A LEADING Scottish businessman and landowner has admitted that he is a ‘racialist’ who wants to preserve Scotland’s genetic purity.
Sir Iain Noble, the co-founder of the merchant bank Noble Grossart and the owner of an estate on the Isle of Skye, made the remarks in a speech he was invited to give by the Scottish Countryside Alliance. But the chief executive of the alliance, which campaigns in favour of blood sports, has now angrily disowned him, condemning his comments as offensive and reminiscent of the Nazis.

At a major conference organised by the alliance in Edinburgh last week, Sir Iain argued that English incomers to Skye had to be stopped. ‘Does that mean I must be a racialist? I think I have to confess that I am,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t mean I don’t like foreigners. I love them, all colours. I have many Indian friends and even one or two black ones. But I don’t want them to settle and create ghettos in my patch of the country.’

He welcomed attempts by the government’s conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, to ensure that trees were grown from local seeds and urged it to adopt the same policy when employing staff. ‘They’ve got an office with 10 people in Portree, and there’s only one Scotsman there,’ he said, to laughter.

‘I don’t have any English blood in my veins, a thing which I am inordinately proud of. And I’m sure that SNH would be pleased as well, because they believe in the purity of species.’

Sir Iain was born in Berlin in 1935 and educated in Shanghai, Buenos Aires and in England at Eton College and at University College, Oxford. His family came from Argyllshire, he said, but he moved to Skye in 1972 after he bought the estate of Fearann Eilean Iarmain in the south of the island.

He was one of the headline speakers at the Connecting Communities conference held by the Scottish Countryside Alliance at Edinburgh’s Sheraton Hotel last Tuesday. In his address from the platform, entitled Community Empowerment, he attacked the idea of tourism as a solution to the problems of rural areas.

‘People thought tourism was the easiest industry to start in these areas. But, damn it, prostitution is the easiest thing for a woman to do who wants to earn a bob. It doesn’t mean it’s the best.’

As well as launching two banks and a series of businesses, Sir Iain was chairman of the Skye Bridge Company in the 1990s. He runs an up- market hotel on Skye and founded the island’s Gaelic college, Sabhal Mor Ostaig. In 1982 he was named Scotsman Of The Year by the Knights Templar.

His remarks last week have quickly become the target of widespread criticism. ‘Sir Iain is a well-known and colourful character on Skye,’ the local MP and LibDem leader, Charles Kennedy, told the Sunday Herald. ‘Clearly the comments he made regarding race in this speech are not acceptable and will be found offensive.’

Tony Andrews, the chief executive of the Scottish Countryside Alliance, said that if he had known what Sir Iain was going to say, he would not have let him speak at the conference. He insisted he would not allow people with such views to be members of the alliance.

‘I completely and totally reject what he said and so do all of my team. It was out rageous and unacceptable to us, either as individuals or as the Scottish Countryside Alliance,’ he declared. ‘He sounded like someone from the Nazi party of the 1930s.’

Stressing his background with the British Council, Andrews insisted that there was no hint of racism in the alliance. ‘The remarks are anathema to me. They go against everything I stand for and everything the Scottish Countryside Alliance stands for.’

Scottish Natural Heritage rejected Sir Iain’s attack on its employment policy in more muted terms. ‘We hire staff on the basis of their qualifications not their ethnic origin,’ said spokesman George Anderson. ‘That’s not only common sense, but it is the law.’

Sir Iain’s thoughts on tourism were also dismissed by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland. ‘The many people who enjoy Scotland’s spectacular open spaces should not concern themselves with such intolerant and blinkered views,’ said the council’s Mike Dales.

On Friday, however, Sir Iain declined to withdraw his remarks. ‘I am not a racist in the sense of disliking people,’ he said. ‘I just don’t believe that ancient civilisations should be destroyed by aliens.’

He dismissed any parallel with the Nazis as ‘rubbish’ and claimed that he had received ‘a lot of praise’ from people at the Scottish Countryside Alliance conference.

‘I’m very disappointed they have taken such umbrage,’ he added. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve given offence … that was not my intention. I wanted to encourage debate.’

Last October the Sunday Herald reported that the aristocratic laird of Arran, Charles Fforde, had come under fierce attack for making offensive remarks about the ‘mongrel race’ of modern-day Britain. He complained that SNH’s concerns about maintaining the genetic purity of red deer were not mirrored by the state’s ‘encouragement given to a multitude of foreign races to immigrate, integrate and cross-breed’.

Fforde also attended the Scottish Countryside Alliance conference last week. In an intervention from the floor questioning the Scottish Executive’s policies on land reform, he said: ‘We have to remember that the country has now slipped very much more to the left. We’re verging on communism.’

‘I have black friends, but I don’t want them to settle in my patch’

This is an edited transcript of Sir Iain’s speech to the Countryside Alliance:

‘I was educated all over the world but I don’t have any English blood in my veins, a thing which I am inordinately proud of. And I’m sure that Scottish Natural Heritage [SNH] would be pleased as well, because they believe in the purity of species.

‘In rural areas, to be dependent on tourism is close to the worst … People thought tourism was the easiest industry to start in these areas. But, damn it, prostitution is the easiest thing for a woman to do who wants to earn a bob. It doesn’t mean it’s the best.

‘The end result of excessive tourism is absolutely excessive colonisation. I would love tourism to decline in Skye. I teased SNH at their head office … I said I think I agree with your policies about insisting that any seed for new trees should come from the immediate area . I wonder whether you’ve thought of applying the same policy to your staffing? … They’ve got an office with 10 people in Portree, and only one Scotsman.

‘I am parochial and I enjoy it … it’s wonderful. It’s so much more interesting than being homogenous with the rest of the world. And then I thought, well, look at all these English people … buying up all the houses and forcing the prices up out of the reach of the local people.

‘Damn it, it would be quite wrong if this continued. Who can stop it and how can we do it? Does that mean I must be a racialist? I think I have to confess that I am. It doesn’t mean I don’t like foreigners. I love them, all colours. I have many Indian friends and even one or two black ones. But I don’t want them to settle and create ghettos in my patch of the country. And I believe that SNH should approve of this instinct, because genetics are the key to everything.’

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