 | 'Although he has become something of a political legend, Donald would have abhorred any attempt to turn him into some kind of secular saint. He would have been horrified at a Diana-style out-pouring of synthetic grief at his untimely death.' Iain MacWhirter in the Sunday Herald 15 th October 2000. |  |
The locals looked around bemused at the exhaustive coverage on the tea-time news of the death of this - to them - obscure political figure. Who on earth was he? Why all these lavish tributes to someone they barely recognised? The BBC was right, of course, to give Donald Dewar the treatment he deserved as one of the most important figures in contemporary British politics. But the cool reception from those locals shows the degree to which Donald Dewar really has changed the landscape of British politics. For the Roebuck reg ulars, it really was news from another country. And not surprisingly, after about 10 minutes, they switched it off.
Next day, as I drove back to Scotland, the papers on the motorway news-stands were paying modest tribute to a modest politician of little interest to England. The front pages had other things on their minds. However, as soon as I left the M6 the front pages in the Scottish editions were bordered in black as Dewar's death was given full head-of-state treatment. It was national mourning, not just the passing of a politician. Dewar was the first truly Scottish political leader in modern times and his death was a truly Scottish event. He would never have described himself as a nationalist, and the phrase "father of the nation", which has entered Scotland's political vocabulary, was always meant as a joke. Who could imagine anyone less like Nelson Mandela? Yet almost in spite of himself, Dewar became if not the father, at least the midwife to a new political nation.
Few politicians ever make their mark on history in such an emphatic way. It was a tragic irony that the First Minister should have become the first member of the Scottish parliament to die. But as his close friend Lord Gordon of Strathblane pointed out, in one sense he died at exactly the right moment: just when he had achieved his lifetime ambition, fulfilled his historic purpose. How much worse, said the founder of Radio Clyde, if Dewar had lived another 18 years and not seen the Scottish parliament come into being.
I'm not sure Donald would have seen this choice as entirely fair; no doubt he would have preferred a Scottish parliament and longevity. But at least he did not live to see his reputation tarnished by the relentless compromises of office. Enoch Powell said all political careers end in tears. Donald Dewar's was the exception: he was a man who campaigned all his life for a Scottish parliament, delivered it, and then departed.
Children of the future will be spared the details of the parliament building scandal, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, or any of the many crises and mishaps of devolution's infancy. Dewar will simply be the politician who won back Scotland's parliament - for good or ill - after 300 years. They will hear about how he embodied those sentiments on the parliament's mace: wisdom, justice, compassion, integrity. For once, here was a politician whose feet were not made of clay, who had no secrets in the closet (save a weakness for Jaffa Cakes). He seemed totally free of the vanity of power.
Although he has become something of a political legend, Donald would have abhorred any attempt to turn him into some kind of secular saint. He would have been horrified at a Diana-style out-pouring of synthetic grief at his untimely death.
As those who knew him politically will admit, Donald Dewar was not above the occasional act of political ruthlessness. But whether he'd have liked it or not, he has become the first political icon of the new Scotland. I confidently predict he will find himself immortalised in bronze, outside the Holyrood building, walking (as he did on the state opening) down the Mound steps with his hands thrust in his pockets - oblivious to protocol.
And why not? Every country needs its heroes. And when all the reminiscences and anecdotes are over, Dewar will emerge as the most important political figure in Scotland in the 20th century, even though he hung on into the 21st. He will perhaps be compared with Keir Hardie, who committed Labour to Scottish home rule more than a cen tury ago. That may seem an inflated claim; but give it a couple of decades and it's the kind of thing graduate students will be writing in their theses. The late John Smith, Dewar's contemporary and colleague, was seen as the senior partner in their friendship. But while Smith always promised great things, Donald delivered. The tragedy, of course, is they both died, prematurely, at the height of their powers. Had their hearts been stronger, we might - who knows - have seen John Smith as UK Prime Min ister and Donald Dewar as First Minister. That really would have been a Caledonian double whammy.
Dewar was a 20th century politician. His thinking was fashioned by the politics of the industrial working class and by the morality of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. No great churchgoer, he showed all the symptoms of Presbyterianism, from his disregard for personal appearance to his concern for the disadvantaged. Even his speaking style owed something to the pulpit. His mission was to restore Scottish democracy, but not just for the sake of it. He always regarded the Scottish parliament as a means to an end: social justice and the eradication of poverty. And like all Presbyterians, he worked hard - too hard - at his calling.
For most of his life, the Scottish Labour Party was, if not actually opposed to home rule, at least highly ambivalent about it. Only in 1974, after the "Dalintober St Declaration", did the party begin to rediscover its roots and Keir Hardie's original mission statement: to restore Scotland's parliament. For many in the party, devolution was a means of heading off Scottish nationalism, which had become a real political force in the early 1970s. Dewar didn't see it as that but nor had he any love for the Nats. Although clearly a nationalist, in love with Scottish culture and history, Dewar always regarded the Scottish National Party as the class enemy, the "Tartan Tories" who sought to confuse and divide the working class. In 1978, at Garscadden, Dewar brought to an end the first high tide of Scottish nationalism with the resounding by-election victory that restored him to parliament.
Only relatively late in life did he overcome his antipathy towards the SNP long enough to come to an accommodation with them. During the passage of the Scotland Act, he struck the deal with Alex Salmond which would deliver the resounding "Yes, Yes" result in the 1997 referendum. What brought Dewar to the negotiating table was his experience in the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Convention, which he initially dismissed as a "talking shop" but which eventually persuaded him that only by uniting the non-Tory Scottish political parties could devolution succeed. He signed the Claim of Right in 1988, promising to work tirelessly to win, for the people of Scotland, the right to determine their political destiny: which was the basis of the deal struck between Dewar and Salmond 10 years later.
The Scotland Act was Dewar's towering achievement - even though much of the hard work was down to his special adviser, Wendy Alexander. Dewar needed all his intellectual and political skill to prevent unionist ministers such as Jack Straw neutering devolution in the cabinet committee. Although the list of reserved powers is long, and the limits of Scottish sovereignty carefully circumscribed, he succeeded in delivering something that could genuinely be called a parliament for Scotland - one that exercises real sovereignty over home affairs.
Indeed, devolution has wrought little short of a constitutional revolution in Britain. The UK has been changed in a way few would have believed possible 10 years ago. We live in a multinational polity, in which Westminster is no longer sovereign and absolute, except in constitutional theory. However, Dewar never saw himself as promoting the "break-up of Britain". He remained a small "n" nationalist and a unionist - an apparent contradiction that puzzled many, not least in the Westminster Labour Party. He did not want to destroy the UK, but remake it: to strengthen the union by recognising its diversity. He always rejected the claim of his constitutional bete noir, Tam Dalyell, that devolution was simply a "slippery slope" to independence.
Rather, he felt that the only way to prevent the SNP separating Scotland from the UK was by ceding limited sovereignty to Edinburgh. Of course, starting from scratch isn't easy and the Scottish parliament has been through a difficult infancy. The Scottish press, now singing Dewar's praises, has spent much of the last year rubbishing him and the instit ution he fought to create. The new regime has made many mistakes, and the image of devolution has been damaged by a Scottish Executive that seems to lack conviction. But just as the Scottish parliament has to be separated as an institution from the politicians who happen to be in charge of it, so Donald Dewar is now a figure above pol itics. He may, in truth, have been a poor party manager, lacking decisiveness and clarity of leadership. As First Minister he was over-inclined to listen to civil servants and failed to set his administration clear, attractive and achievable goals. He had the overall vision, but when it came to the practical reality, he lost direction. But his limitations as a party leader do not diminish his achievement as a national one.
Now that the leadership of Scotland has to pass to another generation, what would he have looked for? Not, one suspects, a deal whereby a First Minister is installed by a series of back-stage arrangements. He would surely have expected his successor to stand for election, and win a mandate from his or her party to take on the role of leading the nation. Devolution is about extending democracy, not curbing it. That would surely not be the way to honour the memory of the first First Minister.
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