In the Drink as a Lord

It’s been a headline writers dream. In the aftermath of MSP Lord Watson of Invergowrie last week pleading guilty to setting fire to a set of drapes in a hotel, ‘Up in Smoke’, ‘It’s Curtains’ and ‘Pull Yourself Together’ were just some of the views offered by Scottish political journalists on the farcical series of events which led to his political demise.

For anyone who might have missed it, Watson was one of the attendees at last year’s Scottish Politician of the Year awards, held in the Stables venue at Edinburgh’s Prestonfield House. This is a night where politicians and journalists can relax in each other’s company and as ever, it was a lavish occasion. After the ceremony, a number of guests including Watson, retired to the hotel proper to continue their evening.

True to form, the drink and the banter were flowing freely into the wee small hours. However, the more Watson drank according to observers, the more his mood seemed to darken. He had just seen his former friend but now bitter rival Margaret Curran collect the evening’s top award. Having been demoted recently to the backbenches after an undistinguished period of ministerial office, he would have been less than human if he hadn’t felt a little sour about the way their respective careers had gone since 1997.

As plain old Mike Watson, he had been Labour’s conquering hero back in 1989, winning the Glasgow Central by-election against a determined challenge from the SNP’s Alex Neil. However, in the run-up to the 1997 election, with the number of Glasgow constituencies being reduced by one, there weren’t enough seats to go round for Labour. He therefore found himself locked in a bitter contest with the then Councillor Mohammed Sarwar and Margaret Curran herself, to win the Labour nomination for the redrawn Govan seat.

The contest was acrimonious in the extreme, with allegations of racism, nepotism and phantom memberships being thrown around by the comrades. After a re-run of the contest and threats of legal action, Sarwar eventually came out on top and to try and heal wounds, appointed Curran as his election agent. While Watson was later given a life peerage in one of the more blatant examples of Labour’s ‘jobs for the boys’ culture, it was no secret that he still felt hard done by.

Back in elected politics since 1999, he had been promoted to ministerial rank by Jack McConnell and then demoted in short order, and was now seeing the career of someone he had once regarded as a junior partner go from strength to strength. For someone who had once considered himself to be destined for much greater things, being refused service by a night porter after the bar had closed must in his drink blurred state have been the final humiliation.

Taking a box of matches, he headed upstairs to the deserted hotel reception. CCTV footage then shows him crouching by the base of a curtain before walking away. Footage from a few minutes later then shows flames licking up the curtain, with Watson apparently returning to check on his handiwork. Fortunately, once the fire was discovered by staff they were able to extinguish it and as the prime suspect, Watson was quickly ushered off the premises.

I have taken a close interest in this sad affair for 2 reasons, neither of them anything to do with politics. For many years, I played the fiddle in the summer months at the Prestonfield’s ‘Taste of Scotland’ show in the Stables. Through this, I know many of the staff that would have been on duty that night, who would no doubt have served then been verbally abused by Watson as the evening came to its denouement.

Built from the ruins of the old Priestfield house, which ironically was itself burnt down in a political protest in the 17^th century, Prestonfield has played host to Benjamin Franklin in its time. In its more recent history as a hotel, it has accommodated such luminaries as Winston Churchill, Sean Connery, Margaret Thatcher, Elton John, Catherine Zeta Jones and Oliver Reed.

In the last couple of years, I have seen how the hotel’s new owner, Edinburgh restraunteur James Thompson, has invested millions of pounds of his own money into reversing the house’s genteel decline, restoring it into one of the most exclusive hotels in the world. The single biggest improvement made in my view is that unusually for a Scottish hotel, it no longer relies on itinerant seasonal staff. In an industry where pay and conditions can be extremely poor, Prestonfield instead chooses to retain and develop people, all of whom seem to repay the hotel with great loyalty and commitment. It horrifies me to think how anyone, drunk or not, could have thought it was acceptable to put all of this at risk with such a reckless and pointless act.

My second reason is, if anything, even more personal. A hotel is just about the worst place you could ever be caught in a fire. There are flammable materials everywhere, while guests are often unfamiliar with the layout of the building. Throw darkness, fatigue and a good measure of drink into the mix and you have all the ingredients required for widespread injury and loss of life.

Before I was born, my mother was the manageress at a number of hotels in the North of Scotland. One of these, a hotel in Invergordon, caught fire one night while staff and guests were in their beds. Thankfully, even though the hotel was destroyed, the fire alarm did its job and all the staff and guests made it outside to safety. The thought remains though that had events in Invergordon worked out differently all those years ago, I might not be here today. Frankly, it chills me to the bone that anyone would start a fire deliberately when the potential consequences could be so tragic.
 

By pleading guilty and resigning his seat in the Scottish Parliament, Watson, his spokesperson claimed, ‘is taking full responsibility for his actions’. What a pity that ‘taking full responsibility’ meant not owning up straight away to staff about what he had done, saying to the press at the time that ‘I categorically deny any wrongdoing’, and submitting an initial plea of not guilty, adding thousands of pounds to the cost of bringing the case to court.

It was drink fuelled idiocy which put Watson in this position, and pure brinkmanship which led him to hold out until the last minute to see whether the Crown would back down and either drop or reduce the charges against him. He deserves no credit whatsoever if this is how he sees ‘taking full responsibility’, and I hope that all of this is noted by the Sheriff when Watson returns for sentence on 22 September.

Regardless of whether Watson ends up in Saughton Prison for a time or spends several hundred hours scrubbing grafitti from bus shelters, it’s difficult to see any good which can come out of this. His sorrow seems to be at having been caught, rather than at the potential consequences of his actions. When he is remembered at all, it will be for his spectacular act of self-destruction, and with relief that he didn’t manage to kill anyone in the process.
 

The Wallace Memorial Stone

Thanks to a mutual friend, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking recently on the telephone to Norman MacLeod, an engaging conversationalist and long time London-based Scot. Norman published a book over the summer which tells the story of how the William Wallace memorial stone at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital came into being, near the site at Smithfield in London where Wallace was put to death.

The book gives a short biography of Wallace and details of how the memorial itself was designed. However, of most interest, to me at any rate, were the potted biographies on the committee members who ensured that the stone would be erected. In fact, the book reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of establishment Scots at the time, many of them arch-unionists but still showing a determination to ensure that Wallace would not be forgotten.

As many saw it at the time, Wallace fought for a freedom which allowed Scots to enter a union with England voluntarily and as an equal partner in 1707. While this may seem an eccentric view today, British unionism and Scottish nationalism in the 19^th and 20^th centuries were seen by many as being complimentary, rather than contradictory forces as they are now.

By contrast, today’s unionism is an empty shell, often meaning little more than being opposed to Independence or harking back to a ‘golden’ Britannic age which never was. The Scots brought to life in Norman’s book and their commitment to ensuring that the memory of Wallace would live on, tell a remarkable story. Every bit as remarkable, in fact, as the way in which today’s Scots in government chose to ignore in any official sense the 700^th anniversary this year of Wallace’s judicial murder.

After being brought back to people’s consciousness by the writings of Blind Harry, Wallace became and remained a people’s hero. Norman’s book celebrates a people’s tribute to Wallace, who still terrifies as much in death as he once did in life those who would rule over Scotland.

If you would like to obtain a copy of Norman’s book, you can contact him by email on luceo57@yahoo.co.uk .

Lucky Jack – a Bedtime Story

Once upon a time there was a girl called Lorraine. Lots of people knew who Lorraine was, because she was always able tell them all the latest news about road accidents and bad men being sent to jail. Because of this talent, one day her friends gave her a new job which would make her very important. That job was to sometimes go to the big school down the road and report back to her classmates on what all the bigger boys and girls did there each week.

Lorraine was very excited by this and she soon made lots of new friends amongst the bigger boys and girls in the red gang. The red gang had always been the biggest gang at her school, but they were about to become the largest gang at the big school too. That would mean that Tony, their leader, would get to be the new Head Prefect, even although some of the rougher children thought he was a bit too much like some in their sworn enemies – the rival blue gang.

Eventually, Lorraine decided that because her friends in the red gang were so much fun, she would stop going to the big school as often and would instead start to help the red gang get as many new followers at her school as possible. Instead of telling people what was happening in the big school like she’d done before, she would now tell all the children in the playground at the wee school about how good the red gang was. Not only that, when she ran out of nice things to say about the red gang, she could tell people fibs about how nasty the yellow and blue gangs were, and all sorts of nonsense about how playtime was longer and school dinners were better with the red gang on top.

As time passed, a boy from the red gang called Jack became Head Prefect at her school. Jack said he had lots of friends up at the big school, including Tony. There was one problem for Jack, though. That was that Tony was getting bored of being Head Prefect at the big school, and had promised to let his former friend Gordon have a shot soon instead.

Although he would never have said so in case people thought he was a bit of a coward, Jack was worried. When Tony had looked like becoming Head Prefect before, Jack had been cheeky to Gordon because he knew Tony would protect him. But if Gordon took Tony’s place, Jack was worried that Gordon might get his own back in some way.

Since Lorraine knew all about Jack, Tony, Gordon and their friends, she decided that she would write all about how Jack had become so important. However, she still had a problem. While everyone knew she was friendly with some important people in the red gang, lots of people already thought they knew how Jack became Head Prefect in the wee school. Not only that, lots of people already knew why Tony and Gordon weren’t friends any more.

That meant no-one would be interested in her stories unless she was able to tell them lots of new things about who didn’t like who in the red gang. She also knew that Jack wanted to let Gordon know that he liked him really, and how he now thought things would be much nicer in the playground if only Gordon could be in charge of everyone instead of Tony. Suddenly, it became clear what she should do.

When Lorraine sat down to write, she decided to tell people about how Jack didn’t trust Tony any more and how he now thought that Gordon would be a brilliant Head Prefect. Surely this would make some people in the red gang, especially Jack, like her even more? Maybe, just maybe, Gordon might start to like her too. And if Gordon became Head Prefect and she was one of his friends too, who could tell what exciting things he might let her do in the future?

Unfortunately, someone else told all the children what Lorraine was going to say before she was ready to do it herself and there was an awful big commotion – some people even thought that Tony and Gordon might have a fight after school! But both Tony and Gordon were big and sensible boys. And no matter how much they disliked each other, they knew that if anyone saw them having a big fight in public, the blue gang who lived in all the posh houses might get the chance to have a Head Prefect of their own soon, which was something neither of them wanted.

So instead of having a big fight, Tony’s friends said they were surprised to hear what Jack had said, but that none of them really cared what he thought anyway. To make matters worse, Gordon’s friends told everyone that they thought Jack was just a sook. Moreover, when Gordon did eventually become Head Prefect, they said, he had decided to look the other way if any of his pals decided to flush Jack’s head down the toilet at playtime.

Meanwhile, Lorraine was very upset. Not only did someone else get to tell everyone else the story before she could, she had managed to upset Tony without getting Gordon to like her. Tony and Gordon were both very annoyed with Jack too. However, to save face in front of the smaller children, Jack’s friends started to tell anyone who would listen that this wasn’t true. In fact, they said, Jack spoke to Tony nearly every day on the way home from school, and both he and Gordon had sat next to eachother before at lunchtime...

Since he was best pals with the Head Prefect at the big school and the boy who would soon take over, this just showed how clever and popular Jack was with the older boys. As the two schools got ready to start another term, Jack and his friends continued swaggering round the playground and their message was clear - weren’t all the children lucky to have someone like Jack as Head Prefect at the wee school?

‘Lucky Jack - Scotland's First Minister’ by Lorraine Davidson, is published in September 2005 by Black and White publishing.