Previewing the St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly by-election of Monday 22nd May 2023
“All the right votes, but not necessarily in the right order”
One by-election on Monday 22nd May 2023:
St Mary’s
Isles of Scilly council; caused by the disqualification of independent councillor Mike Nelhams, who failed to attend any meetings of the council in six months.
We’ll rant and we’ll roar, like true British sailors,
We’ll rant and we’ll roar across the salt seas;
Until we strike soundings in the Channel of old England,
From Ushant to Scilly ’tis thirty-five leagues.- Traditional, Spanish Ladies
After last Thursday’s overseas trip to Northern Ireland, it’s now time to travel across the seas again for a rare Monday poll. Why Monday, I hear you ask? Well, there’s a story behind this one, so settle down and let me explain.
It’s a Scilly story, because that’s where we are — the Isles of Scilly. There are certainly worse places to be. The Isles are the warmest part of the UK with a climate bordering on the subtropical. Because of this, agriculture — particularly cut flowers, which bloom earlier in the season here than in the rest of the British Isles — was a traditional mainstay of the local economy, but there is now a hard dependence on tourism and administration. A tenth of the islands’ adult population are either Scilly councillors or employed by the council, and most of the rest cater to tourists. If the Scilly Isles were a ward, they would rank in the top 15 wards in England and Wales for the accommodation and food service sector, and in the top 50 for self-employment.
There is a lot here for the tourists. For those who like to spend time outdoors there’s the climate as already mentioned and some outstanding birdwatching, and for the politically-inclined there’s the chance to pay your respects at the grave of the former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Wilson liked the Scilly Isles; he had a holiday home on St Mary’s and is buried in the Old Town churchyard.
The islands have a unique and rather complicated legal status — remember this, it’s important — perhaps best illustrated by the only slightly tongue-in-cheek Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War. This goes back to the middle of the seventeenth century, when Cornwall was a stronghold of the Royalist side in the English Civil War. The Royalist fleet had based itself in the archipelago after being driven out of the Cornish ports, and was having a good time raiding the Dutch navy which was in alliance with the Roundheads. Eventually, the Dutch Lt-Admiral Maarten Tromp lost patience with this and he turned up in the Scilly Isles in 1651 demanding reparations. Not getting the answer he wanted, Tromp then took matters to the next level by declaring war — specifically on the Isles of Scilly. This war was essentially resolved within a month, without a shot being fired, when the Royalist Navy surrendered to the Parliamentarians; but no treaty was signed at the time, and it was not until 1986 that the Dutch ambassador turned up on the islands to formally declare peace between the Low Countries and Scillonia.
However, the Scilly Isles were the scene of a serious loss for the Royal Navy in 1707, during the War of the Spanish Succession, when a fleet on its way home from raiding Toulon was wrecked after mistaking Scilly for Ushant. Only 35 leagues wrong, but that error led to the loss of four ships and at least 1,400 sailors. Numbered among the dead was Sir Cloudesley Shovell, the MP for Rochester and one of the most senior commanders in the Royal Navy. The Scilly naval disaster was cited a few years later in the Parliamentary debates on the Longitude Act, which offered large financial rewards for an answer to the problem of determining longitude at sea.
The Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War is not the only legal or administrative oddity arising from the archipelago’s remoteness and small population. Remember this, it’s important. Income tax did not apply here until 1954; road tax was first levied in 1971; the island’s vehicles are still exempt from the MoT test. Although there are no full-time firefighters, the Isles have their own independent fire brigade staffed entirely by retained firefighters.
The local sixth-form pupils get free travel to and a grant towards accommodation on the mainland, there being no sixth-form college here. Travellers to and from the archipelago have the choice of a helicopter link to Penzance or a voyage on the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company’s passenger ferry, Scillonian III. The latter is one of only three ships in the world which still carry the title of Royal Mail ship; the other two are the Segwun, a nineteenth-century steamship still navigating the lakes of northern Ontario in Canada, and the modern ocean liner Queen Mary 2. In parliamentary elections the islands are part of the St Ives constituency, and the difficulty in getting ballot boxes to the count on the mainland is the reason that St Ives is usually one of the very last seats to declare its result.
The Isles of Scilly Council is an oddity in itself, a democratic body like no other within the remit of Andrew’s Previews. It was created in 1890 as the Isles of Scilly Rural District Council, but despite that name has always had a sui generis unitary status independent of Cornwall county council. Remember this, it’s important. The council has never had a ward boundary change in that time, and indeed is not divided into wards at all: instead its five parishes (corresponding to the five inhabited islands) serve as its electoral districts.
Until 2017 the island of St Mary’s elected thirteen councillors with Bryher, St Agnes, St Martin’s and Tresco returning two each. At least, that was the theory; however in the 2013 election only one candidate stood for Bryher, and nobody ever called a by-election to fill the vacant second seat. The Local Government Boundary Commission for England took a look at the Isles in advance of the 2017 election, and cut the council’s membership from 21 to 16 councillors; the island/parish of St Mary’s continues to form a single electoral district, electing 12 councillors. Given that the LGBCE never ordinarily draws wards with more than three councillors, you can see that the islands are very much an exceptional case. The remaining councillor for Bryher, Marian, Lady Berkeley, retired at the 2021 Scilly council elections and nobody stood in the election to replace her; the Returning Officer had to reopen nominations, and one candidate came forward second time round who was elected unopposed.
Also here in the archipelago we have what is possibly the last example in the UK of an old-fashioned unreformed rotten borough. Since a June 2002 by-election, and previously from an August 1976 by-election to 1979, Robert Dorrien-Smith has sat on Scilly council as one of the councillors — since 2017, the only councillor — for the island of Tresco. This is no accident.
In 1834 the Scilly Isles were taken over by Augustus Smith, a philanthropist — and later Liberal MP for Truro — who took out a 99-year lease on the archipelago from its ultimate landowner, the Duchy of Cornwall. With this came the self-awarded hereditary title of Lord Proprietor of the Isles of Scilly. Along with many good works on the islands, Smith built a home for himself on the island of Tresco next to the ruins of an old priory, and enclosed 17 acres of land as the gardens of the new Tresco Abbey. Scilly’s almost subtropical climate, the gardens’ high walls giving protection from Atlantic winds, and the taste of Tresco Abbey’s later owners has resulted in Tresco Abbey Gardens containing a large collection of exotic plants.
Who were those later owners? Well, Augustus Smith had a number of children, but none of them were legitimate; so on his death in 1872 the Lord Proprietorship passed to his nephew Thomas Dorrien-Smith. Thomas became the first chairman of the Council of the Isles of Scilly in 1890 — until 1955, that was a hereditary post as well. His son and heir Arthur Dorrien-Smith handed back the Lord Proprietorship to the Duchy of Cornwall in 1920, but he kept Tresco.
Arthur’s grandson Robert Dorrien-Smith still leases the island of Tresco to this day from Prince William, Duke of Cornwall, and he has other royal connections. His mother, Tamara Imeretinsky, is a princess from the Bagrationi royal family which ruled Georgia until the 19th century; and Robert is on friendly terms with King Charles III who held Tresco’s freehold until his ascension to the throne last year. The 2021 electoral register listed 84 electors on Tresco, of whom one is Councillor Robert Dorrien-Smith and the other 83 are his tenants, which gives him complete control over the island’s electorate. Perhaps not surprisingly, the old-fashioned rotten borough of Tresco hasn’t seen a contested council election for decades.
From 2009 until 2017 the other council seat in Tresco was held by Mike Nelhams, who has been employed by Robert Dorrien-Smith for many years: Nelhams became the head gardener at Tresco Abbey Gardens in 1984. When the number of councillors for Tresco was cut to one in 2017, Nelhams was in no position to challenge his employer and he was forced to seek re-election as a councillor for the island of St Mary’s. He was elected in St Mary’s in 11th place at the 2017 election and in 12th and last place in 2021, polling 367 votes; there were 13 candidates for the 12 seats in St Mary’s that year, and Timothy Jones finished in the unlucky 13th place with 272 votes. Although Mike Nelhams is still listed on the website of Tresco Abbey Gardens as having some involvement, he moved to the Cornish mainland last year; and he has recently been kicked off the Council of the Isles of Scilly under the six-month non-attendance rule.
The strangeness on the Isles of Scilly does not end here, as we can see from the fact that the returning officer’s original plan was to hold this by-election on Saturday 20th May. Andrew’s Previews has never covered a Saturday election, and there’s a good reason for that: in the rest of England at least, it’s not lawful.
The legal rules for by-elections in England are the Local Elections (Principal Areas) (England and Wales) Rules 2006, Part 1 of which sets out the timetable: this is reckoned in working days, and does not include Saturdays, Sundays, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Good Friday, a bank holiday or “a day appointed for public thanksgiving or mourning”. It’s clear from this that Saturday is not a day on which an election can be held in UK, and the last council which tried to schedule a by-election on a Saturday — Doncaster, in 1999 — got slapped down for it by the relevant government department, which at the time was the Home Office. Section 243 of the Local Government Act 1972 protects returning officers against the consequences of bank holidays being declared after notice of an election has been given: this was necessary last year, when the funeral date of the late Queen was declared a bank holiday at short notice.
However, you then get into issues with the Isles of Scilly’s sui generis legal status. The title of the Local Elections (Principal Areas) (England and Wales) Rules itself generates an issue: in England a “principal area” is defined by section 270 of the 1972 Act as “a non-metropolitan county, a district or a London borough”, and the Isles of Scilly is none of those things because the 1960s and 1970s local government reform left it untouched. The Rules are made under Part I of the Representation of the People Act 1983, and the 1983 Act has this to say about the Isles of Scilly (section 202(4)(b)):
This Act applies in relation to the Isles of Scilly as if those isles were a county and as if the council of those isles were a county council, except that … the provisions of Part I relating to the conduct of local government elections shall have effect in relation to those isles subject to such adaptations as the Secretary of State may by regulations prescribe.
Now, I’m not aware of any such regulations having been laid but it’s possible I could have missed something. So, my conclusion when I looked into whether a Saturday election is legal in the Isles of Scilly was “probably not, but I can’t prove that for certain”. The Returning Officer for the Isles clearly has better legal advice than me, and when some spoilsport raised this question with him his response was to move the polling day from Saturday 20th May to the next available working day, Monday 22nd. Monday polls are very unusual, but there’s no question that they’re legal.
There is one polling station for the 1,246 electors on St Mary’s, which is the Old Wesleyan Chapel. The Isles of Scilly has a population of a medium-sized parish council and the non-partisan politics to match: all 16 Scilly councillors are independents, as are both candidates on this by-election. Tim Jones, a retired businessman who lives on St Mary’s and was the only unsuccessful candidate in the 2021 Scilly elections, is back for another go; he is opposed by John Peacock, who lives on the island of St Agnes where he runs a ferry boat business.
Parliamentary constituency: St Ives
Postcode district: TR21
Tim Jones (Ind)
John Peacock (Ind)
If you enjoyed these previews, there are many more like them — going back to 2016 — in the Andrew’s Previews books, which are available to buy now (link). You can also support future previews by donating to the Local Elections Archive Project (link).
Andrew Teale
