SEVERAL days on from the news of Alex Salmond’s passing, it’s hard to think what else to add to the tributes already paid to the man who did more than anyone else to create the modern Scottish nationalist movement.

Most reminiscences from political friend and adversary alike have concentrated on his impact as a political figure of genuine consequence both inside and outside of Scotland. But all politics is local, and what has been less spoken about in recent days is his impact as a local politician and how that allowed him to achieve all that he went on to achieve for Scotland.

Throughout the 1980s, the north east offered a shaft of light amidst the gloom for a struggling SNP. In 1974, Douglas Henderson had won the East Aberdeenshire seat for the party with Hamish Watt winning in neighbouring Banffshire. Both only narrowly lost out in 1979, with Henderson again coming close in 1983 in the newly created Banff and Buchan constituency.

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While that made Banff and Buchan a prime target for the SNP, it still had to be won. Having caught the eye of local party members, Alex came north to contest the constituency for the 1987 General Election, bringing with him an already tall reputation as a professional economist and as a thoroughly seasoned politician.

Constituency boundaries and political personalities change over the years. What doesn’t change is the weight of expectation that any MP or MSP representing the communities of Banffshire and Buchan is under when it comes to advancing the interests of their constituents. And that’s largely as a result of the way Alex set up and ran his constituency office base as soon as he was elected.

He set a gold standard for how MPs should run their local offices which any new parliamentarian would be wise to try and emulate.

His campaigns against the loss of rural facilities and jobs, as well as the diligent but low-key work on behalf of many thousands of individual constituents that he and his office helped over that time, stand in testimony to the work of a dedicated public servant.

It was that “covering of the bases” – in terms of representing his constituents, as well as copious amounts of good old fashioned shoe-leather from local party members who never sought the limelight – which gave him the platform to keep the north east in the political spotlight, and to advance the cause of self-government for Scotland in the face of the general indifference and occasional outright hostility it faced from the Westminster establishment.

Yet whatever national responsibilities came his way – firstly as a party leader and then as first minister – he never lost sight of the fact that he was first and foremost a local representative, always regarding it as the most enormous privilege to have the chance to represent his constituents.

There’s a great story about him once giving a tour of Westminster to some fishermen who were down from Peterhead to lobby parliament. The group finished up in the new Portcullis House building, which had gone well over budget in its construction.

Explaining in part why to the group, Alex said it had been built to be bombproof, fireproof and flood-proof. But even he was reportedly lost for words when asked by one of the fishermen whether it had been built to be foolproof as well!

His achievement in leading the SNP into government and taking Scotland to the cusp of independence would, you might think, be what he regarded as his defining achievement in politics. Yet it was his involvement in the campaign to recover the Sapphire – a fishing boat which sank in 1997 within sight of the safety of Peterhead Harbour – which he himself saw as his greatest political outcome.

In a community where opinion was somewhat divided on the matter and in the face of outright hostility from UK ministers, Alex supported the relatives as they gathered through public donations of over half a million pounds in order to raise the vessel and bring the men home for burial.

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“It really became a story about courage more than anything else”, he said afterwards.

“As the weeks went on, I regarded it as my absolute obligation to make sure the conclusion was in the favour of the people who had fought so hard for it.”

Our time in the SNP didn’t coincide and again, there are no words of mine that need to be added in setting out why that was so. Yet whatever sadness there was at the manner of his parting of ways with the SNP, it never diminished the appreciation and admiration that was felt for him locally.

The split between the SNP and Alba in the north east never became acrimonious between individuals on either side, but it was still no less painful for having happened.

In many ways it was more like a family estrangement than anything else, where we could still come together to mark moments of shared significance. Nowhere was that more evident than at the funeral of Stuart Pratt – a former SNP councillor and Alex’s longstanding election agent and dear friend.

At the kirk in New Pitsligo, Alex gave the eulogy and did Stuart proud, drawing together their shared endeavours and their stories of the road travelled in political life as only he could.

Wherever people’s personal or party loyalties lay that day, their commitment to Scotland and independence was as unshakable as the sense of loss was palpable. And it could hardly have been otherwise – we had all walked too far together and shared too many dreams for it ever to be any different.

It’s both poignant and fitting that Alex’s last public words were to say that: “Scotland is a country, not a county”. Yet it’s in the counties of the north east where he and Moira made their home and which gave him a political base, which were his strength and his stay for so long.

Alex had much in his life to be grateful to the north east for. In turn, the north east is mourning the passing of someone it also has much reason to be grateful to.