Dorothy-Grace Elder
David and the Russians
Many thanks to the Scottish Review for the tribute to David Martin, former head of features at BBC Scotland.
I knew of David’s formidable journalistic reputation when I worked for the BBC but I was in news, TV and radio, and did not have the privilege of working for David but his excellence was well known. However, I got to know David and his remarkable wife, Christine, very well after he retired when, by chance, a mutual interest soared over Russian poverty at the time communism collapsed.
However much people mourn David Martin in Scotland, he is also mourned in Russia due to the 15 years of amazing work he accomplished there for the poor – street children, poverty-wracked schools, hospitals, orphanages. Starting with an interest in Catherine the Great’s Scottish architect, Cameron, the Martins soon became even more involved with human need. David personally loaded aid trucks for Russia totalling 1,500 tons. He had ‘difficulties’ with St Petersburg customs at times – including a gun being pointed at his head on one occasion. Anyone who knew David can imagine how he handled that one.
David campaigned throughout Scotland, gathering donations of clothes and medical equipment. I was astonished to discover the deeply kind heart within one who had been regarded as one of the toughest professionals in the BBC. David Martin lavished his time and intelligence on his campaigns entirely gratis.
I wrote an expose series on Russian poverty in the Daily Express, having gone to St Petersburg and Pushkin with Christine and an Express photographer. We got into prisons with terrible conditions, also schools and hospitals, where the name Martin was positively revered. In one children’s hospital, the Turner Institute, everything, including the hot water and telephone, had been cut off because there was no money. Despite that, surgeons kept on operating, scrubbing up in disinfectant. Children were bathed from plastic bottles of water warmed on window ledges by the winter sun – but no C diff or HAIs due to constant cleaning. The series went worldwide with great results.
A lot of money was raised from readers and one of those turned out to be the Duchess of York, who phoned me out of the blue and asked me to take her to Russia the next year – another successful campaign resulted. An amusing sideline was that, entering one prison, I was waved through to see the governor with no bother, after mentioning I was from Scotland and knew David and Christine Martin. ‘Fergie’ had to wait longer as guards with pony-sized dogs demanded to know ‘Who are you?’. She returned to Russia with her daughter long after our initial series was over.
I’m so glad that Christine continues David’s rage against injustice in the current St Margaret’s Hospice situation. Her grief at the loss of such a husband cannot be underestimated.
Dorothy-Grace Elder is a journalist and broadcaster and a former member of the Scottish Parliament
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