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“I said to Margo: ‘I’m done. I can’t believe this is happening’. It was the worst performance I have ever seen: absolute mediocrity. For mediocrity to survive it must kill talent. That is why there was an orchestrated attack on Kate Forbes and Joanna Cherry. Mediocrity has a vested interest in not having talent. That candidate is now a minister in the Scottish Government.”
My meeting with Mr Sillars takes place as my support for independence hangs on a gossamer thread. Why would anyone want to be associated with a movement led by a political party so full of impostors and charlatans that it has redefined our concept of what failure looks like?
Still, an hour or two in the company of the greatness of this party that memorably took Gofan to the SNP in 1988 rekindles hope. It is also a rebuke to those who, alarmed by the stumbling and mumbling of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, believe that the role of older people in politics should be reduced. At 86, Jim Sillars is five years older than the American President and yet his powers of recall, analysis and clarity are typical of a man still in his prime.
We are discussing the Hate Crime Act. He refrains from apportioning blame or targeting individuals for the most failed piece of legislation in the history of British politics. Instead, he considers how it could have been improved.
“There is no clear definition of Hate in the Act,” he said. “They use the word ‘threat’. Well, that is actually common law where fear and terror are also included. The other words they use are: ‘abusive’ and ‘offensive’ but that doesn’t cut the mustard either.
“I’m in favor of independence but I come from the legislation school in Westminster where we did it word by word and line by line. I was taught by Willie Ross (Secretary of State for Scotland in Harold Wilson’s first Labor Government) who, according to a clerk in the House of Commons, was ‘a master of detailed legislation’. If you’re impeding free speech, you’d better have the highest bar possible. They are building this Act on vague words.”
Other men of old money may spend their mornings arranging checks or, like TS Eliot’s J Alfred Prufrock, measuring their lives with coffee spoons. Mr Sillars has been drafting policy. He gives me his version of what Hate should mean: “An expression of dislike of such intensity as to be well outside the broad bounds of normal critical thought.”
“Yeah, it’s sharp, Jim,” I say, “but it’s still subjective.”
We discuss how this car accident happened. “Some good people sincerely believe it’s just a bad deed with good intentions, but I don’t accept that. I think it is completely intentional that they want us to zip our mouths and eventually zip our minds so that we will never say anything they don’t approve of. It has to be abolished.”
He laments the influence that the Scottish Greens have come to have on the SNP and believes that they have exacerbated the amateurism that has settled across the Scottish Government like a blight.
“The Greens have done massive damage to the SNP,” he said. “I think Patrick Harvie lives in a make-believe world of his own making, while Lorna Slater is wired to the moon. Yet these two and the party they represent drive Government policy.
“It’s about political judgment, or the lack of it. Nicola Sturgeon fell short of one for a majority, yet if she had asked people with some experience she would have been told not to worry. You have four opposition parties. The only thing you need to worry about is getting your budget through because after that you have huge operational power. It is a matter of bargaining with all four parties.
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“You’ll get at least one of them to make sure the budget goes through. Certainly, there will be a few measures where you may have to make a deal with Labor – or even with the Greens – but these are peripheral things. You don’t need to put yourself in someone else’s back pocket like the SNP have done with the Greens.”
He asks me why I have lost the faith. “This is the way Humza and his seniors have turned on their own people,” I reply, “making them out to be hateful knuckle-draggers. They have killed independence for at least another generation and sickened many others like me.”
He understands but says there is a way out of this. “If we want to gain independence, we must take a significant chunk of Unionist support with us. At the moment, Unionists who look at the current Scottish Government say to me ‘If that’s what you mean by independence I don’t buy it’. Many people have told me that they support independence ‘but not if that runs’.
“I think the SNP has lost its credibility as the leader of the national movement. But if the membership cannot resolve them then the electorate will need to do so. This lot has never experienced adversity. And I wonder if they have the courage to come out fighting after a heavy defeat.”
How does it happen that within ten years the SNP has gone from being proud of civility and generosity of spirit to being an organization that fosters division and organizes intimidation campaigns against some of its most capable people? During the Hate Crime consultation they deliberately excluded great thinkers and policy makers in favor of government funded activists: like hosting the World Cup without Brazil and Germany.
He cites changes to the constitution of the SNP. “I joined the SNP in 1980 when it was undoubtedly the most democratic party in the UK and probably in Europe. The senior people of the party had to be elected and they were held accountable. We had an executive which included senior officers. We had to go to the National Council twice a year with written reports on what we had done.
“However, John Swinney started a process that led to the current system where the leadership group has absolute power. The leader now personally appoints the Chairman of the National Executive Committee which is now full of third party organisations. Nicola has created a one person party. This is supported by the way they encourage the selection of candidates for the constituency and the list. This is where the mediocrity begins.”
He does not entirely agree with me that many in the current professional wing of the SNP are less interested in independence than maintaining incomes and lifestyles that would have been far beyond them in the real world. “What I will say is that they seem to be unaware that their inability to think deeply about policy and the mistakes they have made in government positions are extremely damaging to the mason independence they claim to stick to it. They don’t seem to realize the damage they are doing to the independence movement.”
I venture to ask what Margo would have made of her. For a moment, a film of emotion flashes across his eyes. There is a picture of them together as a couple sitting behind us. This week marks ten years since her death.
“I think broadsides would be fired out of this house,” he said. “I have met three outstanding intellects across the broad spectrum of public life in Scotland and the UK: Enoch Powell was one. Leaving aside his views on race, he was an intellectual Rolls Royce.
“The others were Jimmy Reid and Margo MacDonald. Jimmy had an extraordinary mind and so did Margo. They were in a different dimension to everyone else. Under this roof we were equal, but she had an intelligence that was much better.”
IN THE HERALD ON MONDAY: INDEPENDENCE CAN BE SAVED BUT ONLY BY REMOVING THE SNP’S INFLUENCE ON THE LIFE MOVEMENT
