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What a difference
devolution has made, not just to the functioning of our Party, but to
our role as individual members. When the peak of our advance was marked
by the presence of a handful of colleagues at Westminster, the job of
the rest of us — office bearers and members alike — was to continue
to try our best to earn increased support from the voters. We were to be
always sensible, practical, mannerly, well-informed and as likeable as
our personalities made possible. Each one of us was a keeper of the
Party’s good name and defender of its electoral prospects.
In trying to keep
ourselves and our fellow-members up to scratch we would exchange advice
and opinions as to how best we could achieve our goals, how to alert
ourselves to political dangers, and how best to avoid them. Sometimes we
seemed remarkably obtuse to one another because, even among those
sharing a point of view, what to one seemed an obvious decision, to
another was quite beyond understanding. Those were the tasks and
preoccupations of columns like this.
Now, as your columnist
pointed out some time ago, the political world is looking not at us, the
membership, but at our leaders and our public representatives. Their
words, their actions, their conduct, their deportment now command all
attention and determine the prospects for us all.
One result is a feeling
of lessened responsibility all round, a feeling that we can leave it all
to our leaders. A possible consequence would be a falling-off in
grassroots activity, and that is still a danger, though fortunately
there were few signs during the recent campaign that any such infection
had taken hold. We should all, however, leaders and led, bear in mind
that maintaining morale and enthusiasm must be first in the priorities
of any party.
But we must find a new
role for ourselves. With devolution there has come a day by day, hour by
hour, accumulation of problems, queries, tasks, moments of decision; the
working day of our elected representatives must be pretty fully absorbed
in responding and the time taken up in responding is bound to reduce the
time for reflection. We may still have time to bat ideas among ourselves
and enjoy speculations and arguments as to what might be and what should
be. In Parliaments and in Council chambers our colleagues have to deal
with what is.
So we have passed a very
significant milestone in our Party’s development, and the importance
of columns like this is greatly diminished. For those of us whose
present role is now minimal
and whose future role nature will severely curtail, there is a natural
tendency to look to the past. In my own case this tendency has been
strengthened by news items. In the Herald’s diary feature there
appeared recently a cartoon of Bertie Gray — Councillor Gray, Bailie
Gray, Vice Chairman of the Scottish Covenant Association, life-long
colleague, friend and stalwart supporter of Dr John MacCormick. Read
what MacCormick says of Gray in his memoir Flag in the Wind, and
learn of a man whose service to the Home Rule cause has passed beyond
the memory of all but a few of us. But it was Bertie Gray’s 6000 votes
in West Dunbartonshire which denied Tom Johnstone election to
Westminster at a moment when, if elected he might have become Labour’s
leader, and much might have happened differently. It was Bertie Gray who
was the contact for those of us working in the Glasgow University
Rectorial Campaign of 1950, and a —and jovial friend he proved
himself. We saw his replicas of the Stone of Destiny before there was
the occasion to bring one or any of them into use.
Revived memory of Bertie
Gray followed soon upon the news of the death of James Lees. That one
really hurt. The two elections, 1964 and 1966, were crucial in our Party’s
rise and that rise was supervised principally by Dr Lees. In charge of
the Party’s organisation, he was tireless, and forever planning and
driving towards the next objective. With James Braid he left hardly an
acre of Scotland unvisited and the political harvest they sowed was a
rich one. He hadn’t much time for sitting about, or for those who sat
about, and he was a glorious counterweight to those who were more purely
verbal. He was rocklike in loyalty and in determination, and this paper
especially knows what he did for our cause.
When memory gets a hold
of us we can become intolerant bores, for a time at least, until the
moment comes when a new generation begins to be aware that there is a
record somewhere to be sought. As do all obedient scribes, I will seek
the editor’s permission to retire from the monthly exhortations and
expositions, which our elected spokespersons can do so much more
effectively, and instead start tidying up the fragments, written and
remembered, of our 60 years spent in trying to make Nationalists out of
those who never gave independence a thought.
I used to urge Tom Gibson
to write his story, and Robert McIntyre and Arthur Donaldson. None of
them did so in proper organised form, because the coming of leisure too
often coincides with the coming of frailty. We should all tell what we
can while we still can.
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