Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school - Scottish Parliament politicians too had a day off – from Parliament – to allow them to support their Westminster colleagues in the election.
The scholars returned to their studies refreshed by idleness. The politicians to their endeavours, thinner, and more tanned by exercise and a welcome May burst of early summer. Indeed I have had to make another hole in my belt to prevent my breeks falling off my slimmer belly.
But for the 20 or so of the previous 72 Scottish MPs who will not be returning to their desks – some voluntarily, others by verdict of the voters – the 5th of May will have made a greater impact.
Tam Dalyell is one in particular who has made his mark over the years and who has now retired.
Since being elected at a by-election as a Labour MP in 1962 for the then constituency of West Lothian, he has been an implacable opponent of my party, the SNP. But much respected by most of us nonetheless.
Latterly sitting for Linlithgow constituency, a part of West Lothian, he had through time become the “Father of the House” – the oldest member. A position previously held in the Scottish Parliament by my colleague Winnie Ewing who therefore was in the chair at the start to say the memorable words, “The Scottish Parliament is hereby reconvened …”.
Above all Tam will be remembered as a member of the “awkward squad”.
Despite his energy and intellect, the nearest he came to the front bench was during a brief period as a Parliamentary Private Secretary – in effect an unpaid ministerial bag-carrier – in the 1960s. He soon resigned in disagreement over a government policy initiative.
His campaigns are not all well remembered. An early one was to oppose – successfully – the conversion of an Indian Ocean atoll to a military landing strip. The diversity of wildlife there was, for him, of much higher priority than the needs of the US Air Force.
For 30 years he campaigned against devolution. He believed that it created difficulties at Westminster. The reduction in the number of Scottish MPs from 72 to 59 for the election this month is an expression of his concerns revealed in practice.
And Margaret Thatcher feared Tam Dalyell’s frequent interventions on the subject of the sinking of the Argentinean naval cruiser, the Belgrano, during the Falklands War nearly as much as she was annoyed by our own Alex Salmond’s pointed parliamentary questions.
As an old Etonian, a baronet – he is “really” Sir Tam Dalyell of the Binns, and living in a grand country house now operated by the National Trust for Scotland, married to Lord Wheatley’s daughter, he nonetheless sent his own children to the local state schools and felt comfortable amongst the miners whose president Abe Moffat had originally sought him out to stand for the Labour Party in 1962.
But the Labour Party has moved on, moved far away from Tam’s party. In the election to replace him, the elector’s of Linlithgow read absolutely nothing of his achievements over 43 years in the literature of the new candidate.
A shabby way to treat an honest man, if one fundamentally out of tune with the people – one cannot say his colleagues – in the party to which he gave his all.
A final thought from me about Tam. He revolutionised the role of a constituency parliamentarian. He seems to have been the first MP to have operated a system of parliamentary “surgeries” for his constituents to meet him and express their concerns, seek his help, gain his advice.
Today MPs, MSPs, Councillors and constituents assume such surgeries are part of political life.
Good luck to his wife Kathleen and a very happy retirement to Tam Dalyell – a man whom I respect and fundamentally disagree with.
VE Day
Our Parliament debated a motion on “Veterans” to mark Victory in Europe day.
With a disturbing majority of school children apparently not knowing what VE Day was, the need to refresh all our memories of the debt we owe to previous generations is obvious.
Without the men and women who fought fascism in World War II, we simply could not be having the open debates – and elections – that enable us as a community, and in our parliament, to make decisions openly and accountably.
My party colleague, Christine Grahame, read in the debate from the diary of a relative whose merchant ship was torpedoed. He survived, others with him did not.
I have a tenuous link with the war. I was born on the day Himmler died.
We must never see his like again, in power, anywhere.
