‘You are less patient than your mother?’
The first lady of Scottish nationalism flashed one of her brilliant smiles.
‘A little, yes!’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’ The smile vanished. ‘I suppose the experiences I’ve had have been quite hard.’
Now what was this? Some childhood trauma, perhaps?
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Well, the first sojourn in the House of Commons was really ghastly. I was attacked in a way that the Speaker, Horace King, told me no one had been attacked in the history of
the House of Commons. It was like a daily crucifixion scene.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Catcalls every time I went in. Interruptions every time I spoke. Personal insults. Abuse. It’s all there in Hansard. That’s the beauty of it. It’s all recorded for posterity.’
‘Were people nicer to you behind the scenes?’
‘No. That’s a fiction about the House of Commons. There aren’t a lot of cross-party friendships. I was asked if I would like to join the Liberals’ lunch-table, which I did sometimes.
But on the whole, one sat alone. I remember towards the end, a very nice old man joined me for lunch one day. When he asked me who I usually dined with, I said, "Oh,
I dine with Benjamin Disraeli". The reason being, I always sat at this little table for two, under a picture of Disraeli’.
‘You were lonely?’
‘Very. But I had the patronage of Emrys Hughes [Labour MP for South Ayrshire], who was like a father to me. I would have tea with him at five o’clock most days. Of course, he
was teased about it. I said to him once, "Emrys, you’re losing your reputation over me". And he said, "Oh, lassie, lassie, I lost whatever reputation I had long before you were born!" Unfortunately, Emrys died.’
From Conversations in a Small Country, 1989
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The Holiday Banner
Vatersay, Western Isles, on a summer evening two years ago. Islay McLeod took the photograph on her way back from
a ceilidh
The nominations of
SR readers:
a selection
Although I acknowledge the greatness of many on the list, the person I am voting for is Sir Alexander Gibson in acknowledgement of the tremendous contribution he made to the arts in Scotland with both the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish Opera both of which enjoy an excellent international reputation largely as a result of his endeavours (and those who followed him, but he initiated the progress I believe.)
Maureen Michie
It would have to be Alex Salmond and Donald Dewar, both leaders of their nation and great nationalists.
Andrew Gadsden
No one from the sporting world? Being a humble soft southerner, I’m no expert on the fitba’, but surely the late Bill McLaren qualifies for the popular vote as one of the finest ambassadors for Scotland through rugby commentaries that reached a world-wide audience.
Elaine Jamieson
My nomination would be the late Sir Iain Noble, who in his quiet and humble fashion, showed the way forward for rural and especially Highland economies, as well as being an innovator on a considerable scale.
David Grant
I feel that Hamish Henderson should be on the list, not only for his poetry and his work on Scottish folk songs but also to put two fingers up to the BBC Scotland of his time.
Edgar Lloyd
My nomination for the greatest Scot is Alex Salmond. He is Scotland’s best chance of achieving our independence again and without violence. Given what is happening in various parts of the world and given our violent history, Alex is surely the greatest Scot.
Ranald Allan
From what I can remember of the list, it did not include Tony Blair, Labour’s most effective prime minister ever but did include Gordon Brown. The nominees appeared to say more about the group think of the Scottish ‘great and the good’ than about any objective measure of ‘greatness’ in a Scottish context.
I nominate Sir James Black, as it is his discoveries that are keeping me alive to enjoy being a misery.
Randall Foggie
Greatness can be defined in two ways – elevation to the highest accepted positions of politics, literature, business, etc. This can be measured in terms of position, awards and accolades or turnover. It’s not difficult to measure. But such people (almost by definition) are rarely great in the more profound sense – of touching the human heart and influencing people and events. I have met and talked with nine of these (Brown, Cook, Dewar, Ewing, Grimond, McGahey, MacLean, Smith and Younger) and only Jo Grimond rates as a person who inspired. Despite my being a Labour regional politician in a Liberal stronghold (Greenock) he chose to work with me and local people on a community project (ignoring his local political colleagues) and showed great charisma. Alex Salmond’s influence should be recognised. And I would agree that George MacLeod deserves a nomination (for the influence he has had through the Iona Community he created). Of those so far mentioned, I would therefore place my vote with George MacLeod. But I would also like to make a new nomination of Kay Carmichael who had such a profound influence on the social care system.
Ronald G Young
I first heard about Jimmy Reid in 1971 when I was an English language assistant (with a terrible Scottish accent!) at Rennes University in Brittany. A Communist Party colleague who lectured in German showed me an East German newspaper article about the work-in on the Clyde.
I was delighted when the students at Glasgow University chose him as rector. The speech at his installation was surely one of the best orations ever delivered, both in terms of content and delivery, and not just in the Bute Hall of GU.
I canvassed for him in Clydebank in the 1974 General Election, when despite the success of the UCS work-in, too many people at the door greeted me with guff like: ‘He’s a good man, but we’re a Christian/church-going family’. He was of course opposed by the churches and the Labour Party, from the pulpit in the case of the former. I attended one of his electoral meetings, which was totally inspirational.
I was deeply moved by BBC Scotland’s live TV broadcast of his funeral. It appeared to sum up all the things I admired about him: working-class gutsiness, humour and directness; internationalism; socialism; and a desire for an independent Scotland in which these qualities made real sense.
Bill Craw
I would like to add the name of Neelam Bakshi to the list of greatest Scots. When Neelam Bakshi became a Strathclyde regional councillor for Labour in 1990, she was the first woman from a black and minority ethnic background to be elected to public office in Scotland. She has not held elected office again since the abolition on the regions in 1996, but she has set up her own management consultancy business specialising in equality, diversity and human rights. She has also been a non-legal member of Employment Tribunals since 1992 and, from July 2011, she will join the board of the Scottish Ambulance Service.
Kaliani Lyle was CEO of Citizens Advice Scotland (2004-2010) – the first person from a black and minority ethnic group to head a voluntary organisation in Scotland. Born into an Asian South African family who were members of the African National Congress under apartheid, she went on to become Edinburgh District Council’s first race relations officer and then CEO of the Scottish Refugee Council. She is currently the Scottish commissioner on the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
Jackie Kay is a mixed-race poet, playwright, memoir writer and novelist who has won acclaim and several literary awards for work such as the ‘Adoption Papers’.
Bob Cant
I nominate Nigel Tranter.
Alan Hogg
Cardinal Thomas Joseph Winning is my nomination for the greatest Scot of the last 25 years – despite the fact that he lived during only 15 of them. In a piece published earlier this month to mark the 10th anniversary of the cardinal’s death, Herald columnist Harry Reid described him as ‘one of the most outspoken, controversial – and for many downright annoying – public figures in modern Scottish life’. He was right.
Cardinal Winning gave Scotland’s churchgoing community the courage to stand up for themselves in an aggressively secular world. His remarkable work in bringing Pope John Paul II to Scotland in 1982 placed not just the Catholic Church but the Church of Scotland at the centre of Scottish and indeed British political and public life (he was an outspoken critic of the Falklands War and of Mrs Thatcher and later of Tony Blair).
Winning was a feisty Scot with – a female colleague once observed – the film star looks of Paul Newman. He was fiercely intelligent, handsome and as tough as the iron and steel manufactured in the foundries of Lanarkshire, where he was brought up in relative poverty.
He put the Catholic Church on an equal footing with the Church of Scotland to the extent that Catholics ceased to conceal their religious affiliation, although he never managed to eradicate the media obsession with pointing out the remarkable fact that it was not just a Catholic but a ‘devout Catholic’, who had landed this or that important job or appointment in politics.
Winning was intolerant of members of his own flock who were what he called ‘a la carte Catholics’, who wanted to pick and choose from a menu of teachings and doctrines they were prepared to follow. He likened the Catholic faith to being in the forces – ‘In the army you have to wear the uniform, pull on the boots and follow the rules…and not just the rules that appeal to you or suit you personally’, he said to people campaigning on issues ranging from birth control, abortion, homosexuality and women’s ordination to priests being allowed to marry.
The cardinal ploughed money into the care of deprived and disadvantaged women and he was an implacable opponent of abortion. He set up rehabilitation units and created jobs for drug and alcohol abusers long before the public authorities, and he introduced the church’s own social work services for weak and marginalised people. His encouragement of ecumenism helped to found the successful Churches Together movement although he continued to defend his own beliefs so robustly in the public square that he was widely perceived as a genuine contender for the papacy.
Cardinal Winning was an exceptional person from an ordinary working-class background who used his unquestionable intellect to break down barriers that had been in place in Scotland for centuries. It would have been interesting to hear his contribution to the current debates on important issues such as bigotry and sectarianism, Catholic education and the way Scotland is governed. One thing for certain is that he would have been listened to. He is not just sadly missed, but badly missed.
Bill Heaney
I would nominate Donald Dewar. He was a genuine Scottish Renaissance Man.
John Halliday
There is a real shortage of women on the list. I nominate :
Margo MacDonald – one of the few genuinely popular politicians and a respecter of no one’s pieties.
Annie Lennox – recognised as one of the best white soul singers ever (and a great charity worker worthy of her MBE)
There is a lack of entertainers. Springs to mind:
Sean Connery – I am no fan of Connery’s politics but he is Scotland to many people. He has to be on the list surely.
Jimmy Shand – one of our few indisputable world-class musicians and a favourite of producer George Martin.
But is has to be Billy Connolly – the Scot who made the world laugh.
Edwin Moore
I would like to nominate Mick McGahey as my choice of the greatest Scot of the last 25 years. The miners’ strike of 1984 was arguably the defining moment and, I believe, if Mick McGahey rather than Arthur Scargill had been in charge, things might well have worked out very differently. For one thing, crucially, the Yorkshire and Nottingham miners may have remained united, for with Mick McGahey, what you saw is exactly what you got.
Ian Petrie
I nominate Norman MacCaig as the ‘top Scot’ of the last 25 years. We have produced more great poets in the last quarter century than any other category.
Norman McCaig spoke to the soul of Scotland in a way unmatched by any politician, novelist, academic or musician. Even those who came closest, Jimmy Reid for example, lacked MacCaig’s depth of understanding. And he is, I bet, the only one of the 25 who travelled everywhere by bus – I shared an almost empty Edinburgh to Dumfries bus with him one Sunday morning in the early 70s. I like to think he was on his way to visit that other great ‘Makar’, Hugh MacDiarmid.
Willy Coupar
Sir James Black: unambiguous services to our well-being, unlike most of
the others.
Roger Sandilands
How about Alexander McCall Smith? Leading bioethics and medical lawyer (Edinburgh professor, author of leading law and medical ethics textbook, vice chair of UK Human Genetics Commission) until that career eclipsed by his renown for writing.
Alastair Philp
There doesn’t appear to be any mention of football managers which has been a particular strength among the Scots in the past and we now have five or six in the greatest league in the world (English Premier) but my own favourite would be the redoubtable pidgeon fancier from Whitburn, John Lambie. He did win the Scottish Manager of the Year in his time but more famous for his quotes:
‘Tell him he’s Pele and get him back on.’ – Partick Thistle boss on being told striker Colin McGlashan did not know who he was after suffering concussion.
More importantly is the omission of women from the list. Scotland has a proud and unique tradition of community-led housing associations and they are dominated by strong women. Many of them have passed away in the last few years but Lyn Ewing won an OBE in the latest honours list. Her colleague Betty Stevenson died just two years ago.
Foster Evans
Without a doubt, my nomination for the greatest Scot of the last 25 years is our first minister, Alex Salmond. His leadership, vision, determination, ability and dedication to the cause of Scottish self-determination, when he could have had a tremendous and lucrative career as a leading UK politician, has restored Scottish self-belief, pride, and the feeling that we, as a small nation, can join the league of other small nations, and, once again, provide a meaningful contribution to the well-being of the human race as a whole.
Bob Watson