It's all pomp and protests

Published on Saturday 17 May 2008 10:33

IT'S that time of year again when the High Street is thronged with people in dog collars and traffic is momentarily held back for limousines sweeping up to The Mound.

The Church of Scotland General Assembly is a regular May fixture in Edinburgh. The gathering of ministers and elders is a mixture of pomp and ceremony.

Gordon Brown's visit to the assembly today has stirred memories of Margaret Thatcher's famous Sermon on The Mound 20 years ago. But she was not the first Prime Minister to address the Kirk's annual gathering.

Clement Attlee came in 1946, Harold Wilson was at the assembly in 1968 and Jim Callaghan visited in 1978. Nor was 1988 Mrs Thatcher's first visit. She had been seven years earlier, when hundreds of protesters gathered and an egg was thrown as her car arrived.

Hostile crowds were there again in 1988 – home rule campaigners and anti-poll tax demonstrators.

Inside, before Mrs Thatcher was invited to the lectern, five ministers came forward to register their objection to her speaking.

The Moderator, Professor James Whyte, presented her with two Kirk reports highly critical of her policies and said they reflected a Christian understanding of the distribution of wealth.

Former East Lothian minister the Rev Paraic Reamonn, one of the five dissenters, recalls: "Jim Whyte's response at the end of her sermon was a masterpiece of ironic understatement. I doubt if Mrs Thatcher understood either, but the assembly appreciated it."

Prime Ministers and other VIPs who attend normally do so not at the direct invitation of the Church but as guests of the Lord High Commissioner, who is the Queen's representative to the assembly.

George Reid, the former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, is this year's Lord High Commissioner.

They take up residence at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, host a garden party, invite distinguished figures for dinner and visit hospitals, schools and projects on behalf of the Queen.

The Queen attended in person in 1969, 1977 and 2002. She appointed Princess Anne as Lord High Commissioner in 1996 and Prince Charles in 2000.

Among the big religious names to have addressed the assembly was veteran American evangelist Billy Graham. His visit, in 1991, when he also held rallies at Murrayfield, brought back memories of his 1955 crusade when he packed Glasgow's Kelvin Hall every night for six weeks and addressed 30,000 at Tynecastle.

Dr Graham's 1991 visit prompted a protest by Protestant fundamentalists, who threw 30 pieces of silver at his feet over his relations with the Catholic Church.

The group was led by Pastor Jack Glass, a regular demonstrator outside the assembly. In 1976 he staged a mock hanging of an effigy of the Blessed John Ogilvie, after he had been declared Scotland's first post-Reformation saint.

He was a leading opponent of the visit by Pope John Paul II to Scotland in 1982, which included a symbolic handshake between the Pontiff and the then-Moderator, the Rev Dr John McIntyre, under the statue of John Knox.

But as well as the VIP visits, the politics and the protests, the assembly has also had to deal with controversial business – rows between ministers and congregations or whether someone should be accepted into the ministry.

One case was that of the bagpiping minister, the Rev Alan Cameron, a familiar figure playing for tourists at The Mound. As Alan Hasson, he had been Grand Master of the Loyal Orange Lodge of Scotland, but appealed to be allowed back after 24 years, saying he had "sinned grievously".

The Assembly turned down his plea, after it was argued Mr Cameron's ministry was better "on the broad, open, street-level basis" rather than in a parish.