The ObserverUK news This article is more than 18 years oldPapa Stour: pop. 20 and falling, as feuds tear island families apart
This article is more than 18 years oldLike many who have stood on the rugged, windswept spot overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, Martin and Fay Strickland thought they had found their island Utopia.
The couple had, like so many of those before them, become disillusioned with life. They were fed up waking to news of more death, destruction, child abductions and escalating crime. They had had enough of leaving early for work to avoid gridlock, only to be too late to find a parking space anyway. They were sick of worrying about unfulfilling careers, house prices and mortgages. Like a growing number of Britons, they had forfeited the rat race for the good life - in one of the most beautiful places in Britain. Or so they thought.
Last Monday was the busiest day of the year on Papa Stour, a tiny island west of Shetland and one of the remotest outposts in Britain. An extra ferry was laid on to accommodate the influx of three for the annual lamb sale. The rain came down in unrelenting sheets and the wind howled around the dozen stone-built white cottages dotted haphazardly across the east side of the three-mile-long island.
Apart from the two sheep buyers and the chairwoman of the local community council, there was not a soul in sight. Nor is there a pub, shop, cafe or community hall. The primary school lies empty, as does the caravan which once served as a post office. The only accommodation for the few visitors who venture here is a bunk-bed in a hostel at £10 a night.
In the past month two of the nine families who lived here have packed their belongings and left. The Stricklands, who came here five years ago from Lincoln, are desperate to sell up and move to France. Their departure will reduce the population to fewer than 20.
Fay, who is 64, and Martin, 55, moved here five years ago and say they have enough of the arguments and ill-feeling between islanders.. 'Papa Stour sounds like an island in Hawaii and, when we first moved here, we were so happy we felt as if we were living in Hawaii. We absolutely loved it. But things started to go wrong.'
Problems have surrounded a bizarre shooting of a dog, which resulted in a court case pitting families against each other, arguments between 'incomers' and natives of the islands, vandalism and disputes over the running of the tiny and now defunct local primary school.
Jane Puckey chairs the local community council. The retired radiographer lives on the mainland but has a croft on the island and is here today for the annual sheep sale. For Papa to survive, she knows it needs to attract new blood and desperately hopes some young families might heed the words of Prince Charles, who last week eulogised the gentler, calmer pace of life in the far north of Britain, and move to the island.
'Papa has a very, very bright future ahead,' she insists, mentioning the launch of the new roro ferry and the resurrection of the local history group. But for those who are already on the island, the dream has died.
For the Glover family, the final straw came earlier this year when another islander - John Walker - emptied a bucket of dog faeces over the Rev Adrian Glover's head, allegedly announcing as he did so: 'See, we call you shithead.' Glover himself was acquitted last year of causing suffering after shooting the Walker's sheepdog.
The family, who had moved to the island with their four children in 1996, have returned to Bournemouth. Glover said that he still loved the island and hoped to see it do well, but described his time there as 'a bit like living in the Gaza Strip'.
'When we first moved we expected a little bit of hostility as incomers going into a small community,' he said. 'But I tried to change things in the community and that didn't go down well.'
The last time the population on the island fell so low was in 1973. Then, one islander, determined not to let the community die, placed an advert in a national newspaper: 'Island needs young people with adventurous spirit. Land and croft houses available.' Hippies poured in from around the globe. Most disappeared again at the first harsh signs of winter.
More than 30 years on, only one of those families remains - Sabina and Andrew Holt-Brook, who found tranquillity and Jesus in Papa and live in a sprawling house-cum-drug rehabilitation centre overlooking the pier. A planning row in 2003 over the proposals to convert their home into a rehabilitation hostel further divided the community.
If young blood cannot be attracted to the island in the future, there are fears it will go the way of St Kilda, whose last 36 inhabitants were evacuated to the mainland in 1930.
Of course, Papa Stour is not the only remote Scottish island that is facing depopulation and a precarious future. But many of those other islands can boast a strong sense of community, with Hogmanay parties that last a fortnight and packed social calendars. Not here, where the problems are compounded by a history of petty but deeply divisive squabbling.
Another family, the Calvins, were forced to leave the island two weeks ago when John Walker's wife, Jane, withdrew her children from the school after she realised Calvin, the teacher, had given a witness statement to police about the dog faeces incident which resulted in her husband being fined £600. 'Where I come from [Manchester], it's grassing,' Walker said. She acknowledged the disruption her actions caused - three part-time jobs have also gone since the closure of the school - but said she simply could not countenance the thought of Calvin teaching her children, and has opted for home schooling.
Jane, who is 31, moved to Papa with her husband, 60, three years ago. Since the Glovers left, she said, life on the island has improved dramatically. 'You can't come to a small island like this and start playing at being chief and interfering with other people's lives,' she said. 'You get on with your own life and you'll have no problem at all.'
Defending her husband's decision to throw dog faeces over Glover, she said it had reached the stage where they couldn't take it any more. 'Everyone on the island was suffering because of them. That has been the trouble and that has gone.'
As claims and counterclaims spread throughout the island's small population, only one thing appears certain: ill-feeling on Papa Stour is still blowing as strongly as the wind.
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