Inside story: Saving graces

Published on Friday 30 May 2008 12:02

WHETHER it's the fight to save their home or the future of the grey squirrel, there are people all over Scotland standing up for what they believe in

Meet the saviours: Scots from all parts of the country who are united in one goal – saving something they love. The idea behind these interviews was simple – it would be a way of getting Scots to speak about their passions. But the passions explored here are not about achievement or personal fulfilment; they are about fighting against loss. These are people who refuse to lose. In some cases, the loss they are resisting is very personal.

Elaine Ellis, for instance, does not want the tower block that has been her home since infancy to be demolished. In other instances, the thing to be saved is much less tangible – memories, a way of life, the human soul.

It's true that some of the people are real characters, perhaps you could even call them unorthodox. But what they share is that they care, deeply, about their chosen cause and have enough energy and drive to stand up for what they believe. If they are odd, perhaps it is because, in an apathetic age, they are anything but passive.

Who knows whether these particular saviours will be successful in their campaigns? Perhaps, despite their best efforts, the Sighthill flats will tumble and the Scots tongue will fall silent. What's important, though, is that some people burn so intensely with indignation that they are more likely to set fire to fences (albeit metaphorically) than sit on them.

This has long been a nation of awkward, rebellious, thrawn folk. A refusal to accept defeat, even if that means squaring up to a much more powerful opponent, is a famous Scottish trait. One thinks of Bruce at Bannockburn, Wallace at Stirling Bridge, James McFadden at the Parc des Princes. The people here are part of that noble tradition, and their ardent spirit is hard to resist.

IVOR AND CAROL TELFER STEPPS

WANT TO SAVE YOUR SOUL

A FIRST, prejudiced glance might lead a person to write off the North Lanarkshire town of Stepps as a soulless kind of place. That would be rather ironic as it's home to the West of Scotland HQ of the Salvation Army – an organisation dedicated to saving souls. You'll find the small, brick headquarters in a modern business park just off the Cumbernauld road. Hardly the grand hall you might expect, but then the Sally Army has an image problem all round. It is regarded as a cosy, old-fashioned institution – those folk playing the trombones in the snow. The officers, as full-time ordained ministers are known, see themselves very differently, as soldiers on a mission to bring others to faith in Christ. "You cannot beat a brass band at Christmas," grins Major Ivor Telfer through his beard, "but that's not all we do."

Telfer and his wife Carol, also a major, run the Salvation Army's West of Scotland division. Husband-and-wife teams are a common feature of the Army, as it used to be that officers could only marry fellow officers. This can put a lot of pressure on a relationship. Carol Telfer, now 48, was working as a midwife in Clydebank when she began to feel that God wanted her to become ordained; she worried, though, that Ivor, now 54, who enjoyed working for the Bank of Scotland, might have no desire to do so. "I suddenly realised the relationship might be over. So when Ivor said he felt called to the ministry as well, it was such a relief."

They married in 1980 and left their jobs to begin training in London. They were ordained in 1984 and posted to Newry, Northern Ireland, where they worked in the immediate aftermath of many terrorist incidents, including the bombing of a courthouse that resulted in the death of one RUC man and a civilian. In that case, Ivor prayed with the chief inspector, helping him find the strength to tell the constable's widow her husband had been killed. "The Salvation Army in Northern Ireland has always been seen as neither Protestant nor Catholic, which has allowed us to get involved in areas that neither of those churches could go into," says Carol.

The Telfers were sent to Pakistan next, where they ran a programme looking after 120,000 Afghan refugees. They have also worked in Canada, Manchester and Wales. Their four children attended school in several different countries. Now, having been back in Scotland for only three years, they have been ordered to return to London. In all honesty, Ivor and Carol would prefer to remain in Scotland, but they are stoic.

"We said at the beginning that if God wants us to be Salvation Army officers, we would have to believe he has a plan for our lives and knows best," says Carol. "There's no point kicking and screaming."

GEVA BLACKETT's nickname, Attila the Hen, speaks of a certain clucky, plucky personality, at once nurturing and bellicose, which should serve her well when lobbying Holyrood on behalf of the rural communities she loves. "My mother would tell you that I've been bolshy from the moment I popped out," says the new chief executive of the Scottish Countryside Alliance. "My father hated injustice and I've inherited that."

She is hopeful of developing a good working relationship with the SNP government, as those MSPs represent more of rural Scotland than their Labour predecessors. The countryside needs homes, jobs and better services, she insists; as things stand, young people feel forced to move away, and thus the future is in jeopardy.

Blackett, "a naughty 52", grew up on a farm in Sussex, later moving to Yorkshire. Late in life her father inherited a title, fifth Baron Saint Oswald of Nostell, but she talks about this reluctantly. She is proud of having worked hard and is concerned that politicians or activists might dismiss her as just some toff. "I didn't earn the title of Honourable," she says, "but I strive to be honourable in all I do."

She moved to Deeside 16 years ago, her husband having taken a job as factor of the Invercauld estate. Struck by the beauty of the landscape, and feeling rooted in it on account of the fact that her great-grandmother came from nearby Strathdon, she set about trying to understand what made the place tick.

The first thing she did was learn to fish, then how to stalk deer. "It's a hell of a responsibility to kill an animal," she says. "You don't want it to know you are there, and you don't want it to feel any pain. We're not talking about stalking for a nice big trophy on the wall, we're talking about a deer cull. I suppose I shot about 50 over a period of three years."

Though she saw it as a necessary part of land management, killing deer was never something Blackett enjoyed, so she gave it up and moved into politics. She became the parliamentary and media officer for the Scottish Gamekeepers Association, representing that body while the fox-hunting bill was passing through Holyrood, a piece of legislation she considered "an unnecessary waste of parliamentary time".

Blackett is an extraordinarily driven person, and there is little doubt she is going to make an impact on Scottish public life. "Life would be so much easier if I could stay at home baking cakes, cuddling the children and walking the dogs," she half-sighs. "But that's just not me."

THERE is something wonderfully apt about going to Ayrshire to visit a poet. Rab Wilson, 47, lives in New Cumnock, a mining town once home to 8,000 people but, since the pits all closed, now with a population of less than half that.

Wilson, who grew up here, finds the landscape and history inspiring, pointing out the hill that Robert Burns rode past on his way to see Jean Armour, and theorising that New Cumnock is the last place in which the Ayrshire dialect is spoken in exactly the same way as when Burns was alive. There is poetry in the very place-names – Kilmaurs, Mauchline, Auchinleck.

The old tongue of Ayrshire is important to Wilson, who writes not only his verse in broad Scots, but also the majority of his e-mails and correspondence. You can understand why he uses that language for poetry, since it gives him access to "clever, magical words that swirl roond yer mooth and tongue, like malt whisky" – but the use of Scots in his everyday life is motivated by something else. "The language is being eroded and it is a conscious effort on my part to keep it alive. I'm an evangelist for Scots," he explains. "Who we are is epitomised by how we speak, so why no' use that?"

When he isn't trying to save the language, Wilson works nights as a psychiatric nurse at Ayr Hospital, though he is on sabbatical at the moment, working as the Robert Burns Writing Fellow for Dumfries and Galloway.

His first job was at the nearby Barony Colliery. He was an apprentice engineer, but failed his exams "with a panache that left my instructors breathless. They said I couldnae pit a nut in a monkey's mooth." Still, his time in the pits inspired him. He was exposed to humour, pathos and, especially during the miners' strike, tragedy. He started writing rhymes during his years there, slagging off workmates with a lump of chalk on the back of the workshop door.

As part of his writing fellowship, Wilson is judging a poetry competition open to primary five pupils, and joyfully waves a fistful of handwritten verses. He even reads one out, a hilarious poem about socks. This, he says, gives him hope that the language will survive. "The proof is in the way the weans actually speak. If that was educated oot o' them, or they felt they had to modify their language to get on in the world, that would be a gey sair thing to have to happen. If the language was to disappear, that would be dumbing down our culture. So I'll ettle – try – to keep it goin' for a wee while yet."

ANGUS MACMILLAN, also known as Professor Acorn, has for the last 27 years lived with his wife Davina, also known as Debbie, on a smallholding beside Loch Lomond, near Balloch. Now in their 60s, the pair look after 29 ducks, one goose, one hamster, one toddler-sized rabbit, one goldfish, one grass snake and a wee dog with skin problems – all rescued from situations of neglect and cruelty. At Christmas, Angus receives no gifts from his wife; she sponsors four injured fox cubs each year instead.

The Macmillans, as you may have guessed, love animals. They are against hunting of any kind and are vegetarians, though Angus, who is 68, only became so four years ago. They are fighting to save the grey squirrel. The UK has arrived at a consensus that the declining population of native red squirrels ought to be protected by exterminating greys, a more numerous species introduced from America in the 19th century. The Macmillans, together with their son Neil, have set up a website, www.grey-squirrel.org.uk, as the hub of their campaign.

"The cull is quite immoral," says Angus. "It's grossly unfair that any mammal should suffer extermination just because they are seen as not being acceptable. It is ethnic cleansing, almost, the way they refer to non-native species. Grey squirrels have been here for in the region of 45 generations. I'm sure few people can trace their families back that far."

There are 25,000 red squirrels in England and Wales, and six times that number in Scotland. They are vastly outnumbered by the greys, and conservationists worry that the red squirrel will be wiped out even in its Scottish stronghold within 50 to 100 years. The grey is said to have a negative impact on reds by competing for food and by infecting them with squirrelpox, a virus the greys carry but are better able to survive. However, Angus Macmillan delights in challenging prevailing thought. Writing on his website, he argues that greys are not responsible for squirrelpox in reds, and that most reds in the UK are descended from European squirrels and therefore not native to this country at all.

The Macmillans claim that Scottish Natural Heritage and the Forestry Commission spread anti-grey 'propaganda', as red squirrels are considered a tourist attraction. Mostly, though, they just can't stomach the idea of animals being killed by the state.

"The accepted way is to trap the squirrel and club it over the head with a blunt instrument. They call that humane, but if it happened to a person it would be described as a brutal murder. Squirrels inhabit this planet the same as we do and should be afforded the respect and consideration we expect for ourselves."

JANET McBAIN, GLASGOW

WANTS TO SAVE SCOTLAND'S MEMORIES

HILLINGTON Industrial Estate, south of Glasgow, is a surprisingly bonnie place. The air is thick with cherry blossom, the quiet atmosphere disturbed only by the click of bowls on a nearby green. The bowling club was opened during the war for use by Rolls-Royce workers whose job was building Spitfire engines. So says Janet McBain, and she should know. As curator of the Scottish Screen Archive, she has a quenchless thirst for history. Also, she works here, in a low brick building that houses staff and equipment dedicated to viewing, restoring and preserving film. There are 32,000 items in the collection, representing over a century of Scottish life, some of which is viewable online at http://ssa.nls.uk. The oldest film is 40 seconds of flickering footage of Queen Victoria clip-clopping around Balmoral in 1896, but the archive is not dominated by the powerful and famous. It has an everyday quality that is quite moving.

"One of the attractions of the collection is that it is about ordinary people's lives," says McBain. "It's a history of people whose histories are least recorded. I'll be happy looking back on it when I retire. I feel I've made a contribution to preserving the collective memory of the nation."

McBain, 54, has been in this job from the moment the archive was founded in 1976. At that time the office was in Glasgow's Woodside Terrace and 30 years' worth of old films, donated by the public, had been built up in a shed in the back garden. "So I was handed a key and told, 'Go and see what's in there.' The next job was, 'Go and see if there's any more material out there.' I went on STV's teatime news and said, 'Has anybody got any film?'

Well, it just cascaded in and we've never got out from under that avalanche."

After three decades or more, McBain feels personally invested in the material, feels that on some level this is her archive, and, of course, she has favourites. She is fond of footage of a voyage to St Kilda, shortly before the 1930 evacuation. She also has a soft spot for a 1928 film of a pensioners' outing from Lochgelly to the Crook of Devon. "The film opens with scenes of incredibly ferocious old grannies with moustaches and no teeth scowling at the young man behind the camera."

In 2006, McBain won an outstanding achievement Bafta, but has no plans to rest on her laurels. She feels she still has work to do with the archive, principally to find it a permanent, purpose-built home nearer to the city centre.

One last question, though – with so many films in the collection, surely there must be some filth tucked away somewhere? McBain laughs. "We do have one film that was made by an amateur who fancied himself as Scotland's answer to Jean Cocteau. In the 1960s he made a film called Bongo Erotico which consisted of a young lady wearing two pairs of knickers, one pair where they should be and other other draped over her face, writhing about on a bed while a man sat in the corner playing bongos. That's Scottish pornography, I suppose."

ANNE McMILLAN, PERTH AND KINROSS

WANTS TO SAVE SCOTLAND'S HISTORIC REGIMENTS

ANNE McMILLAN can't even think about it without tears coming into her eyes. The end of the Black Watch means that much to her. She campaigned unsuccessfully against the government's controversial decision to have Scotland's six historic regiments merge and become the Royal Regiment of Scotland. Two years on, she has not given up hope, and is now fundraising for the campaign to reverse the merger, Reinstate Our Army Regiments (ROAR).

"This is so important to me," she says. "I spend so much time talking to soldiers, and see the pride and loss. Probably the worst day I ever spent was the last day of the Black Watch. Two hundred veterans held a service just before the merger. Right at the end they said three cheers for the Black Watch and threw their blue bonnets into the air for the last time, with tears streaming down their cheeks. I have never seen anything so sad. You're talking about men of 70 and 80. These men fought. It was their whole life, and the government has broken their hearts."

McMillan is 46 and lives in Alyth. She used to be a nurse but now runs a haulage company with her husband; one of their trucks is painted in the Black Watch tartan. She first contacted the campaign in 2004, offering a vehicle for use as a stage at a rally. Campaign organiser Jeff Duncan kept her on the phone for a long time, explaining how hard the merger would hit the proud traditions of the regiments. By the time she hung up she was very angry and dedicated to the cause.

For the first time in her life, McMillan felt politically engaged. "If you'd told me a few years ago that I'd have a loudhailer, chasing Tony Blair and Jack McConnell round the City Square in Dundee, I'd have said, 'I dinnae think so.' Yet, there I was."

Why, then, is she so passionate about this particular issue? "Well, it's my dad. He was in the Black Watch. He came from a council estate, one of nine children, and it gave him a real sense of pride and belonging.

"Then when I moved to Perth to train as a nurse, I worked part-time in the pub where the Black Watch drank when they came home on leave, so I made lots of friends. When I got married, our best man and two ushers were in their Black Watch uniforms. A pipe major piped me in."

McMillan is realistic about what can now be achieved. Alex Salmond supports their campaign, but defence is not a devolved matter, so it is unlikely that the regiments will be reinstated unless Scotland becomes independent. In the meantime, McMillan will fight to ensure the so-called 'golden thread' – the history and traditions of the regiments – does not fray further. "It's all little things, but they are mounting up to a complete loss of identity," she says. "I feel very emotional about this, and I'll always stay involved with it."