AUTHOR, festival founder, Gaelic speaker, former TV producer and consummate politician, Michael Russell has made a huge impact during his lengthy career.
Born in Kent in 1953, he was brought up in his father’s home town of Troon in Ayrshire, where he attended Marr College. He went on to Edinburgh University, graduating with an MA in Scottish Literature and History and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Honorary Professor in the College of Arts at Glasgow University.
A member of the Labour Club at Edinburgh University, Russell joined the SNP just after the February 1974 election and held local office in branches and constituencies in Edinburgh, the Western Isles, Inverness and Clydesdale.
He was first elected to national office in the SNP in September 1987, succeeding Alex Salmond as vice-convener responsible for publicity. Three years later he acted as Salmond’s campaign manager during his bid for party leadership.
READ MORE: Michael Russell to stand down ahead of Holyrood 2021
His day job at the time was executive director of Network Scotland – having previously been full-time director of Celtic Film and TV Festival which he founded in 1980. In 1991, he established his own TV production company, Eala Bhan Ltd.
He still found time for party politics and was deputy campaign director in the General Election of 1992 having previously acted in the same role during the Govan and Glasgow Central by-elections in 1987 and 1988.
In 1994, he became the SNP’s first full-time chief executive, a position he held for five years, directing the 1997 and 1999 election campaigns as well as the successful Perth and Kinross by-election in 1995.
He was elected as an MSP when the Scottish Parliament resumed in 1999, becoming a founding member of the Parliamentary Bureau. Russell was then appointed shadow minister for education and culture in 2000 and was named as the Herald newspaper’s Debater of the Year that same year. Two years later he was nominated for the Herald’s Politician of the Year as well as Channel 4’s Scottish Politician of the Year.
He lost his seat in the 2003 election and stood unsuccessfully in the SNP leadership elections the following year, finishing third behind Salmond and Roseanna Cunningham.
Already an established author, with books on Glasgow, Edinburgh, Edwin Muir and German aristocrat Werner Kissling, who photographed the people of Eriskay, Russell turned again to writing, editing Winnie Ewing’s autobiography and generating a fair bit of controversy with Grasping the Thistle, co-written with Dennis MacLeod.
In a review of the book, political commentator Iain Macwhirter said he wasn’t sure how Russell could remain a member of the SNP when he appeared to oppose most of what the party stood for.
“Grasping the Thistle is a blueprint for an essentially neo-conservative political revolution in Scotland,” said MacWhirter.
“It seems to me that he disagrees with just about everything his own movement stands for: social democracy, Europe, independence, parliamentary democracy, progressive taxation, public services free at the point of need...”
READ MORE: Michael Russell: 10 things that changed my life
However, such was Russell’s practical contribution to SNP that many members saw his absence as a great loss to the party’s performance and profile in Holyrood.
He was re-elected in 2007 after being placed second on the SNP’s regional list for the South of Scotland, a list that was chosen by a one-member, one-vote system which Russell himself had advocated.
He was appointed minister for the environment, then became cabinet secretary for education and lifelong learning after Fiona Hyslop was moved to culture, tourism and external affairs.
Russell was selected by local members to succeed Jim Mather as SNP candidate for Argyll and Bute in 2010 and won the seat in May 2011 with a majority of 8543 votes. He continued as education secretary until November 2014, when he left Government.
Russell was re-elected as the MSP for Argyll and Bute in May 2016 and became convenor of the Parliament’s Finance and Constitution Committee, then Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe, with the right to attend the Westminster Cabinet.
In June 2018, he became Cabinet Secretary for Government Business and International Relations and his portfolio was expanded last month when he became Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, Europe and External Affairs.
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