Kenneth Roy
Scots of the year

Who made a difference this year? I can think of three Scots.
     The first was Kenny MacAskill, the cabinet secretary for justice, who released the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. It ill became the Scottish legal establishment later to complain of Megrahi's attempt to use the internet to help clear his name rather than to pursue his second appeal against conviction, since the same establishment had been responsible for the many delays in bringing the appeal to court. The prosecution was pursued on the flakiest grounds imaginable and, after trial, was undermined by the disclosure of new evidence, the full detail of which, scandalously, has still not been made public. The Scottish legal establishment has nothing whatever to be proud of in its handling of this case and many questions remain unanswered. In the end it was left to a politician to do the decent thing and take the inevitable flak. He deserves our gratitude.
     Kenny MacAskill, then, is our Scottish public figure of the year, but Tavish Scott, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, runs him a close second for his smart response to this magazine's disclosure of the colossal salaries being paid at the head of the public sector, particularly in the NHS, and for initiating a political debate, now UK-wide, on the gulf between the top earners and those at the sharp end and how to reduce these shocking inequalities. Tavish Scott too deserves our gratitude.
     There should be honourable mentions for two independent spirits – Malcolm Chisholm, who defied his party on the Megrahi vote, and Margo MacDonald who, in the face of her disabling condition, went on campaigning and writing in a humane way. At Westminster, a land of no heroes, Gordon Brown 'kept buggering on' even when his premiership looked dead; he will enter the new year with a sporting chance of depriving David Cameron of an overall majority. If there was a political survivor of the year, it was the Prime Minister himself.
     I can think of no Scots in public life, outside a fairly narrow political sphere, who made a difference this year, except negatively. The bureaucrats who refused to divulge what they were being paid from the public purse, while demanding complete transparency from others, performed the incidental public service of reminding us to be eternally vigilant in the face of official arrogance. They win the brass necks of the year award, while Sir Fred Goodwin was unsurpassed in the Homecoming of the year category and highly commended in the hotly competitive brass necks field.
     From academia, Professor Tom Gallagher asked awkward questions about Scotland under nationalism in his book 'The Illusion of Freedom', and was universally reviled by the media luvvies. He failed to make a difference – the quashing of his views was a wonder to behold – but he may derive some consolation from his nomination by the Scottish Review as dissident of the year. Among extraordinary 'ordinary' members of the public, Michael Forbes is our rebel of the year for standing up to Trump.
     The other Scot who made a difference – apart from Kenny MacAskill and Tavish Scott – was Catriona Matthew. Even by the low standards of commercial sport, it was a year disfigured by scandal. If it was not the Williams sister's foul-mouthed tirade, it was Agassi's confession of wig and crystal meths abuse and Woods's 'transgressions'. Having recently given birth, Catriona came to the British women's open golf championship short of match practice, played brilliantly, kept smiling in adversity, and went on to win against the best of the Americans.

Five Scots who died this year made a difference.
     Iain Cuthbertson was an actor and director of great ability, but the obituaries made too little of his place at the centre of the post-war Scottish theatre. As custodian of James Bridie's playhouse on the 'wrong side of the river', the Glasgow Citizens', he kept the flame alive with scant resources.
     John Panton, the golfer, was an important figure in many Scottish childhoods of the 1950s and 1960s, including mine. We were taught to revere a man who exemplified on and off the course the finer qualities of the Scottish people. Alex Salmond's personal tribute to this exceptional life was both heartfelt and moving.
     Bill Speirs was a trade unionist with a wider social conscience. Even when he knew he did not have long to live, he was still working quietly for vulnerable people.
     Ludovic Kennedy's day job as a current affairs broadcaster tended to overshadow, at least in the public eye, his noble vocation as a tireless investigator of miscarriages of justice. No one fought more tenaciously to correct the serious errors made by the criminal courts.
     Kay Carmichael, who died the day after Christmas, was a socialist thinker, a social crusader, a political adviser (to the most under-estimated government of my lifetime, the Wilson administration of 1964), a friend of prisoners – Scotland's renaissance woman.
     If Scotland can produce people of the quality of Iain Cuthbertson, John Panton, Bill Speirs, Ludovic Kennedy and Kay Carmichael, there is something to be said for this small country.