Getting to a better future starts with revisiting our past, claims UHI Professor

History and heritage have had key roles in bringing about the recent upturn in the fortunes of the Highlands and Islands, according to Professor Jim Hunter, director of the UHI Centre for History, part of North Highland College (NHC) and based in Dornoch.

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Hunter, a former chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise and author of eleven books on Highlands and Islands themes, insisted that the expansion of the Highlands and Islands economy is rooted in the growing self-confidence of the area’s people. This growing self-confidence, Jim Hunter maintains, has itself resulted from a new, and more positive approach, to what the region has inherited from the past.

‘Day in, day out for several centuries,’ Jim Hunter comments, ‘just about everyone in authority told our people that everything about them, starting with their Gaelic language or their Shetlandic, Orcadian and Caithness dialects, was inferior, second-rate, of no account. When people are run down in this way, they naturally lack self-esteem. And where there isn’t self-esteem, there can’t be enterprise, initiative, advancement.’

‘That’s why policies aimed at growing the Highlands and Islands economy work best if accompanied by a commitment to restoring our population’s sense of worth. Hence our need to encourage both individuals and communities to take pride in their background; to make people feel good about themselves and their surroundings; to show that the Highlands and Islands, once dismissed as hopelessly impoverished, are actually rich in music, history, architecture, literature, archaeology and much else; to insist that the Highlands and Islands, so well endowed in those respects, are even wealthier environmentally; to demonstrate that our area, despite its having been so long disparaged, is capable of offering all its people – established residents and newcomers alike – an exceptionally high quality of life.’

 The UHI Centre for History owes its existence to a generous gift of £150,000 made to UHI by Dennis MacLeod, a Sutherland-born businessman now living in Canada. Mr MacLeod was North Highland College’s guest of honour at Jim Hunter’s inaugural lecture. There he heard that, including his own gift, the UHI Centre for History has raised some £550,000 in the year since it was launched – and has been able, as a result, to embark on several high-profile research projects.

So what are Professor Jim Hunter’s long-run ambitions for the UHI Centre for History? ‘Our ambitions are unlimited,’ he says. ‘Sutherland, even more than the rest of the Highlands and Islands was for far too long associated with the Clearances, with economic contraction, emigration – all of that. But no longer. Sutherland is beginning to be on the up and up – and our Centre for History can give the area an additional boost. Thanks to the tremendous backing we’ve had from North Highland College principal Rosemary Thompson and her board, from UHI centrally and from all our funders, we’ve been able to recruit a high-calibre team. This team will grow further – and everyone involved in it is committed to making Dornoch a major centre for the study of history. That will be good for Sutherland; it will be good for the Highlands and Islands; it will be good for Scotland.’

The download links are at the foot of the page.

Audio CD version

This speech can be put on CD and sent through the post on request. Please use the comments form to send us your name and address.