David Ross on the Western Isles

THE determination on the part of both Labour and the SNP to hold/take this islands seat has been intense during the past 30 years, and there can be no harder fought electoral battle between the two anywhere in the land.

It has a special place in Labour history being the first non-industrial/urban seat, while it was the first the SNP took at a general election and has a significance all of its own in that party's sense of nationality.

The 23,015 voters are spread from the Butt of Lewis in the north to Vatersay in the south, and St Kilda in the west, although no one has registered to vote in that particular outpost of British parliamentary democracy. Resident military and National Trust personnel prefer to use proxy votes.

Created in 1918, the Western Isles seat has never been held by an uncontaminated Tory, although a Liberal/Conservative coalitionist was returned for a brief period during the politically unsettled years of the early 1920s.

Since 1935, it has been held either by Labour or the SNP. It was the 21-year-old student at Edinburgh University, Malcolm K Macmillan from Lewis, who began it all with his election in that year, beginning a parliamentary career which was to last 35 years.

Lloyd George, by then the ''Father of the House,'' introduced Macmillan to the Commons, but it was Donald Stewart, the Provost of Storno-way, who forced him from the place by winning the 1970 election for the SNP by just 726 votes.

Donald Stewart was a popular figure and increased his majorities in 1974, 1979 and 1983. He retired in 1987, but could not pass the torch to his party successor. Calum Macdonald took the seat back for Labour with a healthy majority of 2,340 votes.

Although he won 623 more votes in 1992 giving him 47.8% of the vote, Mr Macdonald's majority actually dropped to 1,703 or 10.6%. The SNP candidate Frances Macfarlane, a native of Lewis who worked on Barra, meanwhile, increased her vote by 1,261, to take 37.2% of the vote.

Much of this fluctuation was explained by the collapse of the LibDem vote. In 1987, an Alliance candidate won 3,419 votes, but in 1992 the LibDem candidate Neil Mitchison, a researcher with the European Commission, polled only 552 votes. Mr Mitchison is standing again in the LibDem cause, but can have little realistic hope of winning.

Neither can his Tory opponent, the Eton educated Argyll farmer Jamie McGrigor, nor the Referdnum Party's Ralph Lionel, a retired civil engineer.

This is a two horse race between Calum Macdonald and the SNP's Anne Lorne Gillies, academic, singer and broadcaster. The latter made headlines at the beginning of the campaign with allegations of attempted bribery by persons claiming to represent Redland

Aggregates, who were anxious that Dr Gillies should abandon her party's opposition to the proposed ''super quarry'' at Lingerbay in the south of Harris.

It was reported to the police who, after some investigations, are not pursuing the matter. What, or who was behind it all remains unclear, as do the political implications.

Calum Macdonald is also opposed to the quarry and appeared happy enough to believe the worst of Redland when the story broke. There is no clear ballast water between the two on the issue of the quarry, an issue which will only be decided when a Secretary of State receives the report from the eight month public inquiry.

Dr Gillies, who remarried during the campaign, also raised some eyebrows over the question of schooling. She had sent her children to the private Hutchesons' Grammar School in Glasgow, instead of leaving them in the city schools which taught in the medium of Gaelic.

In the Western Isles SNP's newsletter Guth Nan Eilean, she replied that in the case of her son Robbie, now 24, Gaelic medium had not been available, but it had been true of her daughters, although both could speak Gaelic.

Asked whether she felt bitter she said: ''Not really, more let down by the system (of education) in Glasgow. It's quite different in the islands - or in Oban for example, where I went to school, where everybody goes to the same school.

''But I was brought up to believe that education was all important and it's really hard to stand by your principles when you feel your kids could get a better chance somewhere else.'' SNP activists, however can argue with justification, that it ill-becomes members of the New Labour Party of Tony Blair, and Harriet Harman, to try and make political capital out of this subject. Sunday sailings, transport, unemployment, abortion could also be raised in the islands: Barra, the Uists, Harris, Eriskay, Berneray. But the victor will the the one who attracts most votes on Lewis, an island with more than twice the population of the all the others put together.

Both the SNP and Labour have strong electoral bases on Lewis, but Labour appear the stronger, which should more than make up for the SNP's popularity in Barra and the Uists. Calum Macdonald, a native of Lewis, is not the most flamboyant of MPs, but is hard- working and can claim some real achievements such as the Crofter Forestry Act, which has meant real new economic opportunites for remote communities.

Despite the qualities that Dr Gillies can offer, it is difficult to see the islanders giving up on Labour now, particularly with the prospect of a Labour Government.

The contenders

LabouR: Calum Macdonald, Has been Western Isles MP since 1987.

SNP: Dr Anne Lorne Gillies, SNP Transport and Telecommunications spokeswoman.

Conservative: Jamie McGrigor, Eton educated Argyll farmer.

Liberal Democrat: Neil Mitchison, contested seat in 1992.

Referendum Party: Ralph Lionel, retired civil engineer.