Iona teacher off to Scoraig

Alison Barr, former Head Teacher at Argyll’s Iona Primary School, has been Acting Head Teacher since December 2009 at one of the most remote primary school in Scotland.

The nine-pupil school is at Scoraig, on the peninsula between Little Loch Broom and Loch Broom. There is no road to Scoraig and the only way in and out is either by small boat or along a 5 mile track across the hill.

Highland Council has now appointed Ms Barr to the post and she will be moving permanently to Scoraig.

She’s looking forward to being part of the little community there and with her experience on Iona, added to time spent teaching in Australia, she knows about resilient communities in less accessible places.

Alison Barr will now be staying in a part of the world which is almost numbingly beautiful  and has some curious historical reverberations.

Gruinard

Scoraig faces west across Little Loch Broom to the headland at Stattic Point that lies between it and Gruinard Bay, with the island of Gruinard, poisoned with anthrax during Ministry of Defence experiments  in biological warfare in 1942. These were carried out by scientists from the legendary Porton Down establishment on the Salisbury Plain. (Well away from ‘home’ of course.)

The strain of anthrax used was particularly virulent -  Vollum 14578. Its spores were so durable that they defied post-experiment attempts to decontaminate the site.

This left the island – alarmingly close to the mainland shores, quarantined and with no visitors allowed.

Operation Dark Harvest

There was widespread anger in Scotland that the British Government was making no serious efforts to make the island safe. In 1981, almost 40 years after the experiments and with the island still quarantined, it was time for action.

Enter Operation Dark Harvest, a direct action group whose membership was said to be microbiologists  from two unnamed universities.

The national press began to receive messages from Operation Dark Harvest. These called for decontamination to be carried out by the Government. The demand was backed up by a pretty potent threat.

Dark Harvest – you couldn’t better the name – informed the papers that their team had landed on the island, with local assistance, and had collected 300 lbs of soil.

Armed with this, they made their strategy clear. They announced that they would be leaving parcels of this soil ‘at appropriate points that will ensure the rapid loss of indifference of the government and the equally rapid education of the general public’.

They meant what they said and their targets were strikingly focused.

Porton Down was hit first, with a sealed package of soil left at its gates and, under analysis, showing the presence of anthrax bacilli. Shortly after this – by a matter of days – Blackpool got a package to mark the ruling Conservative Party Conference there. Analysis showed that it was Gruinard soil but this sample contained no anthrax.

This action, however, did improve the Governments concentration and a serious operation was carried out in 1986, spraying the entire island with formaldehyde solution taken down with seawater; and removing the topsoil at the areas of greatest contamination.

We have been unable to discover what was done with that toxic topsoil.

On 24th April 1990, almost 50 years after its initial contamination by anthrax bombs, the island was declared safe. There have been no cases since of anthrax in the island’s flock of sheep.

Perhaps while she’s in nearby Scoraig, Alison Barr might do a spot of research on the gladiators of Operation Dark Harvest.