though I suppose it is an honest one, unlike all the other "tributes" flowing in from his political opponents who couldn't stand the man, hated his politics, and probably, many of them, hated Scotland. All those honeyed words laced with the deepest hypocrisy and unbegrudged schadenfreude. .
I'm going through the obituaries and comments atm: Nearly all by opponents and establishment enemies who either smeared him when alive or indeed who would have had him in prison if it were not for the inconvenience of an impartial jury: the kind that the very same people now want rid off.
Its easy to forget the UK establishment media had him variously over the years as a Hitler, Stalin, Polpot, Ghadaffi...etc: the same thing they later did to Corbyn had been practiced on Alex: then when that failed, as with Assange, conspired with enemies within the SNP to use the dirtiest trick in the playbook: an invented sex crime as a weapon.
On other matters I'll take one BBC comment as typical:
"A witty and brilliant debater, he did not always show the best judgement. As Nato planes bombed Serbia in retaliation for its attacks on Kosovo, he opposed the conflict because it was not authorised by a United Nations Security Council resolution.
Salmond described the Nato action as "an act of dubious legality, but, above all, one of unpardonable folly" and was heavily criticised for his comments. "
Salmond was absolutely correct both concerning it's criminality under International law and as time has shown the folly indeed was unpardonable. The whole business apart from the destruction itself left a legacy of depleted uranium poisoning affecting the children of the region, further long term destabilization and (as always secretly intentended) Bosnia becoming effectively a NATO run protectorate as part of the Wolfowitz doctrine of unipolar US power & NATO expansion. This of course has lead us to the present Russian Ukraine war and even more death. It also weakened the case for International law ever being a reality leaving it as an occasional convenient pretence. But on this "...he did not always show the best judgement." claims the BBC as though this were self-evident when in fact its an astonishing reversal of the truth. It certainly tells us more about our present deluded political establishment and media than it does about Salmond who took a principled stand against an International cabal of scheming warmongering criminals...in contrast to, say, Boris whose was sent as their wardog poodle to Ukraine to make sure the conflict continued. Some might say it was Salmonds finest moment: it was certainly one of them.
I saw him speak a number of times: he was an outstanding orator and was lucky enough to met him a few times on byelection campaigns and the like. In my view Salmonds worst mistake: his real "error of judgement" was resigning after the referendum to take responsibility for what he saw as his failure: I rather think it was us who failed him and I'm not alone in that.
Thanks Ken, very worthwhile posting. I must admit that I didn't always take to Salmond, a bit like with George Galloway - could be blowhards. I particularly didn't like Salmond's close association with Trump and that golf course in Aberdeenshire, that was a misjudgement in my understanding by Salmond- pretty nearly none of the promises made by Trump came to pass, predictably, and Salmond should have known that.
So in your putting the record strait here, Ken, that's much appreciated. Following the failed referendum, he become something of an outlier in Scottish politics, whether that was the success of the "elite" and the press in demonising the man, or whether there was some personal failure I don't know. His Alba Party didn't do very well, perhaps the Scots just perceived him as yesterday's man and no longer relevant?
Your remark about the BBC claiming he's "not showing the best judgement" when with the benefit of hindsight he's been shown to be prescient and moral, staggering lack of self-awareness in the BBC. And as you say, a precursor to the same attitude that brought the Ukraine war.
Before Alex Salmond, Scottish Independence was an impossible dream, a romantic aspiration, outside the realm of practical politics. After Alex Salmond, it is the dominant question in Scottish politics and by far the biggest threat to the UK state.
I would argue that, with every poll for a decade showing overwhelming support for Independence among the under 30s and support for the UK only in a majority in the over 55s, Alex made Independence inevitable.
In Scotland’s national story, he deserves a place alongside William Wallace and Robert Bruce. (In my last conversation with Alex, about two weeks ago, he told me that new historical research made it pretty certain that Robert the Bruce was born in England. I told him that I knew that – in the family castle near Chelmsford, Essex, to be precise – and I had in fact published it about twenty years ago.)
I am really sad he has left us. It leaves a hero-sized hole in my consciousness. Very shortly after he retired as First Minister and Nicola Sturgeon replaced him, I said in reply to a comment on this blog that while I was not sure about Nicola, I would walk through fire for Alex.
In the end I did have to walk through fire, being imprisoned for publishing too much of the truth about the plot to destroy Alex and his reputation. Afterwards Alex very simply said “You had my back. I will always have yours.” We never mentioned it again; we both understood.
I am not going to give a history of Alex’s political career. There are plenty of others to do that. But I do want to recall that Alex was the only leading British politician to oppose the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 – on the day that Tony Blair called on NATO to intensify the bombing.
Alex vigorously opposed the invasion of Iraq and led campaigns to have Tony Blair impeached by parliament after being proven to have lied over Iraqi WMD, and also campaigned for charges against Bush and Blair at the International Criminal Court. He opposed the devastating bombing of Libya that plunged that country into a chaos from which it has never recovered.
His penultimate tweet referenced Starmer as following in Blair’s warmongering footsteps:
Alex led an extremely tight and efficient SNP government of Scotland from 2007–2014 which had a long list of social accomplishments to be proud of and established Scotland as a more left-wing polity than England, with no tuition fees, free social care for the elderly, better childcare, free NHS prescriptions etc.
His weakness was that he was over-trustful and did not see the British security services coming. I know, because he told me, that Alex regretted allowing Angus Robertson to force through an amendment to SNP party policy in favour of Scotland remaining in NATO. Ironically, Alex did so because he thought it would pre-empt and buy off the US and UK security services, when of course they were actually behind it.
I do not pretend I had more than a nodding acquaintance with Alex before the plot to destroy him came to fruition. When he summoned me to meet him urgently on a cold, damp Edinburgh night I was delighted to go to see my hero. What he told me dropped my jaw.
But what stays with me most about that evening, in a bedroom of the George Hotel in Edinburgh, is that what he told me made it absolutely obvious that the plot against him was initiated in and directed from Nicola Sturgeon’s office. He was plainly in huge emotional pain over this.
He was also focused on Liz Lloyd, whom he believed to be an MI5 agent. He said that Lloyd had no connection to Scottish Independence and had initially been placed inside the SNP as an intern to an MP (or MSP, I forget) by a British Government graduate training scheme.
If you want to revisit today the conspiracy against Alex Salmond, I do recommend you read my affidavits in my own contempt of court hearing (as redacted for publication by the Crown Office).
The state deemed these affidavits so dangerous that Scotland’s corrupt judiciary quite literally ruled that they do not exist at all. They are “so evidently untrue as not to require cross-examination”. They were not accepted as evidence in my own case for which they were my evidence, which is truly remarkable. I was jailed with my evidence not even considered, or tested, as “self-evidently untrue”.
I swear to you and to the entire world, on my life and on every thing that I love or that is holy, that every single word is true. There has never been any evidence that anything in them is untrue. Everything we have learnt about the SNP in the last three years supports the truth of my story. Nothing has contradicted it.
In that last conversation with me, Alex was excited about recent council by-election results for his new party, Alba. It has been obtaining about six per cent, which would be enough to get representation in the Scottish parliament with its proportional system. More importantly, most SNP voters were now giving second preferences to Alba rather than the Greens, which he felt was an important shift.
Alex was very happy that Alba was more openly radical than the SNP. Anti-NATO and anti-monarchy, it represents a more radical route to Scottish Independence.
For a former First Minister to be building up a tiny party from scratch and getting 6% of the vote may be portrayed by some as humiliating. But Alex was really excited and upbeat about it; he relished the challenge and was thinking long term. There were days in his young life when 6% would have been a decent result for the SNP. He was simply bubbling with enthusiasm.
I should also recall the occasion when he hosted Peter Oborne, David Davis and me to dinner at a Mayfair restaurant and we got through three bottles of champagne before we even started to order. Alex was enormously good company and really enjoyed the finer things in life.
Heaven just got more fun. At least Alex will never have to worry about seeing his perjured accusers there.
I remember people sneering that Salmond has passed by on the other side over the Murray persecution. Now it looks like neither of them saw fit to mention it. Good for them.The last working-class hero in England.
Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ? ? ? - 4 November 2021
on October 12, 2024, 6:22 pm