• 1 Brian Smith, “When did Orkney and Shetland Become Part of Scotland? A Contribution to the Debate”, (...)
• 2 Neither council has yet developed proposals for the forms such autonomy might take; Martin Williams (...)
• 3 Simon Johnson, “Orkney to explore independence from Scotland and UK following Brexit”, The Telegrap (...)
• 4 Ray Perman, “Scottish devolution: a cause for concern in Shetland”, Financial Times, December 28, 1 (...)

1The constitutional status of Orkney and Shetland has been the subject of recurrent discussion since the 1960s. Collectively known as the Northern Isles, the archipelagos are located in the North Sea at the far north of Scotland, Orkney a short distance from the northern tip in Caithness and Shetland considerably further, situated 100 miles from the Scottish mainland. Incorporated into Scotland after being pledged as a dowry by the Norwegian crown in 1468-1469 and formally annexed in 1472, the island groups have subsequently been governed as unitary parts of Scotland and the United Kingdom and, by the modern period, fully participated in Scotland’s system of local government. Recent decades have seen increased interest in the island groups’ constitutional preferences and political identities both within and beyond the islands.1 Such interest is typically provoked by the prospect of broader constitutional change within Britain and Europe and tends to focus upon a narrative of anti-Scottish sentiment in the islands in opposition to the growing appeal of Scottish nationalism. The islands, it is sometimes claimed, aim to keep a distance from Scotland and look instead towards their distinctive Norse heritage. In recent years, particularly following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and votes by both islands’ councils to explore greater autonomy, there has been speculation within parts of the British media that the islands might themselves attempt to gain “independence” from Scotland.2 Such reports claim the islanders “were already independent in spirit,” many feeling “they had more in common with Norway than Scotland,” often emphasising their history of Norse rule and assuming an antipathy towards governance from Edinburgh.3 These claims bear a striking similarity with commentary on the islands’ opposition to proposals for a Scottish Assembly in the 1970s, which frequently drew attention to the role of the islanders’ national identity—for example, that Shetlanders did “not want to be Scots.”4

• 5 Atina Nihtinen, “Political change and cultural reconstruction of the past in Shetland”, Northern St (...)
• 6 Callum Brown, Up-Helly-Aa: Custom, Culture and Community in Shetland, Manchester: Manchester Univer (...)
• 7 Sebastian Seibert, Reception and Construction of the Norse Past in Orkney, Bern: Peter Lang, 2008, (...)

2As a result, prevailing narratives tend to assume that the islands’ national and cultural identities determine local attitudes towards their constitutional status. Though there has not been substantial historiographical attention paid towards the islands’ engagements with constitutional debates, studies which encompassed this theme generally reinforced a focus on identity. For example, Atina Nihtinen’s analysis of Shetland’s attitudes towards a Scottish Parliament between the 1970s and 1990s was primarily framed in terms of culture and identity.5 Callum Brown has also approached the islanders’ attitudes to a Parliament through the lens of identity, though Brown noted the political and material factors that allow identities to be “adopted and dropped as the need arises.”6 Similarly, Sebastian Seibert’s study of the historical construction and reconstruction of Orkney’s Norse history unsurprisingly engaged with debates surrounding the reform of local government and services in the 1960s through this lens of identification and heritage.7 These identities undoubtedly played a significant role, yet their “anti-Scottish” nature has rarely gone uncontested nor provided a monolithic influence across Orcadian or Shetland society. Moreover, such narratives often imply that Orcadians and Shetlanders have responded to constitutional questions principally through the prism of identity, obscuring socio-economic explanations or agency on the part of islanders to determine their own views.

• 8 This article is based on doctoral research conducted at the University of Edinburgh funded by the C (...)

3This article will examine the relationship between identity and constitutional preferences in Orkney and Shetland with reference to three constitutional debates which took place between 1966 and 1990. Firstly, local mobilisations against proposals to amalgamate the islands’ public services and ultimately their local government into expansive units encompassing much of the Highlands and Islands region provides an insight into the political significance local symbols and identification could assume in the face of centralisation. Secondly, the islands’ opposition to a Scottish Assembly in the 1970s allows an examination of the extent to which questions of identity and “anti-Scottish” sentiment influenced their constitutional preferences. Finally, the campaigns for autonomy pursued by the Orkney and Shetland Movements in the 1980s produced the most overt political mobilisations grounded in the islands’ cultural identities. While some islanders were motivated by an aversion to additional Scottish associations and a rejection of Scottish identity, attitudes towards constitutional change need to be understood in the context of a widespread sense of vulnerability amid perceived threats towards the islands’ own local identities in a period of rapid economic and social change. This included the wide-reaching impact of oil developments in the 1970s and a common determination to avoid the return of unemployment and emigration that had characterised much of Orcadian and Shetland society throughout previous decades.8

• 9 Liv Schei & Gunnie Moberg, The Orkney Story, London: Batsford, 1985, 10.
• 10 Linda Riddell, “Shetland’s Viking Identity: A Casualty of the First World War?”, in Jodie Matthews (...)
• 11 Marsha Elizabeth Renwanz, “From Crofters to Shetlanders, the Social History of a Shetland Community (...)
• 12 For example: Britt Cartrite, “Ethnopolitical Mobilization in the North Sea Region”, Nationalism and (...)
• 13 Stella Sutherland, “The Shetland Way of Life as I See It”, The New Shetlander 107, Voar 1974, 26-27 (...)

5In general terms, Orcadians and Shetlanders identified primarily with their island groups and then with a national identity, either British, Scottish or some combination of both. Of these, Orcadian and Shetland identities have been the most universally accepted and least contentious. Most commonly, the islanders are described in terms such as possessing “a strong assertiveness and a separate identity,” in Orkney’s case leading them to identify as “Orcadians first, then Scots or British.”9 Similarly, Linda Riddell identified the basis of Shetland identity as “geographic isolation, a distinctive ethnic background and history, a sea-faring way of life, memories of oppression, a strong dialect and community ethic.”10 The conception of Orcadian and Shetland identity as forming a distinct ethnicity has been further developed by other scholars, particularly in relation to other British identities. Marsha Renwanz described an “ethnic antagonism towards soothmoothers”—incomers from other parts of Britain—among Shetlanders in the 1970s, while another analysis surmised the process through which landowners in the nineteenth century became coded as “ethnically different, of Scottish descent.”11 Others have rejected the existence of a separate ethnic identity for Orcadians and Shetlanders, citing the prevalence of Scottish and British national identities and the absence of a “national” language—both Shetland and Orcadian dialects derive from Scots, albeit with significant Norse influences.12 Nevertheless, their identities are more distinct than simply localised variations of Scottishness. Much has been written about the Shetland or Orcadian “way of life” in the past half-century, a contested notion often defined by relationships to land and the sea, language, music, community and a sense of belonging.13 Even if not vocalised or understood in such precise terms, these factors produced a strong identification with the island group within a vast majority of their inhabitants. As will be seen, this identification provided a significant element in the communities’ responses to proposals for constitutional change.

• 14 James O’Connor, “British Rule in Shetland”, Monthly Review, vol. 30, n°1, April 1979, 23.
• 15 Bronwen Cohen, “Norse Imagery in Shetland: An Historical Study of Intellectuals and their Use of th (...)

6It is in this pervasive sense of distinctive if not necessarily ethnic identity that the appeal of Norse connections and imagery has arisen. Most famously displayed in Shetland’s annual Up Helly Aa fire festivals, which culminate in a procession of marchers dressed as Vikings throwing torches into a Viking galley, Norse aspects to the islands’ identity are widely prevalent. Norse influences have encompassed place names, folklore and more recently twinning agreements with Norwegian towns and tourism marketing strategies. These have sometimes been framed as a self-delusion on the part of islanders, one visiting journalist commenting in 1979 that Shetlanders “still mistakenly believe that they are more Scandinavian than Scottish.”14 And indeed, substantial research over recent decades has highlighted the process by which Norse identification emerged as an intellectual construct in the nineteenth century, beginning with the efforts of writers, antiquarians and folklorists in the context of broader romantic hunts for origin myths across Europe.15 It was in these works that Orcadians and Shetlanders became conceptualised as possessing a separate, Norse-based ethnicity.

• 16 Mark Ryan Smith, “Shetland Literature and Identity”, in Adam Grydehøj (ed.), Identity, Lerwick: Nor (...)
• 17 Hance D. Smith, “The Scandinavian Influence in the Making of Modern Shetland”, in John R. Baldwin ( (...)
• 18 Linda Riddell, op. cit., 138-139.
• 19 Sebastian Seibert, Reception and Construction of the Norse Past in Orkney, 204.
• 20 Angela Watt, “The implications of cultural interchange in Scalloway, Shetland, with reference to a (...)

7Crucially, claims to Norse identity have been used by some islanders to downplay or reject their Scottish heritage. At its most extreme, Mark Smith described this tendency in Shetland as “a xenophobic trope, used to separate Shetland from the Scottish polity it had clearly and straightforwardly been part of since the mid 15^th century,” noting its inherently political utilisation.16 In communities that still by the late twentieth century maintained a vivid popular memory of class oppression under landlords, or the “Scots lairds,” the islands’ Viking past was reframed as a “golden era of freedom” in contrast to the oppression brought about by Scottish rule.17 However, the extent of such sentiment should not be exaggerated. Riddell’s analysis correctly identifies the half-serious nature of many claims to Viking identity in Shetland, which themselves have been contingent on particular historical contexts and moments.18 The postwar decade following the Second World War saw a particular move away from racialised and bellicose associations of the Viking period that had since been discredited by Nazism.19 Moreover, rather than an explicit identification, Angela Watt has described this tendency as “The Norseman’s Bias”, a “periodic identification in the ornamentation of culture” that can offer “a counter-cultural claim to Scottish influences” rather than an integral part of lived identities.20 The alternative source of identity provided by perceptions of a Norse heritage thereby existed in both island groups as a rhetorical tool that could be utilised during times of political or social confrontation with external forces, as in the constitutional campaigns examined later in the article.

• 21 Atina Nihtinen, Ambivalent Self-Understanding: Change, Language and Boundaries in the Shetland Isla (...)
• 22 Linda Riddell, op. cit., 136.

8Even if Orcadians and Shetlanders lacked a meaningful sense of themselves as a distinct ethnicity, Scottishness has often been the most contentious aspect of their identities. Many islanders in this period vehemently rejected any Scottish associations, an attitude which can still be found today, particularly among older generations.21 In part due to the strength of local island identity and the negative associations with Scotland outlined above, this attitude can also be explained by the strength of British identity in the postwar years fuelled by a shared wartime experience and participation in British institutions such as the Merchant Navy. For those averse to Scottish associations, Britishness offered a positive and accessible source of national identity. The potential for identification with Scotland was further weakened by the fact that several symbols of Scottish identity, particularly as perceived within Orkney and Shetland, were self-evidently absent in the islands. The “nostalgic tartan and bagpipe images with which Scots built their traditions and identity” were considerably less common sights in the islands; in Shetland, Burns Night is typically supplanted by the Lerwick Up Helly Aa celebrations in late January.22

• 23 Thomas Simchak, op. cit., 129-130.
• 24 Christine De Luca was appointed Edinburgh’s makar (poet) in 2014; “Christine De Luca,” Scottish Poe (...)

9Yet, as critics of claims to Norse identification increasingly asserted in this period, the islands did possess numerous markers of Scottish identity and association, albeit in a distinctive form. Orcadians’ and Shetlanders’ dialects derived from Scots rather than Old Norse; they formed part of the Scottish crofting system established in 1886, which oversaw the legal rights and responsibilities of tenants and owner-occupiers in small agricultural holdings within the Highlands and Islands region known as “crofts”; and they had been governed for centuries within a Scottish institutional framework. In cultural terms, islanders generally looked south rather than east—the colours of Scottish football teams are “ubiquitous” in Lerwick, contrasted against the absence of Scandinavian football jerseys.23 Poets and writers from the islands, ranging from Eric Linklater to Christine De Luca, have been heavily involved in Scottish literary circles.24 These contradictions underline the contested position of identity in Orkney and Shetland. Where some islanders would have rejected outright any suggestion of a Scottish identity, for others a sense of Scottishness existed comfortably as part of a rich layer of identities, though usually still prioritising their status as an Orcadian or Shetlander. For this reason, although identity played a key role in shaping responses to constitutional reforms in the latter half of the twentieth century, it would be misleading to assume that these identities were deterministic or that the island communities spoke with a single, homogenous voice.

• 25 Mike MacDonald, “The Orkney Islands and the European Economic Community in the 1970s”, Northern Sco (...)
• 26 General Register Office, Census 1971, Scotland: County Report, Zetland, Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s St (...)
• 27 “Shetland’s Population Lowest Ever Recorded: Constant Decline Since 1861”, The Shetland Times, Janu (...)
• 28 Ronald Miller, Orkney, London: Batsford, 1976, 153.

10As the three constitutional case studies will illustrate, any analysis that seeks to explain island responses to proposals for constitutional change solely in terms of identity neglects the importance of socio-economic considerations. Most notably, local politicians and policy-makers were influenced by a belief that the communities they represented existed in a state of deep-rooted vulnerability, where any threat could bring about economic and demographic disaster. Orkney and Shetland’s populations peaked in the mid-nineteenth century at around 32,000 people in each archipelago, after which both island groups suffered a century of near-uninterrupted depopulation driven by large-scale emigration. Following a prolonged postwar economic depression in the island groups, their populations had fallen to 17,077 and 17,325 by 1971.25 Smaller islands and rural communities suffered disproportionate losses, some communities even facing an existential threat; in Shetland alone the number of inhabited islands had fallen from almost 30 in the nineteenth century to 18 in 1961.26 In the 1950s, as unemployment remained rampant, the islands’ case was frequently described as “hopeless” or “a losing fight.”27 Orkney’s expanding agricultural sector insulated the archipelago from the same degree of economic precarity experienced in Shetland, though an ongoing process of farm amalgamations continued to push workers off the land and contribute to emigratory pressures.28

• 29 Eric Linklater & James R. Nicolson, Orkney and Shetland: An Historical, Geographical, Social and Sc (...)
• 30 J.M. Fenwick, “The Shetland Experience: A Local Authority Arms Itself for the Oil Invasion”, The Sc (...)
• 31 Edward Thomason, Island Challenge, Lerwick: The Shetland Times, 1997, 31-5.

11By the 1960s, with the exception of a brief influx of servicemen during the war, the islands’ local politicians had only ever known communities that seemed to be in a permanent state of decline. The decade saw some reprieve amid expansion in the islands’ indigenous industries of agriculture, fishing and knitwear, aided by financial support from the Highlands and Islands Development Board following its establishment in 1965.29 Many of these gains had stemmed from local initiative and investment, helping to foster a conviction amongst much of the islands’ governing class of the need for, as explained by the Shetland Islands Council’s (SIC) inaugural planning officer, “continuing and improved control over their own destiny.”30 As a result of these developments, the population decline began to show signs of slowing in Orkney while Shetland’s population even recorded growth between 1966 and 1971 for the first time in over a century. However, the islands’ policy-makers were keenly aware of how precarious and vulnerable these gains could be, grimly demonstrated by a downturn in the fish processing sector the following decade. The 1966 seamen’s strike, largely isolating the islands from the Scottish mainland for several weeks during the economically important summer period, reinforced such insecurities.31 This sense of economic vulnerability instilled an inherent suspicion towards any external influence that could place the economic recovery at risk, especially if the islands’ capacity to determine their own policies was perceived to come under threat.

• 32 Jonathan Wills, A Place in the Sun: Shetland and Oil, Myths and Realities, St John’s: Mainstream Pu (...)
• 33 R.J. Berry, “The People of Orkney”, in The People of Orkney, op. cit., 7; Shetland Islands Council, (...)
• 34 Jonathan Wills, op. cit., 12.

12Just as the islands’ social and economic conditions moved towards a steady recovery, they were dramatically disrupted by oil developments in the 1970s. As major oil fields began to be discovered in the North Sea from 1971, the decade saw the construction of enormous oil terminals in both Orkney and Shetland. The islands hosted substantial numbers of incoming workers, peaking in Shetland at 7,000 people by 1980 at the height of the construction phase, while Orkney also became home to thousands of workers.32 By 1981, Orkney’s population had grown by six percent to 19,056, while Shetland’s surged by 31 percent to reach 22,768, reversing over 40 years of depopulation in a single decade.33 These developments placed enormous strain on the islands’ infrastructure, indigenous industries and social relations, described in Shetland as having been “torn apart and unevenly stitched together again.”34

• 35 Marsha Elizabeth Renwanz, op. cit., 230-298.
• 36 Thomas Simchak, op. cit., 2.

13The arrival of oil had three key impacts on Orkney and Shetland’s attitudes towards constitutional debates. The social disruption has been linked by multiple scholars to changes in self-perceptions of identity, a process again especially pronounced in Shetland. Renwanz identified examples of rising anti-Scottish sentiment triggered by the presence of oil workers from the Scottish mainland, focused around an apparent crime wave which was blamed on the presence of incomers.35 There is a risk of over-generalising the extent of such tensions—it is as easy to find accounts of the islands’ welcoming nature towards incomers, even in this period—but they clearly reinforced some Shetlanders’ rejection of any Scottish aspects to their identity. In a similar vein, Thomas Simchak has examined the ways in which oil strengthened a sense of Shetland identity, most significantly through “acts of claiming” tradition and heritage in the face of external social and economic threats—a process that also took place in response to constitutional threats, as will be demonstrated below.36

• 37 Nicolson, op. cit., 100-101.
• 38 Ewen A. Cameron, Impaled upon a Thistle, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009, 294.

14The implications of oil developments on local identities were significant but, in terms of framing responses to the islands’ constitutional status, the second and most meaningful impact was to enhance anxieties concerning the islands’ vulnerabilities. This may seem a counterintuitive response; both county councils in the islands were able to secure substantial revenues via agreements with multinational oil companies, in addition to securing landmark legislation to control and further benefit from oil developments. This included significant powers to assume the role of harbour authorities and establish reserve funds from oil revenues.37 Yet, this highly favourable settlement considerably raised the stakes of any constitutional reform that might threaten these hard-won gains, a prospect raised by Scottish devolution in the 1970s. Without these new powers, the islands faced the possibility of losing control over the conditions of oil developments and, crucially, the resources to cushion the island economies from the anticipated downturn that would occur when oil developments reached their conclusion. Finally, the advent of oil offered a boost for advocates of political autonomy for Orkney and Shetland. In some ways a microcosm of the national debate in Scotland, where the potential to construct an oil-rich independent state was skilfully exploited by the Scottish National Party (SNP), the presence of oil also increased the economic feasibility of island autonomy, despite ongoing fears regarding their underlying vulnerabilities.38

• 39 Zetland is an archaic spelling of Shetland no longer used in most contexts by the twentieth century
• 40 John Glasson, “The Fall and Rise of Regional Planning in the Economically Advanced Nations”, Urban (...)
• 41 Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland, Report, Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s Stationery Offic (...)

15Proposals in the late 1960s to amalgamate Orkney and Shetland’s local government and key services into larger units shared with parts of mainland Scotland provoked significant unrest in the islands. Since the establishment of Scotland’s modern system of local government in 1890, the islands had been governed by two county councils—the Orkney and Zetland County Councils—three town councils in Kirkwall, Stromness and Lerwick and numerous district councils.39 The islands also possessed their own police forces and several localised water boards. As part of a wider trend towards the rationalisation of government along regional lines, the Scottish Office began pursuing policies to merge Scotland’s patchwork of local authorities, police forces and water boards into larger units.40 A royal commission was established in 1966 to propose reform of Scottish local government while the Scottish Office began compulsory mergers of Scotland’s police forces and water boards. Orkney and Shetland’s water boards were to be amalgamated into the North of Scotland Water Board with Caithness and Sutherland in 1968 and their police forces would become part of the Northern Constabulary with Caithness alone in 1969.41 Despite vociferous protest from Orkney and Shetland’s local authorities in addition to their Member of Parliament, former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond, the islands were forced into these new bodies against their will.

• 42 “’Back to Denmark’ posters on Orkney shop fronts”, The Orcadian, August 31, 1967, 1.
• 43 “Orkney ‘rebel’ posters appear”, The Press and Journal, August 23, 1967, 1.
• 44 Shetland Council of Social Service, “The Independent Shetlander”, September 22, 1967, Shetland Arch (...)

16The mergers triggered considerable public protest in the islands which sought to wield their distinct identities in defence of local control over police forces, water boards and—fearing proposals to amalgamate local government were soon to follow—their local authorities. In Kirkwall, a flyposting campaign was launched in August 1967 by an anonymous group of young activists ostensibly calling for Orkney’s return to Danish rule, utilising the tradition of Norse identification in protest against centralisation imposed from Edinburgh.42 Though not explicitly anti-Scottish in nature, the posters’ ire aimed primarily at Secretary of State for Scotland Willie Ross rather than Scotland as a whole, the Scandinavian connection provided a useful rhetorical, if not entirely serious, alternative to Scottish and British rule.43 At the same time, the Shetland Council of Social Service published a broadsheet provocatively titled The Independent Shetlander, which called on Shetlanders to mobilise in protest against the mergers.44

• 45 “Chilly Reception for William Ross”, The Orcadian, September 28, 1967, 1.
• 46 “Shetland Lays ‘Viking Ambush’ for Mr Ross”, The Scotsman, September 25, 1967, 1.
• 47 Zetland County Council, “Minutes of a Special Meeting”, August 29, 1967.

17These protests culminated in a series of demonstrations coinciding with Ross’ visit to the Northern Isles in September 1967. The flyposting campaign returned to Orkney and Kirkwall pier became covered with anti-amalgamation slogans, while in Stromness a Norwegian flag flew next to an effigy of Ross himself.45 On the road to Lerwick from Shetland’s main airport in Sumburgh, he was met by a group of students dressed as Vikings and armed with mock rifles who demanded he sign a form for a visa to enter the “People’s Republic of Shetland.”46 Nor were such invocations of identity and heritage confined to young protesters; Lerwick Town Council and Zetland County Council drafted a petition to the Queen arguing that the terms of Shetland’s 1469 marriage treaty had been violated and demanding intervention to prevent the mergers.47 That an issue as mundane as the restructuring of water boards could become a focal point for such protest illustrates the political salience symbols of local identity could possess in the islands when placed under threat. The resultant mobilisation in defence of the water boards, police forces and, before long, the islands’ local authorities helped strengthen an independent political identity in both Orkney and Shetland, overlapping with but, for many islanders, increasingly distinct from wider British and Scottish political identities.

• 48 Cyril Dunn, “It’s no joke for the rebel who leads Orkney revolt”, The Observer, September 3, 1967.
• 49 Shetland Council of Social Service, op. cit..
• 50 Ibid.

18Nevertheless, while symbols of identity proved to be a powerful device for expressing discontent towards the mergers, islanders were not primarily motivated by outrage at the prospect of greater connections with mainland Scotland. Of much greater significance was the perceived threat to the island societies posed by the loss of local control over key services into the hands of mainland officials who, it was believed, would not understand the islands or their needs. It is indicative that one of the Orcadian protest organisers explained the need “for islanders to insist upon their own identity” as a response to the fact they were “dying” from sustained emigration and a lack of employment prospects.48 Moreover, The Independent Shetlander devoted very little space to discussion of Shetland’s identity and heritage. Instead, the broadsheet railed against plans to deprive Shetland “control of her own affairs in the name of efficiency,” leading to a reduction in the quality of services in the islands and a lack of understanding of local needs from a “remote bureaucracy.”49 Indeed, the broadsheet made no claim to special status beyond maintaining the status quo, insisting “we do not seek union with Denmark or Norway… We wish to remain part of the UK, but a vital member and not a dead limb.”50 For most Orcadians and Shetlanders, the amalgamations were offensive not because they increased links with Scotland but because they represented an assault on the local control that was considered vital for sustaining the islands’ economic and social survival.

• 51 “’Orcadian’ Special—Wheatley: Is This the Best for Orkney?” The Orcadian, October 2, 1969, 4.
• 52 “Editorial: Wheatley Divided”, The Shetland Times, September 26, 1969, 8.
• 53 Zetland County Council and Lerwick Town Council, “Joint Submission to the Royal Commission on Local (...)

19As feared, the Wheatley Commission proposed in 1969 to merge Orkney and Shetland into an expansive Highlands and Islands regional council, leaving only weakened, lower-tier district councils within the island groups themselves. It is not difficult to find comments emphasising the islands’ cultural incompatibility with the wider Highlands region. A particularly stark editorial in The Orcadian professed that “it is frightening to think that these islands, with their traditionally Norse-based culture and outlook, would be controlled by members from a predominantly Gaelic area.”51 The Shetland Times rejected the existence of a community of interest with the Highland region, though this was not an inherently anti-Scottish point, the editorial proceeding to emphasise Shetland’s comparatively greater links with Aberdeen.52 The fundamental objections focused on the loss of local control over policy development and the socio-economic consequences this entailed, the democratic implications of existing as two small communities within a larger regional council and the logistical impracticalities of governing such a large area at the local government level. In its submission to the Wheatley Commission, though the Zetland County Council drew attention to Shetland’s traditions, history, culture and “unique character”, its central point focused on the “need for self-sufficiency and a real desire to achieve this, such as is found in no mainland county in the United Kingdom.”53 As such, it emphasised that any loss of local powers “will disastrously undermine the basic, social and economic fabric of the islands” and that “the future development of a potentially viable community would be seriously threatened.”

• 54 Tom Devine, The Scottish Nation 1700-2000, London: Allen Lane, 1999, 574-575.
• 55 Though 51.6 percent of voters endorsed an Assembly, the result fell short of the required 40 percen (...)
• 56 Jo Grimond, Memoirs, London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1979, 264.
• 57 “Election Campaign Under Way”, The Shetland Times, September 27, 1974, 1.
• 58 Shetland Islands Council, “Extract from SIC Policy Committee”, November 10, 1975, Shetland Archives (...)
• 59 Jo Grimond, op. cit., 266-267.

21The 1974-1979 Labour Government’s plans to establish a devolved Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh and the resultant backlash in Orkney and Shetland produced one of the strongest examples of the islands’ contested identities becoming embroiled within political and constitutional debate in this period. In response to growing dissatisfaction in Scotland with the constitutional status quo and—especially—surging support for the SNP, each major political party began looking towards legislative devolution as a solution to contain the threat of Scottish separatism.54 The Labour government elected in 1974 attempted to steer devolution legislation through Parliament, a policy which ultimately collapsed after a referendum held in Scotland in 1979 failed to reach the required threshold.55 During this period, the status of Orkney and Shetland, including their new position at the heart of British oil developments, played a key role in political and legislative developments. In Orkney and Shetland’s shared constituency, each candidate from Scotland’s four major political parties—the Liberals, Labour, the Conservatives and the SNP—ran on a platform endorsing some form of Scottish devolution in the October 1974 election.56 These campaigns demonstrated an early awareness of the islands’ hesitant attitudes towards Scottish devolution. Where Grimond sought to qualify his party’s well-known support for devolution by emphasising the need for an accompanying ‘measure of Home Rule’ for the islands and the SNP softened arguments for Scottish independence with references to the party’s support for island autonomy, the local Conservative and Labour campaigns largely downplayed the issue.57 The newly-established islands councils, free from any such national pressure to nominally support devolution, initially rejected the government’s policy in full. The SIC famously declared it would have “no truck with a Scottish Assembly”, while Orkney Islands Council (OIC) was similarly, if less dramatically, determined to reject the government’s proposals “in [their] entirety.”58 As opposition to devolution developed, another oft-quoted line popularised by Grimond, safely re-elected in 1974, argued that his constituents “could imagine nothing worse than being ruled by Glasgow trade unionists and Edinburgh lawyers.”59 The question of devolution became particularly dominant in Shetland, in part due to the SIC’s activist response in seeking to either opt-out from Scottish devolution or secure specific safeguards, even holding a local referendum on the issue. Following an extended process of campaigning, negotiations and parliamentary manoeuvring, which there is not scope here to examine in detail, both island councils eventually accepted a compromise which would bring Orkney and Shetland into a Scottish Assembly while ensuring the creation of a constitutional commission if either rejected devolution at the ballot box.

• 60 Marsha Elizabeth Renwanz, op. cit., 269-270.
• 61 Tom Nairn, “The Shetland Problem”, in Roy Grønneberg (ed.), Island Futures: Scottish Devolution and (...)
• 62 Kenneth Stowe to Bernie Owen, “Untitled Letter”, December 13, 1976, The National Archives, CAB 198/ (...)

22Orkney and Shetland’s opposition to Scottish devolution in these years has often been understood as a manifestation of anti-Scottish sentiment, particularly by outside observers. Conducting fieldwork in Shetland as these debates were underway, Renwanz highlighted the role of elected officials in seeking to “convince natives that they didn’t want to be ruled by Scots,” quoting councillors who spoke at public meetings of the “chance to get away from Scottish control.”60 A similar argument was adopted by Scottish political scholar Tom Nairn, who identified an ideology of “Shetlandism” on the part of SIC Convener A.I. Tulloch, a “politically ill-defined patriotism” that grew out from Shetland’s “underlying geographical realities” and “the myth of Norse descent” to oppose greater devolution to Scotland.61 The perception that Shetland was motivated by a rejection of Scottish identity even reached Prime Minister James Callaghan, who at one stage sought reassurance from advisors that describing Shetland as “part of Scotland” would not “offend local susceptibilities.”62

• 63 “Delay in Devolution Shetland Style”, The Shetland Times, October 29, 1976, 11; John Jamieson to Jo (...)
• 64 Spencer J. Rosie, “The Orkney Movement: The First Fifteen Years”, October 1994, unpublished article (...)
• 65 “Editorial: Yea or Nay?” The Shetland Times, February 9, 1979, 10.

23It is certainly possible to find examples of attitudes towards devolution being motivated by a rejection of Scottish identity, particularly in Shetland. SIC Vice-Convener John Jamieson, an ardent opponent of Scottish devolution, repeatedly asserted in the context of devolution that he “was not a Scotsman” and that Shetland “was not part of Scotland in terms of our history and ethnic origins, our culture, our social structure and our economy.”63 Though such anti-Scottish comments were less common in Orkney, one autonomy campaigner active in the 1980s would later point towards “deep rooted suspicions of Central Belt domination”, referring to the heavily urbanised area of mainland Scotland surrounding Glasgow and Edinburgh.64 While highly vocal, these attitudes were not universally held amongst either the islands’ councillors nor general public and did receive some pushback. In Shetland, The Shetland Times adopted an editorial stance intensely critical of such attitudes, calling on Shetlanders to reject “the phoney anti-Scots stance” with which they had become associated.65 The newspaper published periodic letters supporting its view and the islands also possessed active and expanding SNP branches in this period, whose members were among the most vocal critics of the councils’ anti-devolution policies, giving voice to a section of the island population that had no issues promoting a Scottish political identity. The existence of these dissenting viewpoints illustrates the heterogenous composition of identity and political attitudes in the islands, which were considerably more complex and multi-layered than a simple “anti-Scottish” backlash.

• 66 Shetland Islands Council, op. cit.

24Furthermore, the responses of the island councils were themselves predicated on material considerations, chiefly the fear that Scottish devolution could threaten the favourable settlement reached with regard to the islands’ local government status and oil arrangements in the earlier half of the decade. These concessions from central government, yet to become entrenched features of the islands’ constitutional landscape, produced an inherent bias towards maintaining the status quo. As detailed above, the consequences of losing these concessions were widely considered to be catastrophic for the islands’ social and economic fabric. Accordingly, an article drafted by the SIC to explain its initial devolution stance concentrated upon “the threats which Shetland has only recently escaped and those which still menace it.”66

• 67 A.I. Tulloch to James Callaghan, “Devolution and Shetland”, January 10, 1977, Shetland Archives, D1 (...)
• 68 Edward Thomason to Jo Grimond, “Untitled Letter”, November 12, 1976, Shetland Archives, D28/19/8.
• 69 Shetland Islands Council, “Statement on Devolution”, November 1976, Shetland Archives, D1/666.

25Consequently, the councils’ campaigns focused upon the distinctly practical demands that their unitary status and the powers conferred by their special oil legislation could not be altered by a Scottish Assembly. Only in the absence of such concessions did the Councils—the SIC in particular—threaten to consider “a more radical solution” of opting out from devolution or to pursue Crown Dependency status, a distinctly British form of island autonomy practiced in the Isle of Man and Channel Islands. 67Certainly, oft-vocalised fears that a Scottish Assembly might strip away the councils’ powers or seek to seize their oil revenues may have had some link to popular narratives of historical oppression associated with Scottish rule, particularly on the part of councillors most disposed to reject the islands’ Scottish connections. It is noteworthy that the SIC committee tasked with developing the council’s devolution policy initially struggled to outline its specific causes for concern, one of its members complaining that “gut feelings” were not easily translated into coherent policy.68 Nevertheless, at its core, the backlash against devolution represented a fear of constitutional change that could threaten the islands’ hard-won degree of limited autonomy more than hostility to expanded Scottish rule. As the SIC emphasised in its 1976 statement on devolution, which would become the foundation of its finalised policy on the matter, “the majority of Shetlanders are satisfied with the present status quo and what has been achieved for Shetland”; only the prospect of “imminent changes” to this constitutional framework threatened Shetland’s position.69 The islands’ distinctive heritage and culture were cited as a justification for providing “special consideration” to Shetland’s case but did not, crucially, form the basis of its claim. The central aim remained to “protect Shetland’s position”, so that its social and economic wellbeing would not be threatened by the erosion of local control.

• 70 “Reaction to the Big ‘No’ Vote”, The Shetland Times, March 9, 1979, 1; “Orkney’s Thumbs Down to Ass (...)
• 71 “MP Analyses a Hundred Views on Devolution”, The Shetland Times, December 3, 1976, 10.

26Orkney and Shetland voted decisively against devolution in the 1979 referendum, which garnered only 27.9 percent and 27.0 percent respectively in support, by far the lowest figures in Scotland.70 Many voters were undoubtedly influenced by a desire to reject closer political ties with Scotland, either out of a strong sense of island identity or British identity—or indeed both. But, as with the councils’ responses, the role of identity should not be viewed as determinative. Although there is no empirical data from the referendum period with which to fully understand voting behaviour, a survey conducted by Grimond in 1976 found general alignment with the councils’ concerns.71 Furthermore, despite the islands’ antipathy to devolution, Grimond’s survey found considerable opposition to any outcome which would sever the islands’ connections to Scotland, several respondents even emphasising the importance of existing Scottish links, such as the Highlands and Islands Development Board and crofting support. Although identity played a clear role in the islands’ devolution debate in the 1970s, it was not the sole influence on the widespread opposition which developed in these years.

• 72 Martin Dowle, “The Birth and Development of the Shetland Movement, 1977-1980”, Scottish Government (...)
• 73 Rosie, op. cit., 1.
• 74 Ibid., 8.

27The Orkney and Shetland Movements offer a final case study for analysing the relationship between political identity and attitudes towards constitutional change in this period. The Shetland Movement grew out of an organisation known as the Shetland Group which had been founded during the devolution debates to bring together advocates of greater autonomy for Shetland and formalised itself as a pro-autonomy pressure group in 1979, calling for the establishment of a legislative assembly in Shetland.72 Though the Orkney Movement had separate origins, emerging from a campaign against uranium extraction in the late 1970s, it modelled itself on the newly-established Shetland Movement and adopted a similar campaign for autonomy.73 The Movements amassed appreciable public support, peaking at 800 members in Shetland and 500 in Orkney—over three percent of the islands’ combined population—providing them with an impressive membership base in the early 1980s, though it would decline thereafter.74 Each Movement gained representation on their respective islands council, establishing a substantial grouping on the SIC which became formalised from 1986. Despite developing a strong base, there is no evidence that the Movements enjoyed majority support in the islands, while their electoral performances tended to be mixed. An examination of the Movements’ relationships with local and Scottish identity can thereby illuminate attitudes within a subsection of the population most passionate about achieving constitutional change.

• 75 Shetland Movement, “Policy Discussion Document”, October 1984, 5-6, Shetland Archives, D1/542/2; Or (...)
• 76 Orkney Movement, “Policy Discussion Document”, op. cit., 5.
• 77 Chris Bunyan, “Points of View”, Shetland Life, 25, November 1982, 31-33.
• 78 Jonathan Wills, op. cit., 154.

28The Movements developed broad policy platforms throughout the 1980s, publishing multiple policy documents and manifestos. These often prioritised their economic ambitions for the islands, with particular emphasis on using the powers of autonomy to adopt a tougher line on the European Economic Community’s Common Fisheries Policy in order to ensure the preservation of local fishing grounds for the islands’ fishing fleets, further underscoring the perceived link between greater local control and the islands’ economic health.75 Other economic interests were also detailed, ranging from agriculture, particularly in Orkney, to tourism, knitwear and freight transport. Both Movements advocated cultural policies though, notably, these often received less focus. They endorsed the promotion of local history, culture and the use of dialect in schools, the Orkney Movement observing that the Orcadian education system had neglected “our own culture in favour of a Mainland British Culture.”76 The Movements were sometimes described by detractors as reactionary forces which promoted a form of cultural nativism. For example, one assessment accused the Shetland Movement of possessing a “chauvinism it encourages and thrives upon,” blaming all problems on external sources and belittling the needs of other parts of Scotland.77 As essentially broad church organisations, the Movements did attract support from some who Jonathan Wills described in Shetland as “rednecks” pursuing a xenophobic “Shetland for Shetlanders” attitude, although he acknowledged the “impeccable liberal credentials” of the Shetland Movement’s leadership.78

• 79 Shetland Movement, “Newsletter No. 1”, September, 1980, Shetland Archives, D1/545/2; Shetland Movem (...)
• 80 Orkney Movement, “Submission to the Committee of Inquiry”, June 1982, Spencer Rosie personal archiv (...)
• 81 Winnie Ewing to Margaret Flaws, “Untitled Letter”, January 29, 1983, Orkney Archive, D123/2.

29While it is difficult to assess the extent to which such sentiment existed across the memberships, the Movements did not formally advocate policies which emphasised divisions along the lines of ethnicity or identity. Notably, the Movements’ policy programmes and public statements were largely absent of any overt anti-Scottish rhetoric. In its first newsletter, the Shetland Movement insisted it opposed any “social and cultural isolation of Shetland,” and its subsequent policy document maintained there was no reason to break away from the Scottish education system.79 In a similar vein, the Orkney Movement described the Scottish education system as “among the best in the world” which brought multiple benefits to Orkney.80 The Movements even increasingly aligned themselves with the causes of Scottish nationalism and devolution, despite the presence of widespread suspicion in the islands towards both. Ahead of the 1983 general election, the Orkney Movement invited Winnie Ewing, the SNP’s popular Member of the European Parliament for the Highlands and Islands and a member of both Movements, to consider becoming their prospective candidate, although she would ultimately contest the constituency for the SNP.81 The invite was as much an endorsement of Ewing, who supported autonomy for the islands, as it was for her party, but demonstrated an acknowledgement of shared goals and priorities.

• 82 Peter Jones, “Assurances Clear Way for Isles Election Pact”, The Scotsman, April 7, 1987.
• 83 Scottish Constitutional Convention, “Islands Working Group Membership”, 1989, Shetland Archives, D1 (...)
• 84 Lindsay Paterson, The Autonomy of Modern Scotland, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994, 169 (...)

30This led to a formal electoral pact for the 1987 general election which saw the SNP take the unprecedented—and since unrepeated—decision to stand aside in favour of a joint Movement candidate on a platform of decentralising power both to Scotland and the island groups. The pact proved controversial among both organisations, not least due to the reluctance of the Movements’ joint candidate, John Goodlad, to publicly endorse Scottish independence, which was considered a step too far for both the Movements and the islands’ electorate.82 However, the very act of forming an electoral pact represented an important alignment between the political forces of Scottish nationalism and Northern Isles autonomy. The Movements had also consistently supported the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly and actively participated in the 1989-1990 Scottish Constitutional Convention, which drew up proposals for what would in time become the Scottish Parliament.83 Instead of framing their ambitions in opposition to Scotland and the campaign for Scottish devolution, as might reasonably have been assumed in the aftermath of the devolution debates in the late 1970s, the Orkney and Shetland Movements explicitly aligned themselves within the Scottish campaign for self-government. This process was undoubtedly aided by shared opposition to the Thatcher Government’s centralising agenda which among other policies introduced strict limits on local government financial autonomy.84 For many of the strongest adherents of political autonomy there was no inherent contradiction between an expanded Orcadian and Shetland political identity and an association with Scottish nationhood, even if some continued to reject a Scottish identity themselves.

• 85 Orkney Movement, “Submission to the Committee of Inquiry,” op. cit.

31The three constitutional debates examined in this article illustrate the complex, multi-layered nature of cultural and national identity in Orkney and Shetland. The Orkney Movement’s claim in 1982 that “these groups of islands are different” reflected majority opinion in the islands, even if the extent of this difference and its implications for the islands’ governing arrangements produced less agreement.85 Orkney and Shetland both possessed distinctive cultural identities separate from but overlapping with British and Scottish national identities. These identities, containing some Norse aspects but focused primarily on a sense of distinctive customs, heritage, language and sense of way of life, provided a powerful basis for resisting centralisation policies and perceived external threats between the 1960s and 1980s.

• 86 Orkney and Shetland voted by 57.3 percent and 62.4 percent in favour of a Scottish Parliament in 19 (...)

32These experiences helped strengthen nascent political identities in each island group, encouraging a consensus behind the need for some degree of decentralised government based in the islands and creating the political space for autonomy movements to emerge in the 1980s. However, this article has argued that such political developments cannot be understood solely in terms of identity, particularly in relation to the islands’ connections with Scotland. Although these political identities were at times constructed in opposition to Scotland, resistance to amalgamations and the movements for autonomy were not motivated to any great extent by anti-Scottish sentiment. Even the campaign against devolution, which did feature an upsurge in rhetoric opposed to greater Scottish influence over the islands, produced more internal divisions than has generally been acknowledged. While identity remained an important factor, all three constitutional debates examined in this article were influenced by an awareness of the islands’ social and economic vulnerability and the resultant conviction among large parts of the population that only greater local control could ensure a sustainable future for their communities. Wariness towards an expansion of powers in Edinburgh would remain present in subsequent decades, both Orkney and Shetland recording lower affirmative votes for devolution in 1997 and Scottish independence in 2014 than the national average.86 Yet, voters in both archipelagos comfortably endorsed the Scottish Parliament in 1997 as the economic and demographic concerns which had prevailed in earlier decades began to recede in the popular consciousness, a process which would reward further study. Such voting behaviour would not have been possible in societies possessing a deep-rooted aversion to Scottish connections.