Thieves clear shelves of sweets and biscuits at community shop, which is usually left unlocked overnight

A tiny community on the remote Hebridean island of Canna is in turmoil after what appears to be its first recorded incidence of crime in years.

The island’s community shop, which sells gifts, crafts and groceries and is staffed by volunteers, was ransacked on Friday night. The building is usually left unlocked overnight to allow fishermen to use its free Wi-Fi and to buy what they need while resting at the pier overnight.

Payment is made via an honesty box, and shoppers are asked to make a note of what they have taken in a ledger.

The apparently peckish thieves cleared the shelves of sweets, chocolate bars and biscuits, as well as six hand-knitted Canna wool hats made by the shop manager, Julie McCabe.



Canna, which is the westernmost island of the Inner Hebrides and has a population that has settled at fewer than 20 in recent years despite attempts at repopulation, normally enjoys a crime rate of zero. The nearest police station is on the mainland in the town of Mallaig.

McCabe said the incident was shocking for the community. “We are all pretty gutted,” she told the Aberdeen Press and Journal. “I went down and noticed a lot of items were gone. All of the sweets had been cleared out. I got that sinking feeling. I am absolutely floored that someone has been in and did that to our community.

“We are thinking about putting CCTV in, but we don’t want to do that because it goes against the whole honesty idea,” she added. “When you live on a small island like this you have to trust your neighbour and everybody round about.”

A post on the Facebook page of the Isle of Canna Community Development Trust, which owns the shop, said the trust would now consider locking the door overnight.

“With such a small community this is the only way our shop can be viably run to provide a valuable service to locals and visitors. Thefts like this put our shop in jeopardy and may mean it will have to close which would be a real shame after all the hard work and voluntary hours that go into it,” it said.

Reports suggest the last theft committed on Canna was that of a carved wooden plate from one of the island’s three churches in the 1960s. The plate was never recovered and the case was never solved.

Police Scotland do not have computerised records going back that far to confirm this. A former special constable on the island pleaded guilty to two indecent assaults and a breach of the peace committed in 2008.

The SNP MSP Mike Russell, who represents 25 inhabited islands in his neighbouring Holyrood constituency of Argyll and Bute, told the Guardian that “honesty box” culture was common across Scotland’s island communities. “You have honesty bars in hotels, honesty boxes in shops, and I know lots of people around here who leave their keys in their cars,” Russell said.

He suggested that the theft would be likely to leave islanders feeling “outraged and a bit nervous”, but added that he hoped their response would be to continue on as before.

“Modern life is not always attuned to how island life is, but I’d much rather have islands remain the way they are,” Russell said.

• This article was updated on 16 June to reflect later reporting that the theft was the first crime on Canna in years, not decades.