Shetland's Most Wanted
Ballot spoiling, blacksmithing and watersports with Britain's most northerly separatist movement.
The full version of this story was published July 2026 in the UK’s only magazine: The Fence.
Two bird watchers edge towards the shore at Boddam, a beach at the craggy, northernmost reaches of Scotland: the Shetland Islands. The sunlight catches a camera in one of their hands; a murmur of wading birds scatters.
Unless the twitchers are regulars to Boddam, they will not know that at this moment, from either side of a fluorescent, softly bubbling fish tank in a house hundreds of metres away, both a long-lens camera and spotting scope are trained on them; that as they watch birds, Sandra Irvine is watching them – and her blood pressure is rising.
‘I just see red when they’re down there,’ she says, wearing a purple cardigan. Irvine runs a taxi company with her husband when she’s not scanning out of her living room window for naturalists. ‘They think they’ve got the Right to Roam, because they think this is Scotland. But it’s not.’
For most people, Shetland’s sovereignty was settled five and a half centuries ago: in 1472, the Scottish government came to collect the islands as collateral for an unpaid dowry between the Norwegian crown and James III of Scotland. For Irvine and Shetland First – Britain’s most northerly separatists – that deal was bunkum, the Shetland Islands are as Scottish as Tromsø and neither the police, council nor courts have any legitimate authority.
Irvine has gone to jail for her beliefs. And, as we stand observing the bird watchers return to their van, she is prepared to go back. Like Capone went down for tax evasion, Shetland’s separatists rarely take the rap for full-blown treason. Irvine first went to prison in 2023 for refusing to pay a £500 fine for ‘shouting and swearing’ at birders. Now she stands accused of filming while driving (at birdwatchers, fleeing).
For Shetland First, getting caught is half the point. Over the past half a decade, the group has traversed the isles in unregistered vehicles, stormed the local tourist centre and breached the council’s list of tax defaulters to individually reassure them: the council isn’t real, and probably owes you a refund.
In all of this, Shetland First has been led by one man – advising Irvine through her current court case while also running a shadow campaign of ballot-spoiling in Scotland’s recent May elections. Shetland’s chief of police calls him ‘an absolute pain in the arse’. The local Green councillor calls him ‘a danger to democracy’. His partner, Margaret, calls him ‘obsessed’.
Stuart Hill, 83, says he can control the weather, the colour of his urine and put on weight during a hunger strike. He has been to prison four times and will die on 28th May 2069, unless he changes his mind. He claims the number of Shetland First supporters is growing, though after an early interview, he also mentions plans to learn how to windfoil (windsurfing, but floating above the water on a thin mast). For the recent Scottish elections, however, Hill changed his pitch.
For less than the cost of a Shetland pint you can read this story in full in the latest issue of The Fence, alongside investigations into London’s ubiquitous American Candy Stores, the largest painting ever (not) sold and an appointment with the onetime club king of Chelsea.
Get your copy here.
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