LONDON — Officers on the Orkney Islands, a nook of Scotland with Viking roots and an impartial spirit, seized a second within the world highlight on Tuesday and voted to discover methods of in search of extra autonomy — and even independence — from neglectful U.Ok. governments.
Journalists from throughout Britain and around the globe tuned in remotely as Orkney Islands Council voted to check “various fashions of governance” for the archipelago, which has a inhabitants of twenty-two,000.
The proposal from council chief James Stockan grabbed worldwide headlines with its point out of doubtless restoring Orkney’s “Nordic connections.” Orkney was below Norwegian and Danish management for hundreds of years till 1472 when the islands have been taken by the Scottish crown as a part of Margaret of Denmark’s wedding ceremony dowry to King James III of Scotland.
Stockan mentioned his proposal “is just not about us becoming a member of Norway,” however about countering the “discrimination that we’ve had towards this neighborhood” from the Scottish and U.Ok. governments.
“I say, ‘Sufficient,’” he mentioned. “I say it’s time for presidency to take us critically, and it’s time for us to take a look at all of the choices we’ve acquired.”
A report accompanying Stockan’s movement instructed Orkney ought to examine choices together with a standing just like the Faeroe Islands, a self-governing dependency of Denmark that lies between Scotland and Iceland. Another choice is emulating Britain’s Crown Dependencies such because the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey.
Lengthy an impoverished space reliant on the unpredictable fishing trade, Orkney prospered after massive reserves of oil have been found offshore within the Nineteen Sixties. The islands, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of mainland Scotland, even have a burgeoning wind-power trade and a rising tourism sector.
However Stockan mentioned Orkney will get much less help from the Scottish authorities than different island communities in Shetland or the Hebrides, and is desperately in want of recent ferries to maintain its many islands related.
One other councilor, Duncan Tullock, mentioned Orkney was “residing off crumbs.”
“I’ve by no means been extra disillusioned in my life with each the Scottish and the U.Ok. governments,” he mentioned. “We’ve got had promise upon promise upon promise, each single one in every of them empty.”
Any main constitutional change is an extended shot, possible requiring a referendum and laws by the Scottish and U.Ok. governments. The governments in Edinburgh and London are themselves at loggerheads over the Scottish administration’s ambition to make Scotland an impartial nation exterior the UK.
The U.Ok. authorities mentioned there was “no mechanism” to alter the standing of Orkney. The Norwegian authorities mentioned the controversy was “a home and constitutional British matter” on which it had no view.
Councilor David Dawson criticized a number of the concepts being floated for Orkney as “daydreams” — particularly the “fairly frankly weird fantasy of turning into a self-governing dependency of Norway.”
He mentioned the U.Ok.’s rocky departure from the European Union served as a warning in regards to the dangers of going it alone.
“Let me warning you with one phrase,” he mentioned. “Brexit.”