Monday October 14th 2024
This article has been written by Christine Grahame MSP.
First of all my condolences to Moira and Alex’s family and friends on his sudden and untimely death. They will miss him above and beyond all the achievements and political possibilities he still had to come.
As a member of the SNP for over 50 years I came to know Alex from a distance and later when he came often to help me campaign and latterly as First Minister, I remember on one occasion out campaigning (and there were many like this) when he was supposed to meet some local dignitaries but was stopped (as he often was) by folk simply wanting to speak to him or shake his hand. There were no cameras, no press present he just liked to meet and speak with people, chatted at length while his staff agitated as the days’ time table went out the window.
There were too occasions when I took a different few from him and said so (often in private) and those deep brown eyes would narrow to a steely look but even if he did not agree at the time, you would find later he might have reviewed his position.
He abolished tuition fees and famously stated that the “rocks would melt in the sun “before he would allow them to be imposed on Scotland’s students. That was inscribed on a stone installed at Heriot Watt university on his last day as First Minister in November 2014. He introduced free prescriptions.
Today ,both remain “free” whereas in England a student can run up a debt of at least £30,000 in fees alone and a prescription there will cost £9.90 per item.
But most of all this incredible charismatic leader took Scotland within an inch of Independence and the tragedy is he has not lived to see it. But as he said in his autobiography “The Dream Shall Never Die.”
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