Who is the greatest Scot
of all time – apart from
Ann Gloag of course?
Among the candidates short-listed by Scottish Television for the accolade greatest Scot of all time is Ann Gloag, the co-founder of a bus company. I did not believe that I could bring myself to write the sentence I have just committed to screen, but there you are: I’ve managed it. Ann Gloag of Stagecoach is possibly about to be named the greatest Scot of all time; according to Scottish Television, she is already one of the greatest. I have no objection to her buses. They run fairly efficiently, although the drivers tend to be glum – perhaps they have a lot to be glum about. The only objection to her buses is a philosophical one. The company enjoys, in most of Scotland, a harmful monopoly in effect if not in theory; what happened to the competition?
Perhaps Scottish Television, looking at the long history of Scotland, found itself short of women and transport entrepreneurs and decided that, in Ann Gloag, they had identified someone who filled both vacancies as well as giving a sheen of gender correctness to its poll. But if it was truly a woman and a transport entrepreneur they wanted, they need have looked no further than Queen Margaret, also known as Saint Margaret, who died in 1093. A self-effacing person of deep religious faith, she was noted for her social mission, caring for the poor and the sick. What is less well-known is that Margaret was responsible for establishing the first ferry service across the Forth. Eat your corporate heart out, Stagecoach.
I was so insulted by the short-listing of Ann Gloag – insulted on behalf of my native country – that, last night, I dug out a 10-year-old copy of the Scottish Review’s print version, the Christmas 1999 edition, which was devoted to the results of a poll of leading Scots on exactly the same question: Who is the greatest Scot in history? We added a second and perhaps more intriguing question: Who is the greatest Scot of the 20th century? I was astonished to find that 1,600 people voted. We published short essays, justifying their choices, by a selection of the respondents. A decade on, it makes fascinating reading.
The saddest thing about these essays is that five of them were written by people who are no longer alive. Four died this year. I will say a little about each.
One who died recently was a legendary GP in the Western Isles, John A J Macleod, known to all as Dr John. We pay tribute to him elsewhere in this issue. Dr John chose Adam Smith as his greatest Scot and Jimmy Reid as his 20th century Scot. He wrote in 1999 that he had never had the pleasure of meeting or corresponding with Jimmy; I must ask Jimmy whether, in the last years of Dr John’s life, contact between them was finally established. ‘The work that he did for the people of Clydeside was immense and brave,’ wrote Dr John. ‘He got them organised in a manner that probably only Maxton had previously managed. He got them thinking and widened their perspective to provide them with the awareness that dramatic changes in work style and prospects were on the horizons’.
Also this autumn there was the death of Bill Speirs, former general secretary of the STUC. Not long before he died, he emailed me with a request for help. Even as he was dying, Bill Speirs was thinking of the welfare of others, in this case the predicament of a young asylum seeker. He began his letter with the sad words: ‘I wonder if you remember me’. It is remarkable how the best among us, particularly as they approach the end of their lives, seem to be unaware of how fondly they are remembered, of the general respect in which they are held. He died far too young, still in his 50s.
Bill selected as the greatest Scot of the 20th century a figure who might have belonged only to the 19th – another Margaret, Margaret Irwin, who was born in 1858 on board a barque in the South China Seas, yet became a key figure in the development of trade unionism in Scotland. As first general secretary of the STUC, she fought for exploited women workers, for women’s suffrage, for equal pay. Bill pointed out in his essay that, although her influence was profound, Margaret Irwin was never a fashionable figure. His choice of greatest Scot of all time was another graduate of St Andrews University, the polymath George Buchanan (1506-1582), Latin scholar, philosopher, anti-royalist, ‘severe Calvinist’, a prominent figure in the development of Scottish thought, and – let us never forget – the author of ‘Daft Watty’s Ramble from Ayr to Carlisle’. Buchanan died in poverty.
In the spring, Maurice Lindsay died. Unlike Bill Speirs, he lived to a grand old age. Like George Buchanan, he too was something of a polymath in the Scottish tradition – poet, broadcaster, critic and journalist, able administrator with the Scottish Civic Trust, Burns scholar, wearer of bow-ties. He believed in the idea of an independent Scotland, but not in the idea of God or the after-life. For his greatest Scot ever Maurice Lindsay chose Walter Scott. He reminded us in his essay of the Scottish crisis of identity around the turn of the 18th/19th century, of the moves to abandon the name Scotland in favour of North Britain, a move supported at one stage by none other than James Boswell. (Alas! I am past president of the Boswell Society. But I forgive him.) Maurice believed that Scott helped to rescue Scotland with the creative use of our history, making that history available to many people who were largely ignorant of it. Yet, as Allan Massie noted in a recent Spectator, no one reads Walter Scott any more; he is in the nadir of his reputation. Does anyone know why?
Professor Neil MacCormick was another spring loss, at the age of 67: a lawyer, academic and dedicated nationalist. Of his choice of greatest Scot, he wrote in the Scottish Review of Adam Smith’s sound grasp of legal principles, his awareness of the need to set economic theory against its social background; he described him as a historian of human ideas. For his 20th-century Scot, he chose his own father, John MacCormick, one of the founders of modern nationalism, ‘who belongs high in any reasonable list of original motivators’, a man of poetry and romance in his private life, but publicly a practical politician with a gift for compromise and a superb oratorical style. The son wrote of the father that he appeared to die a failure; he did not live to see the flowering of the nationalist movement.
It seems a long time since the death of my old friend in Kintyre, Angus MacVicar, writer, golfer, man of the theatre, but he was certainly around 10 years ago this month to pen a graceful testimonial to Robert the Bruce and John Smith, two great Scots that Angus considered had much in common, including the common touch. Angus wrote that both were politicians who understood the true meaning of the word ‘politics’ (‘care for the well-being of the people’), both were unafraid, practising Christians, and both had faith in themselves and in their fellow countrymen.
So a glance at five of the 1,600 repondents to our 1999 poll produces nominations of Adam Smith (twice), Walter Scott, George Buchanan and Robert the Bruce in the greatest-ever category and of Margaret Irwin, John Smith, Jimmy Reid and John MacCormick in the 20th-century category: each of these nominations thoughtful, intelligent and well-argued. I will not divulge who won each category (none of the above-named). Instead, I will run a follow-up survey of present readers. Look out for the nomination forms in the next few weeks. And anyone who votes for Ann Gloag is barred for life.
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04.11.09
Issue no 164
The greatest Scot
Kenneth Roy
ponders some nominations
for the accolade
[click here]
An excess of bachelors
Dr John Macleod
on difficulties for men
on the islands
The Vatersay stewards
Islay McLeod’s
Faces of Scotland
[click here]
Does the traffic stop
any more?
Peter MacAulay
on Highland funeral rituals
[click here]
What happens to vacuums
Alan Fisher
on winning the prize
but
failing to win the peace
[click here]
Next edition:
Thursday
