Tilting At Windmills. You'd think after years running Channel 4 and

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UNTIL he retired the only obvious interest Sir Jeremy Isaacs had in wind power concerned a section of the orchestra at the Royal Opera House, where he reigned supreme for the best part of a decade. Having recently turned 70, he was looking forward to a relaxed life of reading, writing and rambling around Skye, where he and his second wife - the erstwhile arts journalist Gillian Widdicombe - bought a cottage last summer.

The idea, he says, was to take it easy - to unwind - as "behoves" a man of his years. Instead, he found himself in the eye of a storm that shows no sign of blowing itself out.

Less than three months after acquiring his new property, Isaacs learned of a proposal to build a wind farm two kilometres above the nearby village of Edinbane, in the north-west of the island. Never one to pass up the chance of an argument, he leapt in with both feet, trenchantly voicing his objections. Suddenly, what had been a parish pump story was on the front page of The Times and featured on Channel 4 news, which predicted it would only be a matter of time before wind farms would be proliferating like triffids in gardens across Skye.

All of which proved too irresistible a red rag to the bullish West Highland Free Press which promptly accused Isaacs of fuelling a national media campaign against a project of which it claimed "the great majority of people" on Skye approved. "The Isaacs' campaign," thundered the Free Press, "has been firmly founded on the time- honoured methods of the metropolitan aristocracy - pulling in favours and trading on their names." The headline read: "Is this the most arrogant couple in Britain?"

One half of this couple begs to differ. Isaacs believes he has every right to speak out, even though his protests failed to stop the proposals being approved last week. "We came here in every hope and expectation of leading the quietest of quiet lives," he insists, "and we found that for the people in the village their lives were going to be absolutely transformed by this scheme. And however new we were, we felt that in the end we ought to express our view, particularly as Loch Greshornish - which we look out on and is designated an area of great landscape value - will be overseen by the towers which we will look at all the way along the side of the loch to the main road."

It is a stance that has seen him lock horns with Brian Wilson, the energy minister, who was - coincidentally, but not insignificantly - the founding editor and former publisher of the West Highland Free Press. They appeared last week on the Lesley Riddoch Show on Radio Scotland where Wilson was at his most withering. Isaacs concedes that his adversary is "very tough and very able with a history of being highly combatative on issues that matter enormously to the folk in the Highlands." But? "But the point is he is energy minister, not environment minister. It doesn't seem right to me that the energy argument should have it all its own way."

One sympathises. Honestly, one does. How would you like it if you had escaped the London rat-race, with terrorist attacks imminent and tube strikes daily, for the wilds of Skye, where the silence is sublime, only to discover there are plans to erect around 30, 300ft- high turbines in your backyard? There are those, of course, including our own Muriel Gray, who regard wind farms as one of the wonders of the modern world, their elegant propellers turning balletically in the gale. To its fans, a wind farm is a potential tourist honeypot, complete with visitor centre, restaurant, shops and exhibitions. Adieu, then, to Munro baggers and bird watchers; roll up wind farm collectors and turbine spotters.

Unsurprisingly, it is not a vision that finds favour with Isaacs. He believes that far from attracting visitors, wind farms will send them scurrying elsewhere. "The beauty of the island is an irreplaceable asset that shouldn't be interfered with," he says. "That beauty draws visitors who will be deterred from coming here if the image they have of Skye is of wind turbines and not the Cuillins. Obviously, the two - if they happen - are going to co-exist but thousands more visitors come to Skye than people who live here.

"We get hundreds of thousands of visitors. They are people who want to walk on the hills and see hills and who camp in the caravan site at the bottom of Grishernish and look up to see hills."

Inevitably, it is an issue that creates schisms, even among conservationists who are on the same side of the barricades. On the one hand, there is the attraction of cheap, clean and renewable energy and the possibility of modest profit to a few individuals; on the other, there is the physical effect on a pristine environment, the worry that an Eden is endangered. According to the Free Press, there have been 177 objections to the Edinbane project, 35 of which were from locals and 46 from elsewhere on Skye. One petition included 96 objectors, 93 of whom were from outwith Skye. Either way, it is hard to be precise about who stands exactly where, since relatively few people are prepared to speak out.

"My experience is that Scottish people are sometimes very quiet and don't express their feelings and I think that is part of the atmosphere in the village now," says Isaacs. "These are very close- knit communities; everybody's neighbours. They depend on each other and therefore an issue like this is highly divisive. You can't say it's disgraceful that anybody should make money out of a wind farm if some of the people of whom you're saying it are living across the street from you and next door to you.

"So it's almost easier for a recent arrival, for an incomer, to speak out, particularly if he's got a thick skin. We have met people who have said that that they are opposed to the wind farm but have never been able to say so to those who are prominently in favour. That being the case, Brian Wilson tried to tell me that the people of Skye are broadly in favour of the scheme. That being the case, it's all the more remarkable that the figures are the way they are, because there's a preponderance of objections to the scheme and a greater number of people in the village and on Skye itself are objectors than supporters.

"It's not just a question of Jeremy Isaacs and Gillian Widdicombe sounding off on their own. We are slightly more in tune with public thinking than you might think. We've come to live here. We pay our full whack council tax here. We're here as much as we can be. From tomorrow [Monday] we'll be on the electoral roll, giving up the opportunity to vote in Bermondsey."

Alas, such a sacrifice is unlikely to mollify the Free Press and those who are keen on the wind farm scheme. For them, Isaacs is the classic example of a Nimby and, to boot, a "white settler", who thinks he can ride roughshod over local sensibilities. It is not an argument that he finds compelling. Nor is he the type of man to back off, though his wife has said that had they known about the wind farm they would not have moved to Edinbane. This, after all, as Gerald Kaufman said, is a man "whom it is advisable not to get on the wrong side of."

Indeed, Isaacs himself, with due regard to irony, recalls that one his greatest triumphs at the Royal Opera House was forcing through a planning application that was locally opposed.

Ah, the Opera House! How distant those days of divas and arias must seem now as he watches the clouds gather over the Cuillins. Isaacs was general director at Covent Garden from 1988 to 1996, a period - how can one put it diplomatically? - of transition, culminating in the unmissable fly-on-the-wall docu-soap, The House, which demonstrated that whatever Mozart or Wagner could do on stage, Isaacs could outdo off it. No doubt opera buffs recall amazing performances during that combustible era but the enduring memory is of a company at loggerheads, a state in which its imperious leader not only survived but thrived.

As a record of his tenure, The House made painful but honest television, of which Isaacs himself is a prime proponent. As a programme maker, his credits include The World At War, A Sense Of Freedom and, for CNN, Cold War. From 1981 to 1987 he was chief executive of Channel 4, which no doubt comes in handy when you need to call in a camera crew to help with your cause.

Born in Glasgow in 1932, he grew up in a house full of books which reverberated to the sound of music. His father was a voracious reader and his mother was a singer. They encouraged him to go to concerts which he, in turn, persuaded his peers at Glasgow Academy to do. There are few people more passionate about the arts. "I think you have to be committed," he says.

As a broadcaster, he is an unreconstructed Reithian, a mantle he embraced after shaking the hand of the great man at a school prize- giving. Afterwards Reith addressed the school, telling them he was disappointed in them. "When I shake hands with a man," he said, "I try to do two things. First, I take an impression of him and second I try to leave an impression on him. In order to do that I need to look him in the eye. I am disappointed in you because you didn't all look me in the eye." Isaacs recalls that, given his age and his mentor's towering height, he actually looked Reith in the knee. On Skye, in contrast, his eyes are lifted to the hills, free of wind farms or not.

Sir Jeremy Isaacs is in conversation with Ruth Wishart this Tuesday at 7.00pm, at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow Name: Sir Jeremy Isaacs Born: Glasgow, September 28, 1932 Educated at Glasgow Academy and Merton College Oxford, Isaacs joined Granada in 1958 and made his name with historical documentaries such as The World At War. He was Channel 4's first chief executive from 1981 to 1987, and was general director of London's Royal Opera House until 1996.

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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