Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power

This is not an easy book to categorise and I don't envy the librarian trying to catalogue it. The book is part biography, part cultural history, part campaign diary, part liberation theology and much more. Fortunately, 20 pages of endnotes, 14 pages of bibliography and a thorough index help the reader to explore the text and its layers of meaning further if they so wish. As someone who knows Alastair personally, I find his voice unmistakably reflected in the book. It is knowledgeable, poetic and, despite the seriousness of the issues he covers, never far from a mischievous sense of humour. I enjoyed the first section best. It describes Alastair growing up on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides – 50 miles northwest of the Scottish mainland, out in the Atlantic Ocean. Nearly everyone spoke Gaelic and the bardic tradition remained strong. There is an obvious reverence for the earth – standing stones, fine views, mountains with names like "Cilleach na Mointeach" which translates as "The Old Woman of the Moors" but is otherwise known as the "Silver Maiden" or "Sleeping Beauty". The spirituality played out in the lives of the islanders connected the soil to soul and to the community that they created and is an important thread throughout the book.

Alastair describes in some detail this deep sense of connection in the community, together with other cultural threads that run through life in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. He writes about traditional Celtic spirituality and how it brings together the idea of forgiveness which helps to build community and social cohesion and the idea of God in nature which connects the community with the earth. Quoting a history of the Hebrides published in 1919, "Veneration is to religion what sap is to the tree. In mediaeval and post-mediaeval times, the people of Lewis were profoundly religious, in the sense that they were deeply reverential". Alastair is quick to point out that living on the island was no rural idyll. The Celts have a long but hard line in history, based on a harsh, warrior culture. It has built self-reliance and resilience in the face of a challenging physical environment. Alastair goes on to write about the importance of stories, song and the bardic tradition for passing on the indigenous knowledge base. But like the island economy, this tradition has experienced many attacks over the centuries. Indeed, this sense of values, culture and tradition under attack drives much of the narrative in this book. For example, Alastair describes the decline of the local fishing industry, for which offshore industrial trawling is largely to blame. As the community moves from a barter to a cash economy, its self-reliance is lost. Previously, the islanders relied on mutuality, reciprocity and exchange. It was understood you were your brother's keeper and gave when you had plenty. Others would give in return when they could. Without fridges or freezers, fish freshly caught had to be eaten. This meant sharing what you had caught with your neighbours and maybe getting something else - eggs for example - in return. Nobody kept a formal score because the economy was centred around seeing that everybody had sufficient. As Alastair says, "Surplus is for sharing before trading, and the joy is in the giving, not the accumulating". People lived simply but in "dignified frugality" and not in the degrading structures of the modern market economy. Alastair also describes in some detail the way that the common land became privatised (the Highland Clearances) and how English became the language for education. As with the loss of indigenous ways in other cultures, these processes were accompanied by a psychological trauma for the community. To quote Paulo Friere, "those invaded became convinced of their intrinsic inferiority". Writing about his own schooling on the island, Alastair notes that nobody wanted to learn about the old Celtic stories because, as one teacher admitted: "we were ashamed of it". The rupture from traditional ways had been painful and rather than rebel against this modernist takeover, the people blamed themselves for it. The first section of the book provides the cultural and psychological background for the next half of the book. This second section describes two major campaigns in Scotland: purchasing the island of Eigg by its islanders and preventing Redland, a multi-national aggregates and cement manufacturer, from creating a super-quarry from a mountain on the island of Harris. These campaign stories are told in elliptical and delightfully meandering fashion. There are many diversions to discuss the relevant history, ecology and theology, along with poems, anecdotes, wonderfully colourful characters, humour and suspense. It is hard to do justice in a short review to the richness of all this, but for me, the most memorable story was how Alastair persuaded Stone Eagle, Warrior Chief and Sacred Pipe Carrier of the Mi'Kmaq Nation to participate in the public enquiry held for the Redland super-quarry proposal. Stone Eagle had helped to stop a superquarry in his native Cape Breton in Canada and was involved in land rights issues all over Canada. Alastair recognised the important link between the struggle on Harris and that of Stone Eagle's people. The symbolism of the Warrior Chief's name had also not escaped him – the mountain was about stone and eagles nested 400 metres from the planned quarry boundary. Such a story is typical of the symbolism that flows through this book. Yet for all my enjoyment of it, I had at the end some niggling doubts. For one thing, Alastair throws himself into his activism heart and soul. This is an endearing quality but not necessarily something that we are all called to and it would have helped if he had acknowledged this. Some of the language left me uneasy. For example, the title: People versus Corporate Power. This creates tension between the two and turns the discourse into a battle – which it most definitely is for Alastair. I'm not sure if such stark duality offers what we need as we navigate a complex and inter-dependent present into a highly uncertain future. Another doubt is about the ability of these stories to be carried across to other places, other lands. Certainly the idea of community empowerment, giving voice to an alternative, non-exploitative future is very attractive. And to this end, the stories in this book are inspiring. But how many full-throttle campaigns can a person have in their lifetime? My own work in Scotland is devoted to similar aims and I have tried this route. I am not convinced it is the answer to match the scale of the problems that Alastair describes. For the loss of self-confidence, self-reliance and tradition that has occurred in Highland Scotland is not unique. Rather, it is a hallmark of modernity. Alastair mourns its loss. I would like to suggest for balance, that there have been gains. We now have a sense of connection with a far wider group of people – the global village, rather than a particular one. Tribal societies may be strong, but they can be highly resistant to incomers. The introduction of household goods has led to a lot less hard grind for women. I don't see myself giving up my washing machine easily (although I'd like to be able to use renewable energy to power it and have it made of entirely recyclable materials). And the collapse of tradition, whilst threatening on one level, has created a melting pot for values, cultures and beliefs. Like it or not, the genie is out of the bottle. Yes there are enormous psycho-social problems as a result and we need to find ways to resolve these. Alastair's work with communities offers one model for how this might be achieved. But I wonder whether he is as frustrated as I am by the difficulty in scaling up success from one localised place to another, whilst knowing that top-down solutions are even worse? Are there ways to bring forth recovery, restoration and healing to communities that can scale up from the particular to the general? Can we design these interventions in such a way that they have an energising ripple effect – like a social acupuncture? I agree with Alastair that part of the solution lies in sifting through our collective psychological and cultural baggage. There is a need for young people to have rites of passage to ease their transition into adulthood. It's true we all need "spaces where we can take rest, compose and compost our inner stuff, and become more deeply present to the aliveness of life". I am grateful for the richness of this book and am encouraged in the use of story in my own work because of it. But I still look for more. Can we have another book in a few years that articulates an approach to health and healing for communities and society that includes the "bad guys" rather than fights them?