:19:00
close to the scene
of their primary activity, fishing,
:19:05
and they have a parliament,
a basic... council, where they sit
:19:09
and discuss
the most important issues.
:19:12
And here
the most important issue is
:19:15
whether to continue on the island
:19:18
or to accept that their traditional
way of life will have to end
:19:22
and that they have to
seek evacuation.
:19:27
(Dialogue) Year by year,
the population's shrinking.
:19:30
(Christie)
The background to this debate
:19:32
and the dilemma facing the islanders
:19:35
was the impact of new technology
on their lives.
:19:39
The steam trawlers
that we see later
:19:41
were already
scarring the northern seas,
:19:45
with their otter boards
dragging over the sea bed
:19:49
and damaging
the next spawn of fish.
:19:51
By contrast,
:19:53
the islanders'
traditional rowing boats
:19:55
had been replaced
by small power-driven boats
:19:58
that practised drifter fishing,
:20:01
using fine nets kept up by
air-filled floats to catch herring.
:20:06
According to the regulations,
:20:09
trawlers were supposed to observe a
three-mile limit around the islands.
:20:14
But, inevitably, they often didn't.
:20:17
Already, in the 1930s,
:20:19
the traditional livelihood of the
island fishermen was under threat.
:20:23
Catches were low
and unpredictable
:20:26
and the trawler fleets
took a lot of the blame.
:20:29
Powell argued in his book
:20:32
that the issue wasn't really
so black and white.
:20:34
He noted that
the trawlermen performed
:20:37
many acts of kindness
for the islanders.
:20:41
But in the end they were driven
by the profit motive.
:20:45
This would inevitably destroy
the fragile island economy.
:20:49
He sums it up in the book
like this:
:20:52
"The conquest of nature
by civilisation is a fine theme
:20:56
and always printed in big capitals,
:20:58
but what good is civilisation,