It was early 1992, a general election year, and Scotland was an unhappy place to be. Thirteen years of Conservative government in a Labour-supporting country had instilled a sense of disaffection with the concept of a united kingdom. Scots had voted for devolution in 1979, only to see their wishes thwarted by a Westminster parliament; an unpopular poll tax had been inflicted on the country against the will of the people; now, with another election looming, there was every possibility the Scots would be sidelined yet again.
Alex Salmond sensed an opportunity. Why not, he suggested, stage a national debate — somewhere impressive, with a big audience. What about the Usher Hall? He raised the idea with me at a reception in Edinburgh. As editor of The Scotsman in those days — not a newspaper noted for its support of the SNP — I thought it sounded promising, always provided we could get a balanced platform. Michael Forsyth, for the Tories, was up for it, Malcolm Bruce, a Liberal Democrat, agreed. Only Donald Dewar was reluctant — it did not sound the kind of thing he would relish.
In the end, Dewar was persuaded to join in, and the hall rapidly sold out. With Kirsty Wark in the chair, it developed into a full-throated hustings, with a raucous audience booing and applauding in the style of a Victorian music hall. The upper rows were packed with SNP supporters, who let their feelings be known at every opportunity. Salmond was in his element, playing, literally, to the gallery, setting out the case for independence in old-style rhetoric. Forsyth gave as good as he got, Bruce was eloquent, but Dewar was woeful — you could see he hated the whole thing. It had become the Alex Salmond Show.
A couple of weeks later, The Scotsman ran a new opinion poll. For the first time, support for independence had climbed to 50 per cent. A furious Tory lady confronted me that evening with a copy of the paper in her hand. “Do you realise the damage you’ve done to Scotland?” she demanded. The game was on.
In the end, while the SNP increased its share of the votes, there was no breakthrough for the party in the April election of 1992. The Tories won again, and Jim Sillars, a defeated candidate, uttered his bitter description of the Scots as “90-minute patriots”.
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Salmond, however, had demonstrated how populism could work. From then on, the SNP was to develop into one of the most formidable campaigning machines Scotland had seen — its placards, saltires and baying supporters out in force on street corners almost every weekend. Meeting Salmond a few weeks later, he grabbed my elbow. “That was a decent idea of mine, don’t you think?” he said. It taught me something else about his abilities as a politician — he could get along with his critics when he needed to, and he knew a lot about them.
I would see him working the crowd at some business gathering, button-holing a company chairman and chiding him on his latest set of figures, or reminding a chief executive that he had promised him lunch one day. He lost no opportunity, whenever we met, to remind me that my mother had been best friends with the veteran nationalist, Winnie Ewing, and acted as the SNP’s party agent in Orkney. “What would your mum have to say about that?” he would say, pointing to some critical headline in that day’s paper.
None of that would prevent him sharing a glass or three a few days later. Unlike his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, who shunned a hostile media, Salmond loved the challenge of teasing the opposition. Bumping into him and his advisers one evening in the lounge car of the overnight sleeper from London Euston, I was immediately invited to join him. It turned into a marathon session of downed Glenmorangie whiskies. Sadly, I remember little of the conversation, except it was laced with laughter, and ended around 2am. Next day, one of his advisers rang me: “Please don’t do that again,” he said. “Alex was not at his best this morning.”
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Fast forward to the Holyrood election of 2007, where the SNP won by a single seat. Salmond is holding court in the parliament chamber, surrounded by journalists. He knows he cannot command a majority, because none of the opposition parties will do a deal. Far from being deterred, he describes the prospect of minority government as “exciting” and he holds an impromptu seminar on the meaning of “confidence and supply”, whereby the government seeks support on each issue as it comes up.
Abolishing council tax, wiping out student debt, ending business rates for small companies — all would be achieved, he promised, through the power of persuasion. He was not without self-confidence: “There are advantages in minority government because it clarifies our purpose,” he claimed. “Every single vote is a challenge and the parliament must be light on its feet.”
Four years later, he won what the “father” of the Scottish parliament, Dewar, had once said was impossible: the SNP was in power with an overall majority and a referendum on independence had climbed to the top of the agenda. As Sturgeon said at the weekend: “Alex modernised the SNP and led us into government for the first time … paving the way for the 2014 referendum which took Scotland to the brink of independence.”
That relationship, as we know, foundered in the aftermath of the allegations of sexual misconduct made against Salmond, and his subsequent trial on 14 counts of sexual assault and attempted rape. I was there for every session in that crowded courtroom, made more dramatic because it took place as Covid-19 was spreading through the country, and every cough was a signal for alarm.
Each day, as allegation followed lurid allegation, he would make his way out of the court, through the waiting crowd of journalists. Even then, he could not resist a wave, a shake of the hand, a cheery greeting to some reporter he knew. “Has he no shame?” said one journalist. “No, only chutzpah,” said another. As his defence counsel put it, he should have been “a better man”, and history will have to judge him, warts and all.
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What is not in doubt is that Alex Salmond will be remembered as one of the most influential politicians Scotland has known. By persuading nearly half the voting population to believe that independence was not only workable but achievable, he changed the character of his country for ever.
