A comfortably British Scot

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• Donald Dewar

  edited by Wendy Alexander

  Mainstream, pp. 256

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Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

Rifkind is right to make this point. Dewar was intensely Scottish, but also comfortably British. He was the chief architect of devolution, but remained a Unionist. A Scottish Parliament was to be set up in order to make for the better government of Scotland within the United Kingdom. Yet in the Referendum campaign he collaborated with Alex Salmond and the SNP who saw devolution as a stepping-stone to independence. Dewar wanted to strengthen the United Kingdom, Salmond to break the Union. As I wrote at the time, ‘They can’t both be right.’ So far it seems that Dewar may have judged more wisely. The novelist William McIlvanney recently remarked, ‘I sense a recession in the strength of Scottishness almost just by having the Parliament.’ But of course six years is a very short time in the history of a nation.

Most of the contributors to this volume write from a Labour party perspective; naturally enough. One after the other they stress Dewar’s commitment to ‘social justice’, a term they use, as he did, as if its meaning was self-evident. Wendy Alexander, his disciple, whose career has sadly stalled since his death, writes that his starting-point was often ‘what sort of world are we creating for our children? Will it be characterised by more opportunity, more diversity, more security?’ These are not especially socialist questions; indeed Margaret Thatcher asked them too.

Dewar won both respect and affection. Even political opponents recognised that he was not only an able politician but a good man. He was old-fashioned of course, indifferent to image, contemptuous of spin. His interests ranged far beyond politics: history, literature, painting and sport were among them. It is not absurd to see him as a belated heir of the Scottish Enlightenment.

This little book is testimony to the affection and regard in which he was held. I never knew him well. The collection of essays here makes me regret that I didn’t know him better. One of the best is from a childhood friend, Charlie Allan. Himself a remarkable character — university lecturer in economics, farmer, folk-singer, journalist, Highland Games athlete, and much more besides — Charlie writes that he broke down in tears when he heard of Donald’s death:

We weren’t close friends as adults and I don’t really think I was crying for those boyhood days. I think I was crying for Scotland. I could easily imagine our devolved status descending into chaos and I couldn’t see a queue of Donald Dewars waiting to take his place.