A story about a Russian fishing fleet anchored off the coast of a small village in the Highlands during the Cold War, drug running and Columbian drug cartels, the CID and the KGB… and Ullapool, a picturesque small town on the West Coast with good coffee.
And how a North Sea diver called Julian Chisholm started off smuggling drugs, using Gruinard Island and its history of anthrax testing, as cover. To organising the biggest drugs bust in the UK at the time - £100 million in cocaine. And it all went wrong because of a wee orange van…
Audio is in Gaelic, text is in English.
In this post :
Listen to Klondykers Ulapuil on Apple Podcasts (Gaelic Audio)
The Ullapool Klondyke
I remember them, the big mother ships, as the Lewis ferry made its way through them.
In the middle of the Cold War, a massive fleet of Russian ships would anchor every autumn and winter in the small west coast village of Ullapool. They were after mackerel. In 1985, at its height, 150,000 metric tonnes of mackerel was landed in Ullapool. It was at that time as well that the largest drugs bust in the UK at the time happened, landed at Clashnessie Bay north of Ullapool.
At the time you could get Pravda and caviar in the local shops. Locals liked when they would visit and they rubbed along well in the main, although supposedly there were both KGB and CID undercover officers in the village keeping an eye on who was coming and going.
I was told a story that, one night in the pub, they were having a ceilidh and they put on the ship to shore radio so that the lads on the boats could hear the singing. And then some of the Russians joined in, singing their own songs. They decided to play a football match together. The two communities grew closer after that.
Once, they had a raft full of classical musicians, who went around the bay playing to the ships. Some people wouldn’t get to land, you see, they just worked on the ships for months.
This was the time that the biggest drugs bust in Britain also happened in the area, £100 million worth of cocaine. It’s a little bit Greek tragedy, a little bit Oor Wullie. I’ll tell you the story.
The man behind it was Julian Chisholm. He was from Perthshire originally. Nobody knows where he is now. A North Sea Driver. He started off smuggling drugs, marijuana, using the Island of Gruinard as a base.
The story of Gruinard Island
I’ll tell you a little bit about Gruinard and why people avoided going there then.
So the Government had an idea during the war that they would drop linseed cakes in the German countryside with anthrax in them. Mainly to kill animals and starve people. It was called ‘Operation Vegetarian’.
They tested it on sheep on the island, letting off bombs and tracking the effects. But they didn’t carry through with it. But afterward, no-one could land on the island because it was infected with anthrax.
In 1981 a group called Dark Harvest Commando demanded that the island be decontaminated. They left samples of infected soil from Gruinard at Porton Down and (sold which wasn't infected) at Blackpool, where the Conservative Party were having their conference. In 1986 the cleanup started, removing topsoil and spraying the island with formaldehyde. In 1990 it was declared clear of anthrax and sold back to the original owners for £500.
The Piper Alpha disaster was in 1988. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
The Ullapool Klondyke came to an end in the late eighties or so, not just because of the changes to the Soviet Union. The mackerel went elsewhere, further north.
Meanwhile, the Police were closing the net around Julian Chisholm and his gang.
Operation Klondyke
Julian Chisholm had moved onto much more serious business by then, getting involved with the Colombian Cali Cartel. Chisholm’s plan, which he carried out, was to smuggle £100 million worth of cocaine into the UK. He did this, a squad of them landing the drugs in a small bay, Clashnessie near Ullapool.
But the police had been tracking Chisholm for a long time, since he had been in Spain. They had enough information to know something like this was planned. The operation to catch Chisholm and the others working with him was called ‘Operation Klondyke’.
And it almost worked for Chisholm. But. It was near Christmas, and so Chisholm’s crew left the drugs hidden for two weeks on the beach so they could have a Christmas holiday. And then when they met in a hotel in Bonar Bridge, the staff at the hotel noticed very strange patterns of comings and goings. For example, leaving to make the drive south (with the drugs) at three in the morning.
But it wasn’t this that caught them out. They had hired a van in Forfar and it was bright orange. A Policeman saw the van and thought it…. that’s a bit strange. And that is how they caught them.
If they’d only hired a white van they would probably have been ok. They were stopped in Newtonmore, maybe stopping off for a scone to break up the journey, and five members of the gang were jailed at the High Court in Glasgow.
But not Chisholm. And nobody knows where he is, or whether he’s alive or dead.
Listen to Klondykers Ulapuil on Apple Podcasts (Gaelic Audio)
The podcast episode is available on Apple Pod casts - Klondykers Ulapuil. The audio is in Scottish Gaelic and follows the above text. I’ve changed the name of the podcast it was formerly An Duilleag Bhàn.
Another Highland story involving drugs (this time opium) is the story of Indigo, check out this post about the Isle of Skye and its connection to the Indigo industry.
END.
