The complex legacy of Alex Salmond

In reflecting on the life of Alex Salmond, I should begin by paraphrasing his successor as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon. I cannot pretend that the last few years of the breakdown in his relationship with the mainstream of the party he once led did not happen, but we cannot help but reflect on a remarkable political life.

Salmond was central to the birth of the modern SNP. As former political editor of the Herald Murray Ritchie put it, he took an ‘ill-disciplined, fractious and impecunious fringe party and established it as the dominant force in Scottish political life’, noting: ‘This in a country where Labour had been in control for half a century.’ But while Salmond-as-leader is going to be the point of reference for many in the coming days, it is important to remember where the SNP came from before he came to the leadership in 1990 – defeating the establishment candidate, the late Margaret Ewing. The 1980s were cruel to the party: the heady days of the previous decade faded into the hangover of that 1979 devolution referendum stymied by a backroom Labour fix. 

This was something of a crucible, however, that would see the SNP evolve from being something of a mish-mash of political traditions into the more straightforwardly left-of-centre, pro-European party it is today. This process began with the expulsion of the famous ‘79 group’ of radicals – of which Salmond was by no means a leader, but counted himself as an adherent alongside other future heavyweights like Roseanna Cunningham and Ian Blackford.

His election in Banff and Buchan in 1987 was an indication that the worst had passed. Albert McQuarrie – his defeated Tory opponent – refused to shake hands with him and called him ‘scum’. It was the perfect beginning to a first term that would see him establish himself as a one-man repudiation of Labour’s ‘feeble fifty’ Scottish contingent of MPs, most notably being ‘named’ and ejected from the Chamber during the 1988 budget.

Salmond’s overwhelming three-to-one victory against the Ewingite old guard in the 1990 leadership election was the act that cemented a more familiar SNP to modern readers – but he was determined to update the party in other ways. A decided adherent of the ‘gradualist’ tradition, Salmond almost immediately set about bringing the SNP into the pro-devolution movement. It was anathema to the ‘fundamentalist’ wing of the party who saw it is a compromise too far on the road to independence. 

Doing so meant that the SNP was not only cementing itself within a growing civic and political consensus in Scottish life, it spiked the guns of Labour. The party had sought to position itself (as it still occasionally does) as the party of devolution – despite the reality of 1979 and strong currents of devo-scepticism which ran deep amongst its members. This was best encapsulated by the high-handed quip of Harold Wilson’s long standing Scottish Secretary Willie Ross: ‘Why does Scotland need an Assembly when it’s got me?’

When John Swinney stood down as leader after a disastrous 2004 European election campaign, Salmond seemed in no position to move back to Holyrood. Yet his stance was reversed with customary chutzpah just a few weeks later, when he pitched himself not only for the party leadership but for the position of First Minister – something which seemed quite ludicrous at the time. Just as 14 years earlier, he took a party riven by internal conflict, and by sheer force of personality, managed to unite it. His explicit pitch for First Minister convinced fundamentalists to back him, along with the idea that the post-Iraq Labour Party could be beaten.

As the Blair government ran into these self-induced political headwinds, Salmond’s understanding that they had implicitly treated Holyrood as a second-string parliament was ruthlessly exploited. Out went much of the insurgent, outsider identity that he had relished in the Westminster bully pulpit to be replaced by a more consensual demeanour. It seems almost like another time to think of that first SNP minority government and, in so many ways, the 2011 election majority was unexpected. It was one of several unlikely events that led to that 2014 referendum defeat that seemed much closer than anyone had expected when it was called. Salmond’s dignified and orderly departure could well have been the start of a different sort of final act in an already long career. Instead, as we know, it became just another one of his many contradictions, leaving us all finding it hard to pigeonhole him. This was a politician who defied easy explanation. 

He was the left wing agitator-turned-oil economist; the gradualist who became a symbol for post-fundamentalist ‘Yessers’; the man who was derided as the ‘Toast of Belgrade’ for describing the Kosovo intervention as an ‘unpardonable folly’ while nonetheless leading the SNP to reverse its opposition to Nato; the advocate for the sovereignty of states in Europe who took cash from Russia Today as it trampled over Ukraine; the ‘79 Group Republican that belted out ‘God Save the Queen’ and bowed before her Majesty at Balmoral; or the Scottish insurgent who was so at home on the green benches of Westminster. He inspired much loyalty among many that worked for him, many of whom remain either in the SNP or close to nationalist politics today. Today’s party is something close to an extended family. 

That is why, for so many, so much of what has emerged since he stepped down as party leader in 2014 has seemed closer to a personal trauma than it may otherwise have done. The verdict of his sexual assault trial was that his acts were not criminal – he was acquitted on all charges – but Salmond himself admitted to inappropriate behaviour over several years. I have friends and colleagues who took the stand against him. I believe them, and the fact is, many who worked and campaigned with Alex did too. Similarly painful has been the subsequent political repudiation of Salmond’s own legacy by him and his Alba party. For those of us who consider ourselves part of the gradualist tradition – that the likes of him and Kenny MacAskill established as the mainstream of the party – we cannot shy away from this reality: we cannot pick and choose the convenient facts of our movement. 

Salmond established the SNP as the pre-eminent political force in Scottish politics and brought our nation to the cusp of independence after 300 years of Union. And while these achievements will be foremost in the tributes paid to him today, we cannot wish the paradoxes of his career away. Alex Salmond’s legacy will be manifold and complex, but he undoubtedly left the SNP in a much elevated position than he found it. For the SNP and for the independence movement, I hope also that he goes to rest along with the idea that the cause for which he fought was inexplicably tied to the fortunes of one individual.