Letter from – and about – Iona
AS A PAPER concerned with the state of the arts and crafts, ArtWork seems to me the perfect forum to air my concerns about the current crisis involving the maintenance of historically important buildings.
First some stats. I heard yesterday from a major expert in this field, who declined to be named, that the current backlog in restoration tasks to be achieved by the state is nearing one billion in cost.
To this must be added the sixty odd ancient churches that are being marketed by the Kirk – and there's a long queue behind them. Let’s assume at least another forty, all of which will be calling on state funding. Let’s say five million on each.
How should the State respond? Well, first by removing the extra twenty per cent VAT burden on all renovations in contrast to new builds. And secondly by increasing training budgets to empower the hundreds of thousands of young people who need jobs at a time when the country needs crafts people.
Now let me write about the crisis on Iona. The three mile long island, which lies off the west coast of Scotland, has been described in the words of David Ogilvie (the grandfather of branding in modern advertising) as "One of the major brands in modern Christianity for over a thousand years."
Today the highly commendable and market-led Iona Community, a religious organisation, is considering disposing of the last of its island-based youth centres the Macleod Centre. It's a perfectly understandable, and in some ways admirable, decision. Most charities are badly run and this youth centre has deteriorated badly and would lose money if it was rebuilt to service its previous client base, the rapidly collapsing Kirk market.
I salute the Iona Community and thank them for their comprehensive efforts of trying to find ways of re-purposing the building (which I should explain was named after my father and for which I was the chief fundraiser forty odd years ago).
But I think they have got it wrong. Let me explain why.
It is no exaggeration to say that Iona has been a centre of pilgrimage for much of the fifteen hundred years since St Columba, who was primarily a civil administrator, landed in 563. Go to the graveyard and you will find the graves of kings and queens from all over Europe who were buried there throughout much of the medieval period.
After Herculean efforts, the Iona Community, a thriving organisation, have concluded that the best use of the building would be to hand it over to the local community for much needed social housing, with the youth centre being ripped apart and filled with flats (or more likely demolished to avoid the twenty per cent VAT burden on refurbishments.
The trouble was that when I – who was recently described as a justifiable eccentric (?) – expressed my doubts at leaving Iona to the wealthy (It’s now almost impossible to get a bed on Iona for less than £ 100) I was inundated with messages from those saying it should be rebuilt as a hostel so that the poor could continue to come to Iona just as they had been doing for over a thousand years.
Since then it’s been extraordinary. I have spoken with Robin Harper, (the former co head of the Greens) to two MSPs, a former Provost, a former leader in the SNP, and quite literally dozens of others, and not one of them wanted a situation in which the poor of Scotland couldn't go to Iona and stay overnight.
Just for the record I have also spoken directly to Donald Trump, the Pope, two former prime ministers, the Dalai Lama and our current first minister and all seemed fans of what's been going on on Iona in recent decades and would no doubt be aghast at it becoming a Disney land for the rich to go to play spiritual chess with each other on the white beaches and not be involved too much in grubby hands-on Christian action for peace and justice.
So do you stand with me? Should I be exploring new options for the Mac , not against the locals or indeed the Iona Community but with them?
My intention is to talk to a few dozen more folk and then publish a newspaper defining the options and circulate it around. If you would like to write for that paper, to be called Good Words 602, just send me an email at maxwellmacLeod@yahoo.co.uk.
I won’t be chasing you for your money or passing on your details, but I would like to publish a list of those who say they stand with me.
Best,
Maxwell MacLeod
Background.
Iona is a three mile long island a mile off Mull that has been a centre of discussion and pilgrimage for much of the last thousand years.
In 1938 Maxwell's father, Lord Macleod, took unemployed shipyard workers from Govan to the island and working for local stone masons over twenty five years they rebuilt the Cathedral. During this period many thousands of youngsters from across Scotland came to stay in tents and simple huts.
If the current proposals go ahead to hand over the main youth centre to the locals to be used for social housing much of this work will be terminated.
