UK Edition
Gordon Wilson, SNP leader during the turbulent 1980s – obituary
Gordon Wilson, who has died aged 79, was a shrewd tactician who, during 11 years as leader of the SNP, turned it from a party beset by feuding into a professional movement equipped to rally support for independence when Scotland next became disillusioned with both major parties.
He became leader in 1979 following the abortive devolution referendum and the SNP’s rout as Margaret Thatcher came to power, and handed over to Alex Salmond in 1990 amid signs of revival.
Calm, precise, courteous, utterly straight, cautious in discussion but passionate for independence, Wilson led the SNP with single-mindedness: a quality needed in a party whose problems, in Fergus Ewing’s memorable words, began the day it recruited its second member. He also coined the slogan “It’s Scotland’s Oil”, with which the party broke through electorally in 1974.
Wilson saw devolution and involvement with Europe as distractions from the struggle for independence, though he did at times acquiesce in each for tactical reasons. Nor did he hesitate latterly to criticise Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon; John Swinney, his other successor as leader, was a family friend. In her tribute to Wilson, Scotland’s First Minister pointedly stated: “Even – perhaps especially – on those occasions when his views on tactics differed from mine, I always highly valued and appreciated his advice.”
The son of a butcher’s van driver, Robert Gordon Wilson was born in Glasgow on April 16 1938. After his parents bought a boarding house on the Isle of Man, he attended Douglas High School before returning to Scotland to take a Law degree at Edinburgh University and an LLD at Dundee. Qualifying as a solicitor, he worked for T F Reid in Paisley from 1963 until his election to Parliament.
Joining the then tiny SNP as a student, he became involved with the pirate Radio Free Scotland, which between 1956 and 1965 intermittently broke into BBC Scotland at the end of transmissions, becoming its director of programmes. The station sometimes broadcast from Wilson’s Edinburgh flat as it moved from tenement to tenement to escape detector vans, with occasional tip-offs from sympathetic police officers. The “pirates” learnt how to move heavy transmission equipment under their coats from the activists who had abstracted the Stone of Scone from Westminster Abbey.
Wilson became the SNP’s national secretary in 1964. His seven years running the party saw Winnie Ewing win a by-election at Hamilton to become the SNP’s first MP since the war, and Donald Stewart become in 1970 the party’s first victor (at the Western Isles) at a general election.
Party vice-chairman when the Labour ex-minister George Thomson resigned his seat at Dundee East on becoming a European commissioner, Wilson was chosen to fight the March 1973 by-election against Labour’s George Machin, an engineering shop steward from Sheffield. While Machin took the seat, Wilson pushed the Conservatives into third place and cut Labour’s majority to 1,141.
That autumn Wilson was elected vice chairman of the SNP’s Oil Campaign Committee. “It’s Scotland’s Oil” had barely been printed on T-shirts when Edward Heath called the snap February 1974 election. Labour came out of it with a minority government – and the SNP with seven MPs, including Wilson, who defeated Machin by 2,966 votes. In his maiden speech, he argued that North Sea revenues would be “vast” and should be reinvested in Scottish industry.
With a second election inevitable, Labour dropped its opposition to Scottish devolution. Harold Wilson secured a working majority that October, but the SNP gained four more seats, Wilson increasing his majority to 6,983.
Wilson became deputy leader of the SNP’s parliamentary group, and its spokesman on oil and energy – and from 1976 joint devolution spokesman. The party’s contingent at Westminster gained a reputation for a whisky-fuelled social life, but Wilson’s main preoccupations were trying to stiffen Labour’s devolution legislation and fending off interference from Margo MacDonald, his successor as SNP vice-chairman, back in Scotland.
The outcome of the referendum early in 1979 – a majority for devolution but not enough to pass the threshold inserted by Unionist Labour backbenchers – was toxic. The SNP demanded that James Callaghan’s government, which had lost its majority, proceed with a Scottish Assembly, and when it refused they tabled a motion of no confidence.
The Conservatives took it over and, with Callaghan warning Wilson and his colleagues that they were “turkeys voting for an early Christmas”, it was carried by one vote.
The election triggered by the no-confidence vote brought Mrs Thatcher to power, and almost wiped out the SNP: only Donald Stewart and Wilson, fighting off a potent Labour challenge from Jimmy Reid, the former shipyard workers’ leader who had switched from the Communist Party, survived. His retention of his seat kept the party alive until it could fight back.
The SNP’s 1979 conference overwhelmingly elected Wilson as party leader. Amid the trauma of defeat several ginger groups formed, notably the 79 Group, led by Jim Sillars and Margo MacDonald, which embraced socialism and civil disobedience. At the party’s 1982 conference Wilson effectively proscribed “parties within the party”; the 79 Group was disbanded and the young Salmond briefly expelled.
Wilson comfortably held his seat at the 1983 election, but the SNP registered no gains. As Mrs Thatcher became more unpopular and the Scottish Tories lost ground, he made the SNP more pro-European and its commitment to independence more gradualist. This had yet to pay off when the 1987 election was called; the SNP gained three MPs, including Salmond, but lost two, Wilson being defeated by Labour’s John McAllion.
He continued as leader, and the SNP’s fortunes began to revive; in 1988 Sillars sensationally won Govan from Labour at a by-election. The party gained a new cause in the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland a year ahead of England; Wilson advocated non-payment, as a way of seizing the initiative from a divided Labour Party. He also kept the SNP out of the multi-party Constitutional Convention that produced the blueprint for eventual devolution – to the irritation of many in the party – seeing it as a Labour-led ploy to sideline independence as an option.
Standing down as leader in 1990, Wilson hoped that Margaret Ewing would succeed him, but the party opted for Salmond. He returned to legal practice in his adopted home city of Dundee, continuing as SNP vice-president until 1997. For the 1999 Euro-elections the SNP put him fourth on its list of candidates, but only the top two were elected.
Wilson founded the think tank Options for Scotland with Sillars, and in 2012 became its director. By then the SNP was in power at Holyrood, and the Independence referendum for which he had striven was in prospect. In the run-up to the vote in September 2014, Wilson accused the “Yes” campaign of lacking passion, urging it to attack the “cancer” of Scotland being held back by London and the South East of England.
The referendum having been lost by a narrower margin than he had predicted, Wilson turned his attention to Brexit. Recently he declared it a “waste of time” for Nicola Sturgeon to press for a second vote on independence while the process of Brexit was under way.
An active churchman and a social liberal in his youth, Wilson at the turn of the century was a member of the Church of Scotland’s Church and Nation committee. He moved on to the Free Church of Scotland, and in 2010 founded with the Rev David Robertson a Centre for Public Christianity, dedicated to the revival of the faith. In this capacity he cautioned the SNP government against accepting gay marriage.
Wilson was Rector of Dundee University from 1983 to 1986. His books include SNP: The Turbulent Years (1990); Pirates of the Air: The Story of Radio Free Scotland (2011) and Scotland: The Battle for Independence (2014).
Gordon Wilson married Edith Hassall in 1965. She survives him with their two daughters.
Gordon Wilson, born April 16 1938, died June 25 2017