Tuesday 27 February 2024

Lewis Chemical Works


If you're ever in Stornoway, swing by St Peter's Episcopal Church on Francis Street. It's at the top of the street coming up from An Lanntair on your right hand side. It has a small churchyard with about two dozen graves. Some of them related to the Lewis Chemical Works, an enterprise dating back to the middle of the 19th century, when they tried to convert peat into paraffin.

Gravestone for Henry Caunter

Fairly successful, except it was badly managed. The site, about two miles southwest of Stornoway, just off the A859 road to Tarbert and near the turn-off to Arnish (and its Deep Water Port), is difficult to locate and requires a bit of bog slogging. I've been there, and there is little to remind us of the plant.



Except for this memorial stone

The electricity transmission company SSEN thought it was a good idea to build a huge electricity transformer and converter station there, required to transmit all the renewables-generated power to the mainland, using a direct-current underwater cable. Well, tout Stornoway was up in arms, and today came the news that the site was no longer earmarked for the converter station. Where then? Well, they were thinking about a site near the Fabrication Yard, two miles to the south. We shall see.

Saturday 27 January 2024

Holocaust Memorial Day 2024

 
Today it is 79 years ago since the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated by Soviet forces. More than a million people, mainly Jews, were killed there during the Second World War. The process was conducted as an industrial process. To date, some of the goods left behind by the victims of the Holocaust remain on display. These include suitcases with name tags, spectacle frames, hair and shoes. I have never visited Auschwitz and am not likely to.

January 27th is Holocaust Memorial Day, remembering all the victims of the Nazi's policy of extermination of all those they considered to be sub-human.

Holocaust Memorial Day remembers all victims of genocide.

We must never forget.

Thursday 11 January 2024

11 January 2005

Nineteen years ago, 11th January started as your usual winter's day in the Islands. But when darkness fell, the wind rose to a screaming crescendo. Stornoway was battered by 100 mph winds, the old school I was staying in at South Lochs shook under the onslaught. Blue flashing lights across the water in Laxay indicated that police had closed the A859 to Tarbert, after a busdriver reported a sheep flying past his window. Power went off for 48 hours in my location, up to 6 days in nearby Sildenis. We all hunkered down in darkness, waiting for the storm to blow itself out. 

Nine am the next morning. Phew, that was a bad one. Roof off here, trees down in the Lews Castle Grounds, boats wrecked at Newton. You got any damage? 

News began to filter north from South Uist. Five members of the same family missing out of Lionacuidhe, on the South Ford. They had fled towards the causeway in two cars, but never arrived. As the winds abated, a search of the Ford, the channel between South Uist and Benbecula, yielded all the missing. Lost to a storm surge the evening before. 

I can never bear to see the faces of the two wee ones lost that night. Or those if their parents and grandfather. 

I'll just post the link to the news report

RIP.

Thursday 21 December 2023

Lockerbie - 35 years on

Repost from 2018

July 1981. On my way north with family for the annual holiday. After a late afternoon break in the long journey in Swaledale, we crossed the Scottish border at 6pm. As we headed north up the A74, an all enveloping horror made me lie down on the back seat. I cannot explain what it was about, or why. But after I had given in to my emotion, I looked up again and asked where we were. "Lockerbie", came the answer, and I saw the sign for the A709 turn-off to Lockerbie and Lochmaben flash by.

The same sign that can be seen in the footage from December 1988. The location where parts of the plane came down. Don't ask me to explain the coincidence. I can't. In 1988, I was a student in Holland, and given to watch rubbish on the television. That evening, the Lockerbie images flashed by - and that road sign. A74 Glasgow, the North - A709 Lockerbie, Lochmaben. The documentaries that were shown these past few days were traumatic to watch. The eye witnesses that spoke were moved to tears, even after all those years. I'm no better. May the innocent victims of Lockerbie, from the plane, or on the ground, all rest in peace.

Saturday 11 November 2023

Eleventh

 On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918

the guns fell silent on the battlefields of the Great War, on land and at sea. Millions lay dead, countries were upended and subjected to revolution. 

The war to end all wars. 

Fast forward twenty years and ten months, to September 1939, and it started all over again. World War II did not come to a proper end until nearly six years later, after an atomic bomb vaporised the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The war to end all wars. 

Well, Korea, Suez, Vietnam, the Middle East, the Balkans, Ukraine followed. 

Lest we forget what sacrifices were made to safeguard our freedoms. Fragile as though it may be.

Thursday 9 November 2023

Reichskristallnacht 1938

 It is 85 years ago since the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht]. That night, an organised mob of Nazi forces and sympathisers went on the rampage in towns and cities across Germany, smashing and destroying Jewish-owned property and businesses. It was a foretaste of what was to come during World War II. The extermination of anyone deemed sub-human by the warped mind of Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. Jews topped their league of the unfit, closely followed by gypsies, the mentally ill and many many others. The Reichskristallnacht was a night of infamy, and not just to Germany. Hitler had already been allowed to get away with murder for several years beforehand. In 1936, he occupied the Rhineland which had been ceded to France at the end of the First World War. The League of Nations, the predecessor of the United Nations, cried wolf but had no bite. On 12 March 1938, Nazi forces marched into Austria to join that country to Germany, an event referred to as the Anschluss. Neville Chamberlain flew to Munich to meet with Adolf Hitler on 30 September 1938, returning with the infamous phrase: "Peace for our time". Six weeks later, the Reichskristallnacht took place. Only a few months later, Germany invaded the Sudetenland area of Czecho-Slovakia, and again, nobody moved a finger to stop. In September 1939, Hitler thought he could get away with the invasion of Poland. But this time, it prompted a declaration of war, signalling the outbreak of the Second World War. The lights have gone out in Europe, it was said at the time. The lights in Europe had already been extinguished in 1914, and had not been relit, not even at the end of the First World War. The Versailles Peace Treaty of June 1919 contained all the ingredients for another war, which duly materialised. After the unspeakable atrocities of the Second World War, Germany was divided into four by the victorious allies. The British, French and American sectors became West Germany, whilst the Soviet sector was turned into East Germany, a communist state. Berlin was similarly divided. Until 1961, people from the East fled to the West in droves. A barrier was erected across Berlin in August 1961, later replaced by a high, concrete wall. Similar barriers were put up along the borders between East and West Germany. Anyone trying to flee from East to West was shot on sight, no questions asked. The advent of Mikhail Gorbatchov as leader of the USSR in the 1980s heralded a start of change. And when this wind of change blew across eastern Europe, it blew away all the communist regimes within the space of a few months in 1989.

The Berlin Wall was torn down on 9 November 1989, and you can see the dilemma. Do we remember the Kristallnacht, and not celebrate the reunification of Germany? Do we celebrate the reunification, and ignore the Night of Broken Glass? Maybe the two can be reconciled. The Berliners remember the Kristallnacht in a very low-key but poignant manner. Every year, in the evening of November 9th, candles are left on the doorsteps of houses that were ransacked that night.

The flame, burning at the top of this post, is my candle of remembrance for Kristallnacht.

Tuesday 31 October 2023

Hallowe'en

 

Trick or treat, pumpkins, witches and warlocks. I did not grow up in a tradition of Hallowe'en, and I only really came to know it after I moved to the UK, now 26 years ago. Children knocking on your door, asking for sweets, and if you didn't give them the treat, they could play a trick on you. So, bags of sweeties at the ready.

There is a more serious side to it.
A misconception exists that black cats are associated with witches and wizardry (they are not), which some see as a pretext to mistreat the animals Absolutely unacceptable, and I repost the image from 2006 where an animal shelter will not give out black cats for adoption around October 31st.

Hallowe'en is the abbreviation for the Eve of All Hallows, November 1st, when we remember those who have gone on ahead in the past year. I shall do so in quiet contemplation. 

November 1st is also known as Samhainn, the start of the Celtic winter. The clocks went back last Sunday, putting our sunset time back to 4.45pm - and receding. Today was a nice day, with seasonally normal temperatures. But winter is coming, and the coal fire is lit tonight.