Andrew Whitaker: Who will Salmond bring to book?

It may be unfair to pre-judge the former first minister’s account of the independence referendum, says Andrew Whitaker
Alex Salmonds book might reveal clashes with figures such as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Picture: Robert PerryAlex Salmonds book might reveal clashes with figures such as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Picture: Robert Perry
Alex Salmonds book might reveal clashes with figures such as Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. Picture: Robert Perry

GEORGE Orwell wrote that “autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats”.

The publication later this month of Alex Salmond’s eagerly anticipated inside account of the independence referendum The Dream Shall Never Die: 100 Days That Changed Scotland Forever is almost certainly a prelude to the release of the former SNP leader’s full memoirs at some time in the near future.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But what exactly should we expect in the literary works of Mr Salmond – both with his imminent account of the referendum and then later his own full life story?

How will it compare in the pantheon of the works of other big political beasts such as Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, both of whom published expensively priced hefty biogs amid a blaze of publicity and controversy, but which were soon to be found on the shelves of cut-price bookshops?

Perhaps Mr Salmond’s opponents fear something reminiscent of the speech delivered by the wonderful sitcom creation Father Ted Crilly, so memorably played by the late Dermot Morgan, who used his acceptance of a “golden cleric award” for alleged services to the priesthood to settle old scores with old enemies he had encountered over the years.

Or maybe Mr Salmond will follow a narrative reported in The Scotsman several years ago, when he seized on the release of the Thatcher biopic starring Meryl Streep to claim he had played a significant role in bringing about the removal of the former prime minister from office.

To slightly recap, Mr Salmond said a Commons intervention by him as a young SNP MP in the late 1980s “helped to kick-start” Thatcher’s departure from office.

The audacious claim about his role in Thatcher’s downfall centred around an episode at Westminster in 1988 when Mr Salmond was thrown out of the Commons chamber after he interrupted the then chancellor Nigel Lawson in mid-flow, speaking out against the controversial poll tax.

Perhaps there will be more similar such accounts of Mr Salmond’s clashes with other political heavyweights.

It’s possible to hear the names being dropped already, with talk of Mr Salmond’s titanic clashes with figures such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Is it possible that alongside his self-styled role in Thatcher’s removal from power, the reader will be illuminated of further Salmond history making and closeness to major global political figures?

Perhaps we’ll learn about a hitherto unknown “special relationship” between Mr Salmond and Bill Clinton or even the great late Nelson Mandela.

Joking apart it’s worth asking just how worthwhile, reliable and readable memoirs really are from leading politicians ?

There are some political biographies that just sink without trace and accounts from Tory ministers from the Thatcher and Major years like Kenneth Baker and Norman Fowler probably fall into the bottom division in this way.

Somewhat less turgid, are those from fairly heavyweight figures like David Blunkett, who despite having an inspiring back story of overcoming blindness and poverty to become one of the leading politicians of his generation produced a memoir that was not exactly one for the annals.

Then there are those that probably land the writer with a hefty wedge of cash from the publisher, but which tell us little we did not already know and simply serve the purpose of saying “I was right all along”, as well as carrying out the task of hammering opponents.

Mr Blair’s book springs to mind in this category, as does Thatcher’s. It’s probably this division that Mr Salmond’s literary work sits alongside in terms of financial reward for the author and publicity.

So what then have been good political books ? The political diaries of Labour’s Tony Benn and those of former Tory Minister Alan Clark are both rightly viewed as good and illuminating accounts from politicians on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

To take Orwell’s quote on the best biographies being about failure, the fairly obscure, but sharp witted memoirs by the late Tory “wet” Julian Critchley entitled A Bag of Boiled Sweets fits the bill there.

Critchley’s story of a politician perennially confined to the back-benches due to his position on the liberal wing of the Conservative Party during the Thatcher years, is a somewhat forlorn story of defeat and humility in a style that it’s hard to imagine Mr Salmond writing about even for a moment.

However, the most well received political books in the last year or two were probably the two volumes of memoirs by former Labour minister Alan Johnson – This Boy and Please Mister Postman.

Mr Johnson’s books – for those who have not yet read the works – are that rare thing for a politician, in that there is not the remotest hint of self-absorption or self importance.

Covering, Mr Johnson’s poverty-stricken London childhood, a spell as a shelf-stacker in his teens, his job as a postman and his rise through the postal workers’ union takes an “everyman” approach to his biography – again something it’s hard to picture coming from Mr Salmond.

Of course. we have yet to see the content of Mr Salmond’s book on the referendum, much less his memoirs further down the road and for that reason it’s arguably not entirely fair to pre-judge how the former first minister will tell his tale.

But we’ve already got the controversy about the deal with publisher William Collins – an arm of HarperCollins, which is in turn a subsidiary of Mr Murdoch’s News Corporation, rather than a Scottish publishing house.

Mr Salmond appears content to turn a blind eye to the media mogul’s anti-trade union stance and decades-long opposition to the social democracy, which the nationalists purport to advocate. It’s also hard to imagine that Mr Salmond will not come away from such a deal “well minted” for the serialisation rights in one of Mr Murdoch’s British titles.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It’s perhaps doubtful then whether Mr Salmond’s book deal would have met with the approval of George Orwell and his “trusted” biography test.

FOLLOW US

SCOTSMAN TABLET AND MOBILE APPS