LIKE most people privileged to have known Winnie Ewing, I was saddened to hear of her demise. I was glad to have worked during her famous by-election shock for the British establishment. The late Oliver Brown wrote: “A chill ran round the House of Commons, looking for a spine to crawl up.”
In Hamilton, waiting on the results, a large crowd of mainly SNP supporters gathered, singing Jim McLean Scottish republican songs, mainly The Scottish MP: “I am a Scottish MP, from a city grey and black. I will shut my mouth when I’m in the south, just in case they send me back.”
How those forced to pay tribute would have loved to send her back with all her successors. The Young “Socialists” gathered outside, chanting at the SNP.
The huge Union flag they were holding was grabbed by the crowd. Angus MacIntosh, late councillor for Cowcaddens, called “Halt!”, then proceeded to burn a line down the flag with his cigarette lighter, leaving the YS holding a stub of a rag whilst the results were announced. I wonder how many of these Young “Socialists” became full-time hacks for the British establishment?
Angus MacGillvery and Hugh MacDonald carried Oor Winnie shoulder high to the rapturous cheering of the huge crowd. Two young polismen tried to prevent the crowd marching behind a piper on to the main street.
I was proud to join the Winnie train taking her to London. Jimmie Ross, teacher and folk singer and one of “Morris Blythman’s weans” led the crowd in Central Station, playing Scottish republican songs.
At the other end, as we jostled on the Thames Embankment, a young Met Polis was accidentally pushed down the concrete embankment with his bobby’s helmet rolling after him, next to the hunched Winnie Churchill statue at the bottom. I wonder if a future free Scotland will erect a statue tae Oor Winnie?
My late mother and brother, living in Chelsea, were embarrassed, next day, when I used a “Scotch” £10 note in every bar down the King’s Rood, after ordering a round of drinks.
Winnie was always pleased to see her foot soldiers. I was honoured to have her sit on my 1970s sideboard, crammed into a ceilidh in my auld hoose. She and Gordon Wilson used to invite myself and other Scottish Republicans outside of conferences into the conference hall bar. We were selling the “Scottish Workers Republic”, which I used to edit and publish, along with other merchandise.
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Gordon’s wife, Edith, was a student member of Maryhill Branch. Edith told me she always recognised my letters in The Glasgow Herald before she got to my name. I stopped writing to them when the late Arnold Kemp was editor. I wouldn’t waste my time now, although I do waste my time, trying to get letters published in The National.
We were always entertained by the Ewing and Wilson families, along with George Leslie and the late Hugh MacDonald etc, singing McLean songs. Winnie famously said in the Commons that more business was done in the bar than at the bar, an old lawyer’s joke. Her “Stop the world Scotland wants to get on” was a parody of a famous Broadway musical. “Stop the bus, I want to get off”, a far cry from Boris’s infamous Brexit bus.
Even wee Doogie was forced to pay tribute after his offensive, disgraceful, reference to her in Parliament the other day. I doubt if Fergie Ewing appreciated his backhanded, cackhanded “compliment” in his crude effort to cause divisions. Fergus will always be an old-style Scottish nationalist, whatever his disagreements on this or that issue. There is no one in HM’s loyal opposition party of bootlickers fit to lace the Ewings’s boots.
Donald Anderson
Glasgow
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