Don't weave me this way

To the outsider, it is impossible to guess from looking at the material pouring into one end of the machine what colour of yarn will eventually emerge from the other side – but for those inside the Harris Tweed industry there's a far more worrying sense of uncertainty. After generations of laid-back Highland attitudes towards production, a new thread has been added in the form of Brian Haggas, a snappily dressed septuagenarian textile magnate from Yorkshire, who has bought the island's biggest mill, in Stornoway, with plans "to bring it into the 21st century".

Many fear his drive to improve efficiency – not to mention restricting the use of tweed from his mill to the making of just four colours of gentlemen's jackets, a move that has already seen him halve his workforce and virtually stop orders of new tweed while he upgrades the factory – will spell the end of the centuries-old cloth. Haggas, in turn, claims the changes will revive a dying industry.

Yet some suggest Haggas is a vital catalyst – the anger over his plans has ignited a fresh passion among others involved with Harris Tweed and sparked the formation of two new mill companies, which aim to meet demand for the orders his KM Group refuses to supply. There is optimism as well as prophecies of doom to be heard on the rainy streets of Stornoway.

Lorna MacAulay, aged just 36, this month took over as head of the Harris Tweed Authority, the body charged with protecting the quality and promotion of the cloth and its trademark "orb" stamp. She says:

"There's been so much negative coverage, but there are a lot of good things happening."

She speaks enthusiastically of regenerating foreign markets from Italy to Japan – while there's general agreement that Harris Tweed must be presented as an upmarket product, unlike Haggas, MacAulay believes its future lies in keeping it fashionable: "The women's market is important. Men are often happy to wear the same jacket year after year, but women tend to be looking to update their wardrobe regularly and that leads to more sales."

MacAulay also believes women have another key role to play in ensuring a strong future for Harris Tweed – becoming weavers themselves.

There's no doubting one of the most serious risks to the future of Harris Tweed is its elderly workforce – while visiting weaver Colin MacLeod, 64, in his Carloway home I ask him if there are any young weavers in the village. He thinks for a bit before naming one man. How old is he? "Well, I suppose he must be about 50 right enough."

Traditionally, weaving was a man's job – the old single-width looms are heavy and noisy. But the new, modern looms, which produce twice the traditional widths, are cleaner, easier and quieter to operate. According to MacAulay, that makes them an attractive prospect for mothers who want to work part-time.

It's a nice idea, but the weaving community says that part-time and occasional weavers will not bring stability. They say what is needed is full-time workers who can ensure a year-round supply. Where such a workforce would come from though, is more difficult to determine.

Everyone on Lewis – where, despite the name, most Harris Tweed is made – has a different take on the story. But among the locals, one thing is common: it was all going quite well until the arrival on the island of "the Yorkshireman", a title pronounced with softly spoken but bitter disdain.

Of course, it's far from being that simple. Harris Tweed – a label that requires producers to meet stringent criteria, including the fact it must be produced in the weavers' own homes in the outer Hebrides – had started to undergo a revival a few years ago, championed by designers from Ralph Lauren to Vivienne Westwood and even Nike. Overall, though, the industry has been operating at around one-seventh of the output seen during its height, before the collapse of US markets in the early 1980s sent production spiralling into decline.

It was 18 months ago that Haggas, 76, a Keighley businessman whose family has been in textile production since the 1700s, decided he fancied a challenge. He bought out the industry's main mill owner, Derek Murray, announced he'd be concentrating work in a single mill in Stornoway and restricting production to just four patterns for his own traditional men's jackets company. Islanders were outraged.

From Haggas' point of view, such changes are vital. The roots of the industry's downfall lie, he claims, in making Harris Tweed too widely available, so it lost its upmarket reputation while remaining too expensive to compete with mass-produced fabrics. The huge array of colours just led to unused yarns tying up cash and space. But the plan left more than 170 self-employed islanders reliant on the success, or otherwise, of one man.

Haggas is on the island this week – he's flown up, in his private jet, to take part in a film he's commissioned, a "docu-drama about the history of Harris Tweed", to help promote the brand.

He turns out to be disarmingly charming, but there's no doubting there's a tough heart and stubborn mind beneath his somewhat surprising tan and twinkly blue eyes. He is stereotypical Yorkshire: all grit, grind and cold, hard cash – and impatient with the slow pace and idiosyncrasies of island culture and crofting life.

John Alderson, who has been working for Haggas since he was 23 and was brought in to run the Stornoway mill, bemoans in his broad Yorkshire accent the haphazard state of the place when he took it over, the need for "discipline" and the islander's resistance to change.

But the thing about Harris Tweed production is that there's more to it than factory-style working practices. It is, as one local puts it, "part of the very fabric of island life".

I ask Haggas why he thinks he knows better than those who have been involved in Harris Tweed all their lives how best to save the industry?

"Well, I don't," he says smoothly. "But I do know that since the mid-1970s the industry has been in gradually escalating decline and if Ian Taylor (who bought a rival mill] and our company had not bought the remaining companies on the island by now Harris Tweed would be extinct.

"The way they had proceeded in the past was to make more and more designs and sell it at cheaper and cheaper prices and that is the road to ruin. So we had to think it through and decide to take a different road. Whether we shall succeed only time will tell.

"When I was at school we had a visit from Field Marshal Montgomery and I'll never forget the words he said: 'When you're going to do something, very carefully make your plan, and once you've made it, go ahead and do it and never ever ever deviate'. And I shall follow his words."

That's fighting talk. But is a battle really what is needed?

Well, perhaps it is. When Haggas announced his plans, Ian MacKenzie, the then-chairman of the Harris Tweed Authority, decided to leave his post and reopen a mill at Shawbost to pick up the market that Haggas had rejected. According to his estimates, it should be able to handle up to 40 per cent of the islands' total output.

With the support of former energy minister Brian Wilson, and entirely funded by oil trader Ian Taylor – whom Wilson persuaded to fund the project while the pair were enjoying dinner with Fidel Castro in Cuba – Harris Tweed Hebrides was set up. MacKenzie is confident the company will succeed and help ensure the cloth's future as an upmarket, fashionable and unique product.

"We're a big mill," he assures me. "We are getting in the orders and able to meet them," he adds, showing me the green-tinged fabric headed for "Ralph" (ie Lauren) in Italy, all proudly marked with the Harris Tweed orb.

Alan Bain, director of Harris Tweed Textiles, the tiny mill at Carloway where staff are working overtime to meet orders, is also insistent that, contrary to the doom and gloom reports, there's enough will and enthusiasm to revitalise the industry.

There is, however, a desperate need, he says, for everyone to work together: "The industry cannot sustain itself by relying on one mill. Production needs to take place at all the mills to ensure that the industry continues to flourish."

Already a liaison group involving all three mills, the Harris Tweed Authority and weaver representatives has been established with the hope that they can move forward as one in promoting the Harris Tweed brand. It won't be easy, but if they can tie tpgether the many strands of this disparate industry, then this traditional fabric can perhaps secure a vibrant future.