4 ideas
In 1943 the SS Cabinet Minister, carrying about 50,000 cases of whisky for export to America, runs aground in fog off Little Todday in the Outer Hebrides. The episode is fictionalized from the real 1941 wreck of the SS Politician off Eriskay, whose whisky cargo was also looted by islanders.
A community will not treat taking goods as theft when the law against it comes from distant authorities and conflicts with local norms. The islanders see the wreck as a providential gift from the sea, so salvaging it counts as legitimate. That shared judgment turns individual lawbreaking into a collective norm. Enforcement then fails because no one will inform, and everyone becomes complicit in hiding the goods.
The absence of a customary good can stall the rituals and relationships that depend on it, not just deprive people of consumption. In the novel, without whisky, betrothal celebrations cannot properly take place and courage and hospitality dry up. The arrival of the cargo restarts courtships, weddings and personal defiance. Seen this way, rationing a ritual commodity rations social life itself.
An outsider who enforces rules pedantically, and for his own standing rather than local good, becomes a common target. That can unite groups that are otherwise divided. Waggett's self-important legalism gives Protestant Great Todday and Catholic Little Todday a shared opponent to outwit. His zeal leaves him isolated and ridiculed instead of obeyed.