|
 "Take
your opportunities", proverbs tell us. "Seize the moment". "Gather ye
rosebuds while ye may". "Carpe diem". And so on. Bearing in mind all
this good advice, it is most strange that people judged to be wise —
or wishing to be so regarded — are so often to be found giving
contrary advice. Don’t be too hasty, they advise. "Look before you
leap" — and especially be very quick to refuse to leap in the dark:
"This is not the time", they sum up, wisely wagging a finger of
warning.
No doubt reflection and second
thoughts have their place, and sober risk-assessment should be part of
anyone’s political expertise, and yet how sad it is to look back on
the waste of time which the counsellors of delay have caused.
Half a century ago I tried to
invite the voters of Stirling, Falkirk & Grangemouth to act, there and
then. If this was not the appropriate election for them to come over
to our side, because it "wasn’t the time" then at
which
Election might they change their minds?
How many General Elections did they assume they were going to live to
see? During those same days a famous evangelising campaign was ongoing
in Scotland, and Billy Graham was telling his audiences that they must
"come forward now"; they must decide, because time was passing all too
swiftly.
In 1955 just under 3000
people were persuaded to do as I advised. How well Billy Graham did in
the constituency I don’t know, but as things turned out we were both
condemned to a long wait — 12 General Elections and 47 years on, and
we both still have a bit to go.
Who would have suffered, and to
what degree, if we had achieved independence in 1955, or in any
subsequent year while we were still corrupted by fear? How many
misfortunes caused by the bad judgment of governments, and the rotten
priorities of our selfish and greedy rulers, would we have escaped,
and now been spared, if only our courage and our confidence had been
even adequate? And yet both were at such a low ebb (and long remained
so) that we had few converts and not even much of an audience.
Such audience as there was was
battered by the news that independence was a monstrous absurdity, and
those who urged it were demented, to be laughed at and pitied when
weak, and crushed with power if they ever seemed likely to be strong.
And still, though a great confident cheer was years away, and the best
we could muster was a defiant whimper, there was at least something to
build on.
And some
one, too. Four years ago we lost
him, in physical old age, but in the full vigour of political will and
conviction, just such as he had displayed when he cherished and
nurtured our Party. He had helpers; and he had contemporaries who
served Scotland’s interests according to their lights, but neither
group offered anyone else who could have done what Robert McIntyre
did. Holding firmly to a course aiming at the greatest good for his
country and its people, he led us to understand that good purposes
require competent instruments if they are to be brought to fruition.
The Party was the instrument of his choice and essentially of his
creation.
Perhaps we are affected
in our sub-conscious by the decimal system, and we tend to see
anniversaries in cycles of five or ten or twenty five or fifty years,
and so there may be some mild surprise that the SI should remember
Robert particularly, on this fourth anniversary of his death. We have
become privy to certain plans which make our remembrance relevant.
Many of us have always taken it
for granted that some day we will place a monument at the grave of our
old friend and counsellor. His family, Lila and John, are now ready to
see the work begin. We will keep you posted.
Probably the most famous epitaph
of all goes "If you want to see his monument, look around you". How
true. Robert’s memory needs no stone to keep it alive, but
a national monument is no
more than he deserves. For his memorial, when you next attend a packed
auditorium or a busy field of Bannockburn, look around you. |
