Saltire in the sky, viewed from the M8
Photograph by Islay McLeod

The role model

Alex Salmond should

remember tonight

Kenneth Roy

 

A long time ago, when we occupied adjoining columns in a newspaper, Alex Salmond wrote that, although we seemed to agree about little else, he was pleased that we shared a regard and affection for the Scottish golfer, John Panton. I hope the first minister will be remembering him tomorrow when he arrives by helicopter in the grounds of Prestonfield House Hotel after his resounding, possibly spectacular, election victory. He could not look to a better role model in his hour of triumph.
     John Panton, who died a couple of years ago, was not the world's greatest golfer, although he was an exceptionally fine one, winning the PGA Match-Play Championship in 1956, the World Seniors' (beating Sam Snead) in 1967, the Scottish Professional title on many occasions, and playing three times in the Ryder Cup; he was the honorary professional of the R & A and given the MBE for his services to the game. The strength of his golf was his superb iron play, but his putting sometimes let him down. Had his short game been more consistent, he would probably have won the Open Championship, in which he came close more than once. In his early 50s, he scored the lowest round on the last day at Muirfield, in a gale.
     Alex Salmond's near-reverence for John Panton, and my own, could not be wholly explained by our admiration for his achievements as a player. Like many others of our generation, we recognised in him graceful sportsmanship of a kind almost vanished now. Panton took modesty to almost ridiculous extremes, dismissing one of his most majestic rounds as 'not bad' and exhibiting a painful shyness when it came to making victory speeches, as it often did. He would not allow a well-known sports journalist to ghost an autobiography; the idea of such a self-promoting enterprise was not Panton's style at all. His favourite tipple was tea, of which he drank a great deal. Not for nothing was he known universally as Gentleman John.
     Why do we – I mean people in general – idolise certain sportsmen and women? What is it we see in them? Do they, perhaps, represent the better side of ourselves and what we might have been? I am not addressing this question to Mr Salmond. I ask it of myself. But I find it interesting that the first minister, someone who is often accused of excessive vanity, arrogance and ambition, should have hero-worshipped a man in whose character these unattractive qualities were completely absent. So far as I know, no-one has ever explored this intriguing irony as a possible clue to Mr Salmond's personality.
     We also shared, as it turned out, a regard and affection for Jimmy Reid. I remember on the night of his death sitting in a BBC studio in Glasgow watching Alex Salmond's filmed tribute in which he said that Jimmy Reid had all the right friends and all the right enemies. Who among us would refuse such a wonderful epitaph? A few days later, at the public gathering in Govan Old Parish Church, the first minister's was the last of six speeches, most of which had over-run, one badly.

 

     As Mr Salmond finally came to the lectern and unfolded his notes, David Scott handed him a piece of paper on which he had scrawled the words, discouraging to any speaker: 'The crematorium beckons'. Quite unfazed, Alex Salmond seamlessly edited his material without missing a beat and produced a practical idea in Jimmy's honour that earned him a prolonged ovation.
     Panton and Reid were temperamental opposites – Panton reserved to the point of dourness, Reid convivial, warm and passionate, yet they were both old-fashioned national archetypes. They could not have been anything but Scottish; in their different ways, they represented some of the nobler characteristics of the race. I don't doubt that Alex Salmond's warm feeling for them was sincere. It was certainly eloquently expressed. On the occasion of their deaths the first minister showed sound judgement about the Scots of the post-war era of lasting influence, both as individuals and symbols. In my experience such a hinterland of understanding and perception is quite rare among politicians. It speaks well of Mr Salmond.
     The helicopter speaks less well. The destination – a posh Edinburgh hotel where Lord Watson of Invergowrie once set fire to the curtains – doesn't sound too promising either. In the last seven days we have witnessed puffed-up national pride in various forms, from the overheated emotion of Little England to the unseemly cheering outside the White House. We may be about to witness a further manifestation of it in our own backyard. I hope it doesn't happen; I rather fear it will.
     My other hope – not that I will be staying up to see it realised or otherwise; the overnight vigil is best left to the anoraks – is that Iain Gray avoids personal humiliation. It would be hard to conjure up a campaign more ineptly conducted than Labour's in the last six weeks. The party started, if not in a commanding position, in a potentially strong one and yet was outwitted at every turn. It had no clear strategy, lacked fight and resolve, had nothing of interest to say and said it badly. Mr Gray himself has been left exposed – or has been foolish enough to expose himself – to the possibility of an imminent exit from political life by the party's failure to nominate him for a list seat, an insurance policy for any prudent party leader.
     I hope he retains East Lothian (though it is entirely possible that he won't) for two reasons: despite his lack-lustre performance he is one of the brighter people in a sea of mediocrity; and, should he fall, the hubris of his opponents, and of sections of the Scottish media, would be insufferable. We have come a long way from the under-statement of a John Panton or the magnanimity of a Jimmy Reid. Let the hysteria begin.

Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review