A councillor subjected to sustained verbal attacks over a planned Highland incinerator plant insisted yesterday she would continue to serve her community, despite the vendetta that led her to boycott the meeting that sank the project.
In her first interview about the two-month ordeal, tearful Cromarty Firth Independent councillor Carolyn Wilson described yesterday how she was the victim of a misconception that she was in favour of the proposal for Invergordon.
She told the Press and Journal the confusion stemmed from a council document she and others had signed, requesting a separate planning application – for a waste transfer station – be reconsidered.
Mrs Wilson, a 52-year-old mother-of-three who owns the Victoriana florist in Alness High Street, said anxious residents following the debate at public meetings linked the two issues and assumed that she backed the incinerator plan.
She was unable to speak publicly about it before a council debate.
“Because, at a public meeting, the community council advised people to write to me to make their feelings known, I became the focus of all the objections, letters and e-mails,” Mrs Wilson said. “They made it clear I had something to do with it.
“I had people come into my shop and intimidate me.
“One person suggested if I didn’t make the ‘right decision’ I would be subjected to further action. Others snubbed me.
“All this came from people I have worked with, live near and people I have respected. The advice from the council’s legal department was to say nothing.
“I did not think the health risks of an incinerator talked about were insignificant.
My husband, Warwick, has suffered for 20 years from an illness caused by organophosphate poisoning, so I’m somebody who takes it very seriously.
“It’s been difficult. I’ve never backed off from making my views known, especially on a local issue.
“I’d never felt frightened about going to a meeting. The worst part was my family feeling threatened and, when it affected my kids – my two daughters work at the shop – that was the worst bit.”
Asked how she would have voted at Tuesday’s area planning meeting in Invergordon, Mrs Wilson said: “I didn’t hear everything that was said, so I couldn’t tell you.”