I recently chanced upon the revelation that the Scottish Government is preparing a “Depopulation Action Plan”. Ye gods, I thought. Not another one. So many years, so many plans, so little action. And in truth, so little interest.
In order to address a challenge, it is helpful first to define it. For starters, it is a long time since there was any generic “Highland Question”. The most populous parts of the region are doing at least as well as many other areas of Scotland.
When the Highlands and Islands Development Board was set up in 1965, the Scottish Secretary Willie Ross referred to the Highlander as “the man on Scotland’s conscience”. Sixty years on, the burgeoning City of Inverness and its hinterland have no priority claim on anyone’s conscience, as they would surely agree.
Rather, as the first chairman of the HIDB, Sir Robert Grieve, wrote in its first annual report: “No matter what success is achieved in the Eastern or Central Highlands, the Board will be judged by its ability to hold population in the true crofting areas”. These are the places now dying on their feet.
Meantime the dichotomy has intensified. The Highlands and Islands population has risen by at least the same rate as the rest of Scotland while its periphery continues to seep people and potential. That is the challenge which headline population figures have been regularly deployed to disguise.
Read more: How is our ‘second industrial revolution’ coming along?
If you add up the areas in which population continues to decline, I doubt if they reach 100,000. Yet so much of Scotland’s image,........