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 Murray Ritchie was presented with the Oliver Brown Award on Saturday 16 June 2001 at a well attended lunch in the Terrraces Hotel, Stirling. The undernoted report of the event appeared in the August 2001 issue of the Scots Independent.
"It’s
a much bigger and grander affair than we’d been expecting". Award
recipient Murray Ritchie’s young wife, Andree, was among the many
distinguished guests at this year’s better-than-ever event in Stirling’s
Terraces Hotel.
After a gourmet lunch,
the guests then savoured the eloquent if gently barbed thoughts of
Oliver’s daughter, Una, on the world and everything Dick Douglas’s
generous toast to the SI with an appendix on the work the Party had to
do in relation to matters European; and Peter Wright’s erudite
chairmanship.
Doyen editor Kenneth Fee
explained why the Herald’s Scottish political editor had been the
Oliver Award judges’ unanimous choice this year - not just for his
authoritative authorship of "Scotland Reclaimed" but also for
his years of professional service delivering essentially decent and
intellectually honest Scottish journalism which rose above the tangled
web that was now the Anglo Scottish mass media.
In an elegant response,
Murray thanked the Scots Independent and Oliver’s family for the
Award. He reminisced about his days as a local reporter, with the
Dumfries & Galloway Standard and the East African Standard in Kenya,
feature writer, diarist, columnist, investigative reporter, leader
writer, European editor in Brussels and back to Glasgow as political
editor there.
Kenneth Fee, in
presenting the award, had recalled the dominance of the British
political parties who controlled the Scottish Press — as far back as
the 1960s when the then High-Tory Glasgow Herald’s editor, Sir William
Robieson, had been knighted for services to politics rather than
journalism! Murray Ritchie’s view, however, was that, while nothing
very much might seemed to have changed, there was little point in
attacking the Media. In the last analysis they would respond to what
people believed and wanted. The SNP had made substantial progress in the
1970s when, post Winnie’s Hamilton victory and subsequent vigorous
campaigning by the whole Party, the popular imagination and hence voting
strength had been generated. The Media, for obvious circulation reasons,
would be forced eventually to defer to the popular mood and will.
It was a splendid
occasion, flowing with wit and wisdom, once again doing Oliver’s
memory proud.
Murray Ritchie
Born
in Dumfries in 1941, Murray Ritchie was brought up and educated in
Glasgow. His career in journalism began on the Scottish Farmer —
earning £3. 19s a week — but in 1960 he returned to Dumfries to work
for the Dumfries & Galloway Standard, where for the next five years
he learned the tricks of the trade. Those stood him in good stead when
he joined the Scottish Daily Record, "in the days", he says,
"when it still printed news".
Thence to Kenya, working
for four years on the East African Standard. "That was great
fun", he told me, "and provided a very useful insight into
African nationalism".
In 1971 he returned to
Scotland and the (then Glasgow) Herald. On May 31st this year he will
have completed 30 years there, "for my sins". During that time
he has covered the complete journalistic spectrum: reporter, diarist,
news and feature writer, columnist, investigative reporter, leader
writer, pundit ! And in 1980 the Fraser Press Award of Journalist of the
Year was conferred on him.
Following the Tory
General Election victory in 1992 — and the Herald’s entry into the
age of enlightenment — he was sent to Europe where politics were real,
certainly compared with those in Scotland. For the next five years he
flourished as European editor.
Recalled in 1997 to
become the Herald’s Scottish Political Editor, he was in charge of the
transformed political scene, covering the devolution referendum to the
present. It was while he was swimming in those deep waters that he
decided to set down a detailed record of the creation of the new
Scottish parliament.
Over the years he had
contributed to several books but this was the one he wrote on his own,
"Scotland Reclaimed" — with the masterly outcome that has
principally led to the Oliver Award judges’ decision this year.
Murray is married to
Andree whom he refers to with customary and humble gallantry as his
"long-suffering wife", and they have three grown-up children.
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