The SNP’s rewriting of party history is Stalinist
In an article on Reaction last month I recalled the boy-hero of the Soviet Union, Pavlik Morosov, who gained that status by denouncing his father to the authorities before being murdered by indignant neighbours or relatives. This article was provoked by consideration of the Hate Crimes Bill brought before the Scottish Parliament by the SNP justice minister. Among its clauses is one which would make Hate Speech a criminal offence even if the objectionable words were spoken only in your own home. This seemed to me – and still seems – an encouragement even to children to report their parents to the police if they have expressed hateful views; meanwhile guests are likewise being encouraged to denounce their hosts.
All this seemed to me very Soviet, very Stalinist. Police states first encourage, then recruit informers. Liberal democracies don’t, and the SNP has always presented itself as a respectable democratic party.
A few days ago, alerted by an article in The Scotsman, I called up the SNP website, and found something just as remarkable and deplorable in its account of the 2014 referendum on Independence.
“In the months leading up to the vote, the Yes campaign, spearheaded by the then deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, engaged with every community in Scotland. ”
Now this is extraordinary. It’s classic Soviet or Communist China re-writing of history. The Yes campaign was of course led – spearheaded if you prefer – by Alex Salmond, not Nicola Sturgeon. He was First Minister at the time, as he had been since 2007. Few who have been active in Scottish politics, as politicians, journalists, interested citizens, have any doubt that the rise of the SNP and its emergence as a party of government owed more to Salmond’s leadership than to anything else. But now he has been air-brushed from the party’s history, and, by extension from Scotland’s. You might as well exclude Trotsky from the history of the Russian Revolution as Salmond from the rise of the SNP and the 2014 Referendum. But of course this is what Stalin did; it is the sort of thing Stalinists do. In perverting History, they display their contempt for truth.
Why did this happen?
When this article appeared on the SNP website, allegations of sexual misconduct made against Alex Salmond had been investigated by the police and he was about to go on trial charged with a number of sexual crimes. He had become an embarrassment to the party. One understands this. But embarrassment is an insufficient reason for telling lies and distorting history.
I don’t know who writes material for the SNP website. It seems reasonable, even likely, that it receives editorial scrutiny, likely that whatever appears on the website has been approved by people in the upper echelons of the party, perhaps even by its chief executive, Peter Murrell.
Murrell is Nicola Sturgeon’s husband, but no matter how fond a husband he may be, he surely can’t believe that she, rather than Salmond, “spearheaded the Yes campaign”. To claim that she did goes beyond suppression of the truth; it is quite simply a lie.
Salmond has asserted that he is the victim of a conspiracy, a plot to prevent him from resuming his political career. This seemed unlikely, to me anyway. Having resigned as First Minister and leader of the SNP after the Referendum, handing the reins to Nicola Sturgeon, the loyal lieutenant whose career he had fostered and promoted, he returned to the House of Commons in the 2015 General Election as MP for Gordon. A dual mandate – membership of both the Scottish and Westminster parliaments – no longer being permitted by SNP party rules, his decision to prefer the Commons might be interpreted as a generous gesture, for it was possible that his continued presence at Holyrood would overshadow Sturgeon.
However, when Theresa May called an unexpected general election in 2017, he was defeated in Gordon by the Tory candidate. No longer a member of either parliament, his active political career seemed likely to be over. He was now a back-number as former party leaders usually are when no longer members of a parliament. When he then hosted a chat-show on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and subsequently another on the Russian propaganda TV Channel RT, the chance of a political come-back seemed remote. The association with RT met with widespread criticism. He appeared to be yesterday’s man.