A Difference of Opinion
My Political Journey
Jims insights span one of the most important and transformative periods of Scotlands history and he is right to say that idealism and passion are not enough alone to change the world. I hope others of my generation will look to his vast experience and timely lessons explored here and take on the mantle of socialism for the coming decades
Cat Boyd, co-founder, Radical Independence Campaign
Jim Sillars hails from Burns country and is the living embodiment of the bards man of independent mind. Required reading for anyone who wants to understand the strange death of Labour in Scotland and the demise of Alex Salmond
Michael Forsyth, Secretary of State for Scotland 199597
From the Attlee landslide in 1945 to Harold Wilsons devolution woes, from SNP MP on the inside to outside strategic critic, his take on independence remains original and unique. This memoir straddles some momentous events which are told with real insight from a man with a ringside seat
Bernard Ponsonby, Special Correspondent, STV
Jim Sillars is the grit in the oyster of complacency there is a challenging thought on almost every page for every thinking person
Nigel Griffiths, Deputy Leader
of the House of Commons 200507 and
MP for Edinburgh South 19872010
First published in 2021 by
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10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
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Copyright Jim Sillars 2021
The moral right of Jim Sillars to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 9781788853033
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, Elcograf, S.p.A.
To my late brother Robert
and my sister JeanContents
Acknowledgements
That I have survived the slings and arrows that fill the political air I have lived in for sixty years to reach my present age I owe to the care and support given to me by my son, Matt Sillars, my daughter, Julie Martin, and my stepdaughters, Petra Reid and Zoe MacDonald. All four experienced turbulence in their lives through my involvement and that of Margo MacDonald in the storms of politics. I owe all of them a debt of gratitude.
That I am able to understand the world of today, which now seems a historical time away from the one I was born into in 1937, is, in good part, due to my ten grandchildren Stephen, Roseanne, Matthew, Lena, Rebecca, Josephine, Beth, Peter, John and Adam. Our close relationships, our discussions and arguments have contributed to the continuing evolution of my take on the world, as reflected in the later parts of this book. The births of the first two took Margo and me into a world outside of politics and the others who followed made that just family part of our lives even more enjoyable.
Alex Neil MSP and Professor Joe Farrell have gone through the mill with me on a number of occasions and I have been fortunate to have had their company on my political journey. No one has ever had better friends. To them must be added Iain Lawson and Gil Paterson MSP whose support in the campaigns I have been part of, as recorded in these pages, was immense.
There is too a younger generation who have ensured that I was not put out to grass too early and have kept me and my mind active. They are Peter Kearney, Calum Miller, Jim Eadie, Tom Walker and Colin Fox.
My thanks are due to Carole McCallum, archivist at Glasgow Caledonian University, for the access she gave me to the records of the STUC at the time I was an official there. The National Library of Scotland staff were, as ever, exceptionally helpful.
I also wish to record sincere, not just formal, thanks to Hugh Andrew and Tom Johnstone of Birlinn and the staff of the company. Their courtesy and friendliness have been greatly appreciated.
I must record a special thanks to my copy-editor Patricia Marshall and Birlinns managing editor, Andrew Simmons. It has been a salutary and beneficial lesson for this writer to have my drafts pass through their hands. Their criticisms, suggestions and frankness have, I hope, made this book more interesting and informative for the reader than would otherwise have been the case.
Foreword
This book comes due to pressure on me from Professor Joe Farrell. He argued that there are events in my political life, lessons learned from them, some of the thinking I have done and expressed, that will not only be of interest to those involved or simply interested in politics but useful to the younger generation now taking its rightful place in the forefront of public life. I have been reluctant to comply with Joes urgings, not from any false sense of modesty. In elected office or out of it, I have been influential in politics especially on the Left. The reluctance comes because I have always been able to keep my private life private. I intend keeping it that way. This is not an autobiography. I bring in personal matters only where circumstances or people have been important in shaping or influencing me politically. During an interview with a journalist who thought he was entitled to probe when I was an MP, I told him that, although the public paid me, they didnt own me. It is a principle I recommend to todays politicians.
I did not have a good formal education this was partly my own fault and partly due to the system and attitudes in place in my school days. I have sought to make up for that by self-educating through reading, with an emphasis on history, geography, political biographies, memoirs, philosophy, economics and articles by numerous thinkers and opinion formers across a wide spectrum. I have not restricted myself only to socialist literature, although that has had a great influence on me. I think I am one of the last few survivors of a working-class political culture that produced its own leaders.
I have also learned a great deal from working in other countries and with people of other cultures. My two years studying law at Edinburgh University, when I was no longer an MP, was the best educational experience of my life and, while I did not complete the course, it gave my mind a cutting edge and stimulated my interest in spheres of knowledge into which I would not otherwise have ventured.
If democracy is to be genuine, it must have not just diversity but a multiplicity of ideas that generate dispute and fire up debate. Explicit to that is the recognition that the other side has legitimacy and that understanding where that legitimacy comes from can only be obtained from reading, talking to and discussing with those on that other side. People who engage in politics and seek to shape public policy should make themselves study the other point of view and so recognise that no ideology or single set of opinions can make the claim to absolute truth and certainty.
Bertrand Russell has had the greatest influence on me. From reading him, I have developed a personal guide to treat every ism, including my own socialism, with scepticism. I first made public reference to this principle in a debate at Glasgow University in 1976. It was immediately denounced by a young student as cynicism. It is not. It is a bar to dogma a fault of all ideologues. And, if the young treat every ism with scepticism, as essential to the rigorous interrogation of ideas and policies that can make or mar the lives of people, they will be better equipped to address the issues they will face.
