In an exclusive published today, The Oban Times has portrayed an island that my be paradise but is not devoid of internal trouble. This follows reports earlier this week, including ours, that Eilean Eisdeal, the community development organisation for Argyll’s Easdale Island, was going forwards with a development plan for a visitor lodge, affordable housing and business premises.

Eilean Eisdeal made it known ar the time of its announcement that it was aware that ‘some of the older, retired residents don’t want to see any change and that is a valid view’.

It would appear that this ‘valid view’ has grown some rumbustious muscle. The Oban Times reports allegations of – not pistols at dawn but fisticuffs at midnight outside the island’s renowned Puffer Bar, vandalised boats and water channelled into diesel tanks.

The focus for the row is not so much the entire plan but the visitor lodge, said to be a 38 bed hostel which objectors say would ‘double the overnight population’.

Objections are said to have been lodged with Eilean Eisdeal and local anger is fuelled by the fact that these are not perceived to have had any jnpact on the progressing of the plan.

The ability of the infrastructure of the island to cope with the scale of this influx on the rare occasion when it would operate at full capacity is foregrounded by objectors; as is the vision of 38 extra drinkers making mayhem outside the Puffer Bar.

This is a classic confrontation between sincerely felt but polarised views.

One view resists change at all costs – despite the evidence that the Easdale World Stone Skimming Championships, held over two days and drawing far more than 38 people from all over the world to what has become a major left-field event – has not led to the end of civilisation as it is known in that part of Argyll.

The contrary view is that progress is necessary for the sustainability of the little community and that proper facilities for visitors and support for business enterprise by residents is a constructive balance in driving development.

Compromise can and obviously must be found and that always involves sitting down to talk. Easdale has all the capacity to make a great deal of fun out of a pow wow and to use it to heal divisions. ‘Ownership’ is important and those not invited to the party – or who willfully exclude themselves simply perpetuate what we call ‘Bad Fairy’ syndrome. Remember the Sleeping Beauty, the uninvited Bad Fairy and the vengeance that followed?

Current financial realities have a lot to say here. The UK has been taken into a position iof unimaginable national debt  that will still be being repaid when today’s children are working adults. There will not be, in the foreseeable future, public money available to continue to subsidise non-viable communities. All communities, even the smallest and the most remote – in fact particularly these communities – must now work to earn their keep.

Argyll has long had a ‘dependency’ culture. While it still does, there is evidence that it is moving away from this, as it must.

Change is, in many cases, how we see it:

• a loss of innocence and old freedoms, of our own protected peace and quiet
• a confident embracing of today, opening to new opportunities, girding up for different challenges and sharing what we have in mutual respect

In the end, there is no choice. Darwin said: ‘Adapt or die’. The only choice is between accepting the need to adapt with grace and negotiation or throwing mudpies like sullen children.

The photograph above really gives the picture – the tiny inhabited island of Easdale with the slender passage of water separating it from the mainland settlement of Ellenabeich.

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