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 A PROTEST has been made by top environmental group, Friends of the Earth Scotland, following the leaking of a letter relating to the public inquiry into the Lingerbay Superquarry. And the Council has officially regretted the tone and content of the letter, sent by Assistant Director of Planning John Marshall to the Council's solicitors in Edinburgh, in April 1994. Mr Kevin Dunion, Director, Friends of the Earth, Scotland, said the letter, which was passed on to his group after appearing without explanation or cover note in the mail of a local anti-quarry protester, "provides a disturbing insight into the attitude which a senior Council official holds about people who take the trouble to express their concern about a major planning proposal which, as we subsequently know, led to one of the longest running public Inquiries in Scotland."
In the first part of the letter, Mr Marshall, who is at present on sick leave, dismisses half of the representations as being the result of a Friends of the Earth campaign although as he notes "most people have at least been energetic enough to write it out again in their own hand-writing."
Then he goes on to pick out a particular representation which had been posted from abroad. He says "apart from being an avowed Greenpeace and RSPB member the representation from Thailand is particularly interesting. The correspondent's home address is Glasgow which makes me think that this particular representation was written whilst he was in Thailand on some kind of sex holiday - certainly the hand writing appears to be that of a very tired man! "
The letter then goes on to deal with a submission by Dr Murdo Macdonald, which, he says, "judging by the standard of his submission, is to be taken quite seriously. What he has to say is largely new ground unlike, say, Callaghan, where we heard it all before." This was a reference to long-term anti-quarry campaigner Mr Ian Callaghan of Scarista House, Harris. Council Chief Executive Brian Stewart told the Gazette that the letter was genuine and went on: "The content and tone of the letter are to be regretted, no matter if the letter was intended to be informal or was written under the intense working pressures of the moment.
"However, the letter is part of the privileged information between client and solicitor and was never designed to be made public or to embarrass or belittle individuals.
"What is of extreme concern is that someone appears to have seen fit to leak this information with the intention of causing embarrassment to firstly an individual member of staff who is now on sick leave, and secondly the Council. "It would be a pity if this regrettable matter distracts the parties to the Inquiry from the forthcoming publication of the Part 1 Lingerbay Report." Mr Dunion, in a letter to the Gazette said of the holiday comment in the letter: "Frankly I find that comment is utterly unworthy in an exchange of official correspondence from a senior Council official and the Council's legal representatives. It also demonstrates a contempt for the democratic process by which members of the public are entitled to express their views ."
Mr Callagahan said: "I think it shows the sense of contempt that the Council had for objectors at the inquiry who were, after all, only trying to get at the truth of what was going on."
Original article Stornoway Gazette Feb 22 1997.
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