Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent
A selection of tributes to Jimmy Reid
Fiona MacDonald
I met Jimmy many times following the formation of the Institute of Contemporary Scotland – both at members’ events and, in particular, at the Young Scotland Programmes which I organised.
I need not describe here his powers as an orator on the more formal occasions. At the programmes his sessions took the form of conversations – ranging over endless subjects – and there too he was spellbinding, inspiring, passionate, humorous and humane. It seemed Jimmy could talk knowledgeably on just about any topic.
So much of what he said tumbles back as I sit here. I remember him talking about the importance of being gracious in victory – of offering your opponent dignity and respect in their defeat. Often his theme turned to international fraternity. Although he loathed Saddam Hussein, he said he utterly condemned the Iraq war. No country can impose a solution to another country’s problems – it has to come from inside. He told the young people present not to fear authority, to despise inequality, to look for imaginative solutions (‘not a strike or a sit-in, they were too obvious and they were the opposite of what we wanted to do. We wanted to work, so we would carry on working’).
There was the story of how, during the work-in, a bouquet of roses arrived during a meeting. Someone opened the card and found they had come from John and Yoko. ‘They’re from Lennon,’ he said. ‘They cannae be from Lenin,’ came a voice from the back. ‘He’s deid.’ In fact Jimmy didn’t talk that much about the work-in. He preferred to range over other topics and I could see an inward sigh when he was reminded yet again about the ‘no bevvy’ speech. He had so much more to say to the young.
I will forever have an image of Jimmy and his wife, Joan, in my mind. An impromptu ceilidh had broken out late one evening and the two of them rose to perform. The song escapes me now but it was an old-fashioned love song and their voices blended sweetly as they swayed in time to the music, Jimmy leaning on his walking stick. It was obviously their party piece. The room was spellbound.
After dinner, and though his health dictated against it, he enjoyed a good cigar (preferably Cuban). I would set off to the bar of whatever hotel the event was being held in to fetch one. Often the best I could do was a pathetic little specimen and as I handed it to him the two of us would gaze at it in sorrow. The last time was at the North West Castle Hotel in Stranraer. A finer example was available on this occasion but he stared at me in disbelief when I reminded him that he would have to go outside to smoke it.
Today I have the sensation of yet another door closing on the Old Scotland – of yet another voice silenced, yet another light gone out. It’s a feeling I have had a lot lately, but never more so than today. I suppose every generation feels that although we may continue to prosper, the present and the future pale in comparison to the past. But it is hard indeed – impossible in fact – to imagine that Scotland will ever witness anyone again quite like Jimmy Reid.
Rose Galt
I vividly remember one Young Scotland Programme where, as usual, he mesmerised the audience, many of whom had never heard of him. After the session a young woman come up to me and said: ‘That was magic. I didn’t learn any of that in school’, the latter observation with a mixture of wonderment and contempt for Scottish education in her voice. She asked me if any books had been written about Jimmy and the work-in. I directed her to the internet and gave her some other useful names. She left me with a perceptible spring in her step. Magic!
Peter Macdonald
At the time of the UCS work-in my father was involved in the dispute at the Plessey factory in Alexandria. I remember as a teenager passing food through the factory gates to my dad and his workmates. I also remember the leadership of Jimmy Reid which fostered pride and dignity in the communities involved in the two work-ins. Around that time I came across a quote from Jimmy, ‘If there is a God I hope it’s Jesus’. This struck a chord with me and played a part in shaping both my faith and my politics. Today I serve as leader of the Iona Community, saddened by Jimmy’s death but pleased to pay tribute to the former chancellor of the exchequer in George MacLeod’s youth parliament.
Maxwell MacLeod
Jimmy Reid was always held up as being the exemplary Scot in our household.
He personified the self-respecting, highly decent, clear-eyed bonny fichter for justice and had the full set of arrows in his quiver – a passion for learning and egalitarianism but above all else the civic obligation to get off your backside and fight the bastards. He also had nerve. I remember when he started 7 Days magazine he mentioned casually that he had staked his house on it because he felt Scotland needed such a publication. I wrote a cartoon strip for the magazine and even when he was hard-up and against the wall his phone calls would be relaxed and personable, always finding the time to ask for members of the family even when you knew that the hounds of hell were battering at his door.
He liked the good life, a cigar, good jazz, fine books, but there was no self-serving affectation about these indulgencies: they were just part of his infectious zest for living. I remember seeing him at a jazz concert once, cigar in hand, thrilled by the music. He looked so happy I thought he might explode.
Maxwell MacLeod is George MacLeod’s son
Hugh Kerr
I first met Jimmy Reid in the late 1950s when he came to Kilmarnock to recruit a group of sons of communists to the Young Communist League. We asked him his policy on nuclear weapons and he defended Russia’s right to the bomb – ‘the workers’ bomb’. We were into CND and decided to join the Young Socialists instead.
Forty years later I returned to Scotland as an expelled Labour MEP and became the first chairperson of the Scottish Socialist Party. I invited Jimmy, who was by then Scotland’s leading left-wing columnist, to lunch at Rogano with me and Tommy Sheridan (the only time I succeeded in getting Tommy into Rogano). I told Tommy we would have a discreet discussion of SSP prospects and Jimmy might give us a favourable mention in his column which he duly did.
Unfortunately our discretion was breached by Jack McLean of the Herald who was at the next table and penned a diary item the next day.
I also entertained Jimmy as a guest to the Scottish Parliament and a memorable lunch at the Tower restaurant in Edinburgh to meet with the president of the European Parliament’s United Left Group, a meeting which led to the SSP joining the European Left Party. My final meeting with Jimmy was in 2004 when we both spoke to a meeting of the United Left Group MEPs at a South Kensington hotel. At a good lunch afterwards with his customary brandy and cigar he said: ‘Hugh, you know there is nothing too good for the working class’.
There will be many obituaries and testimonials to Jimmy in the coming days. He was truly a giant of the Labour movement. For me he was a deeply human person who loved the good things in life – literature, music and above all people.
Veronica Gordon Smith
In the distressing early days of the reconvened Scottish Parliament, when the Daily Record was screaming ‘SKIVERS!’ and the establishment both left and right, London and Edinburgh, were doing their best to wreck it, Jimmy made a prescient remark, for which I will always be grateful: ‘The parliament’, he said, ‘is greater than the sum of its parts’. It was a precious glimpse of hope for the future that may well have buoyed up thousands of people across Scotland. Thank you, Jimmy.
Jock Gallagher
As a journalist, I have met all conditions of public figures but it is Jimmy Reid who stands out most in my memory. Maybe it’s the familiarity of the name Jimmy but I like to think he and I became friends…no, we were more than that. We were mates. We certainly got on well enough to discuss the possibility of collaboration on what would have been a fascinating biography. It should have been an autobiography but despite the astonishing riches of his past, he knew he was never going to achieve that. It wasn’t laziness and it wasn’t lack of enthusiasm. It was as if he saw it as the final chapter of a life that he was still too full of living. ‘We should get round to it one day but not too soon.’
I was one of the awestruck audience – the others were the latest cadre of participants in the Young Programme – when he talked theology to the former Bishop of Durham David Jenkins. He always tried to avoid getting involved in what he regarded as pointless arguments but he certainly made an exception for the good Dr Jenkins. He rattled off biblical texts and continually out-scored the bishop to the point of speechlessness and splutter.
Afterwards, he asked me: ‘Was that wicked of me to argue so much about something the man believes in?’ It was a rhetorical question. Wickedness would not have fitted Jimmy. He may have disputed that he had one but his soul was surely pure.
For Kenneth Roy’s interview with Jimmy Reid, published in yesterday’s edition [click here]
