Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

“The Eigg Dream Is Cracking Up” by Brian Swanson. September 5, 1996 Daily Express

“The Eigg Dream is Cracking Up” is of interest for various reasons. First of all the media had tended to describe the islanders as ‘pot-smoking hippies’ and ‘incomers’. This was of course false. Many of those involved in the struggle to establish liveable conditions on Eigg had family roots on the island. I won’t go into detail here, but can mention Marie Carr, Peggy Kirk’s daughter. However, that said, there were also many ‘incomers’. But this is hardly a crime in itself but a consequence of changes in the economy, and due to cultural factors.

The point I’m trying to make here is that there was not only a conflict between the islanders and the lairds, but also between the islanders. Thus, some of the islanders, for various reasons, felt ‘left out’. And it is this, which this article focuses on. The reader can read the article (if they have good eyesight ☺) and reach their own conclusions.

Absurdly, I have few relatives on the island of my own generation. Perhaps only one, my second cousin, Donald McKinnon (mentioned in the article). Donald is the son of Dugald and Katie MacKinnon. Also, absurdly, I met his wife by accident in 2007 when visiting Eigg. He was somewhere in the background, but I never had the chance to talk to him. This is not surprising as at the time I had little information about my ‘family’ on Eigg. My mother used to talk about her aunts and uncles, but I can’t remember her talking about her cousins or their children. This is also not so surprising as she probably hadn’t visited the island since the late 1930s.