At the 2005 General Election the people of West Lothian entered a new era. For the first time in 43 years there were facing the fact that for the first time in 43 years none of them would be represented by Tam Dalyell.
At that election I was selected to stand in the parts of his former West Lothian constituency that lay to the north, including his ancestral home the House of the Binns. When he first posed the West Lothian question, as it became known, about the role of MPs of devolved parts of the UK, I don’t think he thought he’d still be waiting for the definitive answer 40 years later when he died.
He dedicated his autobiography “The Importance of Being Awkward” to
the men and women of West Lothian – Labour, SNP, Conservative, Liberal, Communist – who, whatever their political opinions, were kind to me in all sorts of ways over 43 years as their representative in the House of Commons.
Personally I can only take a small part in that kindness having only moved to the area four years before. So it is to my predecessors in the West Lothian Liberal, SDP and Liberal Democrats who take a great portion of that dedication, for Tam did carry the respect of all in West Lothian. When I first campaigned there you saw that mutual respect for Tam carried over to a respect between all those involved in West Lothian politics.
The reason he carried that respect was because he respected people, no matter what their views. If they could back it up with evidence, which appealed to his scientific mind, he would be happy to listen, keen to debate or agree where agreement could be met. He encouraged those who stood up for people to do just that, even it meant we stood against the candidate of his own party. His letter in response to mine upon his retirement encouraging me thus, is one I took great solace in after the election in 2015.
But while he may have been many things a former soldier, teacher, hereditary baronet, Member of Parliament, scientific journalist. To the people of West Lothian he was always simply Tam.
* Stephen Glenn is the Chair of the Northern Ireland Liberal Democrats and a member of the Alliance Party. He has stood as a Westminster Candidate for the Lib Dems on three occasions.
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6 Comments
Stephen Glenn: Please also say something about the current situation in Northern Ireland.
Tam Dalyell was famous for his questioning on the sinking of the Belgrano. PM Margaret Thatcher got herself into a terrible tangle which undermined her credibility, but when HMS Conqueror sailed into a UK port flying the skull and crossbones they were asserting that their torpedo had hit the Belgrano. Private Eye made a lot about the fact that the Belgrano was sailing away from the Falklands when hit. The PM was correct to say that the Belgrano was a missile platform and could therefore launch missiles towards the Falklands. She had authorised the hit, but botched a cover-up when the sinking of the Belgrano was a fact.
Tam Dalyell was, if anything, ‘further left’ than Corbyn’..He was involved in the Irish Republican led “Troops Out” movement, a staunch defender of Gaddafi and, like Corbyn, anti-war…
I met Tam, a fellow Scot, in a professional capacity and had dealings with him over a number of months. He was a straight as a die and delightful to deal with, though on occasion a bit unworldly. Among the many things that distinguished Tam was that he had friends up and down the social divide; in the great Scottish castles and country houses (either via family ties or friendships since childhood) and in pubs and working men’s clubs, in universities, in the law (he had married Kathleen, daughter of that great Scot and first post-reformation senior Scottish Catholic judge, Lord Wheatley and was a friend as an uncle of mine, also a judge, but a great SNP man), in business and sport, on farms and corner shop. Just everywhere. There was no artifice with Tam. As decent a man as you could meet and as Jim Naughty said on Today this morning, a champion of public service. Rest in peace, Tam.
Oh that we could have more MPs of his quality!
In 11 years of living in Edinburgh, we had only occasional involvement with Linlithgow, the House of the Binns and Tam Dalyell. But these were the years of the 2nd Scottish referendum about having a Scottish parliament and then the creation of it, briefly in the General Assembly Hall of the Kirk and then in Holyrood itself. The ‘West Lothian Question’ that he asked persistently has yet to be answered properly and the current mess with Brexit and the SNP could have been less messy……
I recall Tam well from Cambridge, where he was Chairman of the University Conservative Association and rose to be Vice-President of the Cambridge Union; conversion to Labour came later, after the Suez crisis. His height accentuated his aristocratic bearing, but he never affected superiority and was unfailingly courteous to friends and political opponents alike, with a quiet if penetrating ability to dissect weak argument. His civilised approach to the political scene will be sorely missed.