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We are, today, all losers 15/7/09
Dear Sir,
So that's it, then. A Sabbath ferry service is to be imposed on us here on Lewis, from this weekend and for always, whether we want it or not. It is being imposed on us against the wishes of our democratically elected Comhairle; against the wishes – by the hard evidence of the two petitions – of a majority of Long Island people; and against the wishes, as is well known, of a majority of CalMac shore and office staff at Stornoway: they, and their families, are the most immediate losers of all.
And this, of course, is only the beginning.
The crowing from those who have long lobbied for this service has already begun.
That much of their strategy has been simply to vilify anyone who dared publicly to
oppose Sunday ferries – cruelly, and often dishonestly -
That they have combined with Caledonian MacBrayne, the Scottish Government and the local SNP to subvert – yet again – Western Isles democracy is a badge they will wear with undoubted pride. That their official spokesman vocally and shamelessly opposed the one fair test of island opinion – a referendum – is gaily laughed off.
They have won. The joys of untrammelled free-
The first Sabbath sailings will be not just an inauguration, but a circus. Already, folk have publicly announced they will travel specially from the mainland for the ploy, and for the gloat, and of course for the TV cameras – and there are those locally, of course, who will board it for the ride too.
Yet, in hard reality, this campaign has been won at the last not by reason, but by massed and at times vicious noise; and triumphed not by argument, but by immigration.
Nor is it the end. Hotfoot from their sad little victory, they will now continue (and with all the more confidence) their campaigning for Sabbath sports, Sabbath golf, and Sabbath shopping. The biggest prize has been won. One by one, in two years, or five, or ten, all the dominoes will fall. What was announced today is already irreversible. Its results, as yet unknown, will be incalculable.
But a hollow victory it is. The immediate losers are these men and woman who work
for CalMac at Stornoway. In the long haul, the biggest losers are our island poor
– our unskilled, untrained workers in the service economy, whose own Lord's Day rest
can now rapidly be eroded for their pleasure of the yacht-
This is not a liberation for Lewis. It is a judgement – a judgement, in the providential will of God, not merely on us as an island and as a community, but a judgement on us as churches and as believers.
As far as I know there are no plans for any sort of demonstration or protest at the Stornoway ferry terminal this Sabbath.
I will certainly not participate in one and would actively discourage anyone else from doing so. It would do no good; it would only make the cause of Christ look ridiculous; and we should not be tempted to make monkeys of ourselves for the nation's media.
In the near future, we may wreak cold vengeance ourselves on our Parliamentarians.
I resigned as a member of the Scottish National Party, on this issue, some weeks
ago, sickened by the determined fence-
But he has never made any secret of them; he has conducted himself at all times with integrity; and the issue is in any event now academic.
At the dissolution of Parliament, then, I intend not only to vote for Cllr MacSween but to campaign for him. I would urge others to do the same. These islands deserve better than a playboy in Westminster and a party apparatchik in Holyrood.
There are besides very serious questions to be asked about the conduct of local Christians in this controversy and, this year especially, the leadership of the Lord's Day Observance Society. In these critical weeks from midMay, the silence of virtually all local ministers was astonishing. The failure of the mass of local believers to make any sort of public stand for the Lord's Day was terrifying.
Britain is rapidly retreating from the Gospel – an increasingly intolerant, secular,
Christ-
If church members on Lewis could not even be bothered to email their MSP or write a letter to the paper – lest (the horror!) they be publicly derided before their neighbours, how will they fare in the day of knocks at the door in the middle of the night; the arrest of pastors; the seizure of their children? For conditions in the West are unusual and temporary; it is in that despotic, hateful environment, of repression and violence and terror, in which most of God's people in the world presently live. (And we are nearer that day than we think: already, on the lunatic fringe of the gay lobby, there are those who demand the criminalisation – and, presumably, the arrest and imprisonment – of ministers who dare to teach, from their own pulpits and to their own people, the Bible's very clear teaching on homosexual behaviour.)
But words fail me to fathom the antics in the last critical weeks of the LDOS. By
the end of May, from a shaky start, there had been an astonishingly successful campaign
which had made the most of advantages unavailable in 2007 – CalMac's stupid invocation
of the Equality and Human Rights Act; the highly supportive Opinion of Gordon Jackson
on that CalMac tactic; the EQT Commission's entire repudiation of CalMac's bid. By
the European Parliament election, Angus Mackay's deftly directed LDOS campaign had
won domination of the local news-
The LDOS held a self-
Having authorised Angus MacKay in tabling a Freedom of Information request with CalMac, the Committee then publicly humiliated him by (when CalMac blithely stonewalled) refusing to sanction either a formal appeal or a public statement. Much of the trouble seems to have originated from the 'Free Church Continuing' representative on the Committee, consistently obstructive and unpleasant: most critical of the endeavours of others, but with no ideas or initiatives of his own.
At the time of writing – 8.30 pm on Tuesday evening, over six hours after the CalMac
announcement – no official LDOS statement has been made and all three ministers on
the Committee are off the island and cannot be contacted. Considering both the emphatic
community mandate and a considerable sum of money won from the Christian public at
the recent Rally – what on earth was done with it? -
But these are all sad details for later, leisurely post mortem. To the last, a bare handful fought, against massed and at times vindictive opposition; at times mocked publicly even by some who made claim to be Christians.
By the Lord's permissive will, the day, here, in the end, and on this issue, has gone against us; and we cannot but share, and in full measure, the shame this week brought on our community, in all its squalour and all its consequence.
Yet we believe God is in control; that His kingdom shall endure without end, and
that He will have a people to Himself – long after, perhaps, the religion of this
island is a dimly recalled curiosity; the Gaelic language has gone the way of Manx;
and our derelict churches do service as pubs, guest-
The earth her fruit shall yield,
our God shall blessing send.
God shall us bless: men shall him fear
unto earth's utmost end...
John Macleod
Drover's Rest,
Maryhill,
Isle of Lewis
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