by Ian Hamilton
Lifetimes change people, but they have never changed my love for my country nor my pride in what we did so long ago. I am now an old man but I am immensely proud that the young man who resolved to go to Westminster was me. Bill Craig, Johnny Josselyn and Gavin Vernon are dead. Only Kay, Alan and I remain, three old strangers to one another for we met for a short time and for one purpose alone, and never met again. Did we achieve our purpose to awaken our country? For a short time we did, but old habits persisted. In 1955 the majority of the total electorate voted Tory. They voted for the strongest unionist party of all. Yet today that party is one of the tiny minorities pressing for more powers for the Holyrood settlement. In 1950 no one would have believed that such a change was possible. We didn’t bring about that change. It was done by the slow movement of history. History is on the side of the small nations. Look about you and you will see that truth.
We four were no part of the devolutionary settlement. We are not even a footnote to history although some people say we are. What we truly were was a representative group of our own generation. That generation included Winnie Ewing, a university colleague and personal friend, and many others. We belong to a generation that saw the need for change and who set about making it. We were only 60 years before our time. All of us in our different ways played our small parts but we were the products of history, not its creator.
Yet I ask you to remember us with some kindness. The Deans of Westminster have long since done so. At times I correspond with them on affectionate terms. There are so many items worthy of memory within the great Abbey Church of Westminster that they of all people can understand why we called on them at dead of night. I don’t keep copies of my own books, but in the back flap of my wife’s volume from which I typed up these pages I see several letters from several Deans, all in affectionate terms. In 2007 a film was made of this book. We were permitted to night-shoot in the Abbey. The filming did not take long, and for the greater part of two nights my wife and I were left alone in its magnificence. It was brightly lit for filming with two great helium-filled airships high in the roof, casting millions of candle-power on the floor 100 feet below. However, no amount of lighting could evoke a memory of these four young people of long ago or of me, who was one of them. It has all gone. I am a different person. I cannot enter into that young man’s mind and body. Even this book evokes no memories, except the labour of writing it. It is better so. The filming occasion was great enough without memories. Thank you, John Hall, Dean of Westminster. Thank you to you and your Chapter.
I began this last chapter of my book by saying I had never seen the Stone again. It had been my intention to wait until Scotland achieved independence before paying it a visit. We are so nearly there that it makes no odds. An occasion is coming up in 2008 when I may break my long abstinence. I have mentioned that my book has been made into a film. Although it is no part of my story, the film may give closure and bring me back full circle to my youth nearly 60 years ago. On the evening of its Edinburgh premiere Alex Salmond and the Scottish Government are to give a reception in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle. It is a long way from a two-up two-down semi in a Paisley suburb to the Great Hall of my country’s greatest castle. It has taken me all my life. If invited, and I am told I will be, I shall go. If my country’s First Minister takes my arm and leads me through to the Crown Room to see the Stone I shall go with him. I have never sought an honour, but I can think of none greater.
As for my long life, breaking into a holy place is not good preparation for entry into the most conservative of professions, but I survived. We three survivors of the original four are now very old. This exercise in looking back is not typical of me, nor so far as I know of them. Life is for living and even at my great age I prefer a motorbike to a keyboard.
I repeat myself as old men do. Remember us with some kindness. What we did we did for Scotland and what we do for Scotland we do for all the world.
When on 25 March 1707 James Ogilvie, Earl of Seafield, Chancellor of Scotland, signed the Act of Union, ending Scotland’s ancient independence, and merging the two parliaments of Scotland and England into the United Kingdom Parliament, he threw down the quill with these words: ‘Now there’s the end of an auld sang.’
It may be, it just may be, that on Christmas Day 1950 four young people wrote a new verse to that old song. Whatever we did, the song is still being sung.
