If you want to run away
and never be seen again,
don’t come here
Gerard Rochford
The July poem
Ernie Walker
One of the Scottish Review’s most stalwart supporters, Ernie Walker CBE, has died at the age of 82 after a long illness. When we launched the Friends of SR appeal in the autumn of 2009, Ernie signed up with a generous donation. He believed that the magazine was what he called ‘the other room’ of the Scottish media, providing an alternative perspective not to be found elsewhere.
Much has been written in recent days of Ernie Walker’s exceptional contribution to Scottish football as general secretary of the SFA and as an ambassador for the game internationally. Very little has been written, however, of his wider contribution to Scottish public life as chairman of the Health Education Board for Scotland.
We met last August at Jimmy Reid’s funeral. Indeed it was Ernie Walker who arranged for the reception to be held at his beloved Haggs Castle golf club, where Jimmy once proposed the toast to the immortal memory of Robert Burns.
Ernie, in his speech of welcome to family and friends of Jimmy, told an affectionate story about, of all people, Michael Forsyth. He recalled how, to his surprise, given that his own political sympathies lay elsewhere, he had been approached by Forsyth to chair the Health Education Board. Ernie, accepting the post, said he did so in the hope that his friend Jimmy Reid would be invited to join him on the board. Michael Forsyth replied that he would have to see what ‘The Lady’ made of this suggestion.
Ernie thought he would hear nothing more about it – that Mrs Thatcher would have the Communist firebrand on the board of a Scottish public body over her dead one. To his greater surprise she approved the appointment and Ernie and Jimmy did indeed work together, Jimmy no doubt smoking his favourite Havana cigar as he pondered the public health of Scotland.
With Ernie Walker a good man has gone; a true servant of this country. We salute him.
– KR
Islay’s daily pic
The most optimistic shop in Linlithgow
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The scandal
they all chose
to ignore
Kenneth Roy
The patient’s daughter said: ‘They get an awful lot of money [£28,000
per year per patient], so not to fix a window lock with a screw was unforgivable’.
