Issue 7 Biography Dundee Inveramsay
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The Best of 25 Years of the Scottish Review Issue 7 Biography Dundee Inveramsay Edited by Islay McLeod ICS Books To Kenneth Roy, founder of the Scottish Review, mentor and friend, and to all the other contributors who are no longer with us. First published by ICS Books 216 Liberator House Prestwick Airport Prestwick KA9 2PT © Institute of Contemporary Scotland 2021 Cover design: James Hutcheson All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-8382831-6-2 Contents Biography 1 The greatest man in the world? William Morris Christopher Small (1996) 2 Kierkegaard at the ceilidh Iain Crichton Smith Derick Thomson (1998) 9 The long search for reality Tom Fleming Ian Mackenzie (1999) 14 Whisky and boiled eggs W S Graham Stewart Conn (1999) 19 Back to Blawearie James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbon) Jack Webster (2000) 23 Rescuing John Buchan R D Kernohan (2000) 30 Exercise of faith Eric Liddell Sally Magnusson (2002) 36 Rose like a lion Mick McGahey John McAllion (2002) 45 There was a man Tom Wright Sean Damer (2002) 50 Spellbinder Jessie Kesson Isobel Murray (2002) 54 A true polymath Robins Millar Barbara Millar (2008) 61 The man who lit Glasgow Henry Alexander Mavor Barbara Millar (2008) 70 Travelling woman Lizzie Higgins Barbara Millar (2008) 73 Rebel with a cause Mary Barbour Barbara Millar (2008) 76 Last days of a poet – the dying of Robert Burns Catherine Czerkawska (2009) 79 Then we sever Agnes McLehose ('Clarinda') Barbara Millar (2009) 82 My political hero Michael Foot Alf Young (2010) 85 Father of the nation Donald Dewar Alan Alexander (2011) 88 The strange background of Margo MacDonald Kenneth Roy (2014) 91 The death of a friend Malcolm MacKenzie Walter Humes (2014) 95 A Hebridean bohemian in Rose Street Hector MacIver Iain Smith (2014) 98 Matters, fags and booze Gavin Maxwell Barbara Millar (2014) 102 A thrawn hero of our time Sydney Silverman Bob Cant (2014) 105 Karl and Hector Karl Miller and Hector MacIver Iain Smith (2014) 108 The man who caught fire Norman Morrison Donald S Murray (2016) 113 Spirit of adventure Simon Davidson Barbara Millar (2016) 115 The end of a story James Davie Ian Jack (2018) 118 In admiration of my father Professor Willie Russell Lucy Russell (2018) 122 A reputation in recession James Bridie Gerry Carruthers (2018) 125 Remembering William McIlvanney David Cunningham (2018) 127 The humanity and talent of Hugh McIlvanney Gerry Hassan (2019) 132 A woman of wit, empathy and imagination Joan Ure Gillean Somerville-Arjat (2019) 136 Dundee 138 Cinema and the poor Bob Cant (2014) 139 The Glass Bucket Bob Cant (2016) 142 'Cool Dundee' Gerry Hassan (2018) 144 Dundee has a long way to go Bob Cant (2018) 148 Dundee: the place to be in Scotland? Gerry Hassan (2019) 150 Dundonians have seen little improvement Josh Moir (2019) 153 Inveramsay 155 The road to Inveramsay Kenneth Roy (2011) 156 The railway clerk Barbara Millar (2015) 162 Contributors 167 BIOGRAPHY The greatest man in the world? Christopher Small on William Morris 1996 What is the connection between floral wallpaper and the Red Flag? The answer, of course, is William Morris. Everybody knows that, and if anybody didn't he (or especially she) will have been reminded in this centenary year of Morris's death. The wallpapering at least has been lavish. He was, as we've copiously been told in recent months, an artist and domestic designer of wide and lasting influence. All over the place, his work and its derivations are prominently on view; some of them, the wallpaper and furnishing fabrics, have never been away, but we're invited to look at them with a newly admiring eye. Morris was also a poet; and towards the end of his life he was a declared socialist, using all his talents as an active pioneer in the early upsurge of the movement, literally and in his own person raising the scarlet banner high. But this latter information has been, if not withheld, treated in a somewhat muted manner as something incidental, even anomalous, at most an eccentricity (artists are indulged in that) and not of much importance in what is otherwise comprehensively to be claimed as heritage. (If you want an idea of what's on offer in that line, have a look through the current edition of Past Times, 'a wealth of fine and unusual gifts inspired by the past', in which Morris designs have been applied to everything from plates and mugs and scatter-cushions to tablets of soap). In the large commemorative exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, a single showcase of old socialist newspapers and pamphlets was tucked in towards the end of the ordered tour of viewing, together with voice-over as, so to speak, auditory wallpaper. Proportionate to Morris's prodigious output of all kinds, this is perhaps no more unjust than in the present climate it is surprising. Not much more than the last decade of his 62 years was spent in political activity. Nevertheless, it seems to me a mistake to neglect the work, actions and utterances of those few years if you want to receive a real communication from the man and not leave him to the half-life of museums. Nobody's life and work are all of a piece and our notions even of a living person are always selective; far more so of the dead. But if we believe in personhood at all, we're obliged to make connections between different parts, and from that there may actually be something to be learned. Morris, a stout man in several senses – at times unquestionably what would now be called overweight – impressed those who knew him by his tremendous energies, which he spent without stint in many directions. (One of his doctors named the cause of his death simply as 'being William Morris, and having done more work than most 10 men'.) But they were also impressed by his integrity or, as some expressed it, his simplicity. When he surprised them – and by nothing more did he surprise and bewilder some of them than by 2 his declaration that 'I am one of those people called socialists' – they knew, nevertheless, that he meant what he said. Most unlike his collaborator and (in more than one way) rival Rossetti, he always did mean what he said, 'sometimes', as Bernard Shaw recalled, 'very vehemently'. For Shaw he was 'a saint', and Shaw as we know didn't bestow that title indiscriminately – Joan of Arc is the only other Shavian canonisation that comes to mind. To John Bruce Glasier, the Scot so closely associated in his youth with Morris as socialist, he was in recollection simply 'the greatest man in the world'. It would be absurd to claim any special Scottish corner in Morris, the Londoner of Welsh descent who was at least as English as William Blake. But it's possible that such an estimation as Bruce Glasier's came more easily in Scotland, where Morris became known personally more as a socialist than as artist – or where, it would be more accurate to say, these two aspects were seen as inseparably combined. Glasier, who saw this from the first of his acquaintance, also remarked Morris's 'intense self-willedness', the 'unselfconscious egoism', 'ownselfness', or integrity of a healthy child, and he had no doubt that this included his political opinions: 'He was a socialist because he could not be William Morris without being a socialist'. Morris, on his own part, committing himself unreservedly to the emergent socialist movement, described his motives forcefully and succinctly. He looked upon the material and moral hideousness of the world he lived in and concluded: 'There are only two ways today of being really happy – to work for socialism or to do work worthy of socialism'. It was a carefully worded distinction, and whether or not it was distinction without difference is perhaps the most important point of all he said and did, which must presently be looked at. But, in the meantime, what is clearly to be understood, and may more readily be understood here in Scotland than in the vicinity of the V&A, is that for him the 'two ways' were perfectly complementary, and he followed both with his whole heart. Those were the days of enthusiasm, of course. Glasier, writing at the end of his own life, remembered his first sight of Morris – it was in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, the clubroom of the recently formed Scottish Land and Labour League – and how 'a kind of glow seemed to be about him, such as we see lighting up the faces in a room when a beautiful child comes in'. (Morris, now in his 50s, corpulent, bearded, seems constantly to have produced this paradoxical impression.) When he spoke in St Andrews Hall the following Sunday (on 'Misery and the Way Out'), 'no such address had ever been heard in Glasgow before'. Glasgow was, of all the cities where Morris spoke, maybe the most ready to hear him, because in the very heyday of commercial and industrial self-confidence, it was already buzzing with critics. (Glasier himself used to answer the question, What made him a socialist? with the one word, 'Glasgow'.) The young man took Morris on a brief tour, including the yet new glories of George Square and the City Chambers, from which, as Glasier delicately said, Morris 'turned his face… with an unquotable epithet of contempt'.