I was elected as an SNP MSP in 2003…and expelled by the party in 2004. That has to be some sort of a record. It only took them a year to decide they had to get rid of me. I was the first SNP parliamentarian to be expelled by the party and the first MSP of any party to be expelled. My ‘offence’ that led to my expulsion was to have publicly criticised the ‘leadership’ of John Swinney – the Doyen of Devolution – and to have argued that the SNP should be demanding ‘independence, nothing less’, rather than seeking to manage the devolved Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom.
My time at the Scottish Parliament actually started in its first days, in 1999. I was employed as the Parliamentary Assistant to the legendary Kay Ullrich. In addition to constituency work, I helped Kay in her role as the SNP Shadow Minister for Health and Community Care. In 2000, when Kay became the SNP Chief Whip, I moved with her to the Whips Office and took on the role of SNP Whips Administrator. This position meant I was privy to a lot of sensitive information about SNP MSPs. In my autobiography – Was It Something I Said? – I set-out some of the issues we had to deal with in the Whips Office. I’ll refer to all three of my books at the end of this piece.
Back in those very early days of the Scottish Parliament, I remember having a conversation with a few SNP MSPs about how many people on the SNP floor of the parliamentary offices would
actually be working for the other side, for the British State. It seemed to us to be a certainty that there would be British State assets amongst us, both MSPs and staffers. It was, and remains, insane to think that the British State would not have infiltrated the SNP, a political party that claimed to have as its raison d’etre the break-up of the British State.
The difference between those early days of the Scottish Parliament and today, is that the British State assets in the SNP have, over the intervening years, risen-through the ranks and now hold senior positions that have allowed them to influence party policies and direction, such as adopting a lack of urgency in delivering independence…and that’s putting it mildly.
John Swinney has always been a devolutionist. He once told me he admired what Tony Blair had done with the Labour Party, and his ambition was to re-create that transformation with the SNP, to create New SNP. His plan was for the SNP to copy New Labour by moving the party from its traditional, moderate left-of-centre position to adopting a moderate, right-of-centre position. As happened with New Labour, Swinney’s vision was for New SNP to become a Tory-lite party, and that is what happened when he succeeded Alex Salmond as party leader in 2000.
Swinney almost killed the SNP, which was why I spoke-out publicly, calling for him to resign and for Alex Salmond to return as party leader.
I was expelled in 2004, just before Swinney resigned as leader. He orchestrated my expulsion, which he demanded should happen before he tendered his resignation. Within a couple of weeks, Alex Salmond returned and saved the SNP.
I was approached about re-joining the party, but I asked why I would want to be a member of a political party that had broken its own constitution and rules in order to expel me, and I declined the invitation. I served the remaining three-years of the parliamentary term as an Independent MSP, sitting beside a legend of the independence movement who also found herself outside of the SNP, a woman who became a great friend of mine, Margo MacDonald.
Having saved the SNP, Alex Salmond turned around the party’s fortunes and took Scotland to the brink of independence in the 2014 referendum. Sadly, the immediate aftermath of the referendum saw what I believe was a rare error on Alex’s part: he decided he should stand down as leader. I don’t think he had to stand down, but as a man of integrity he probably felt he failed to deliver for the independence movement. I think that judgement was too harsh. If Alex had remained leader of the SNP in 2014, I firmly believe Scotland would be an independent country today.
What we got when Alex stood down, though, was a return to devolutionist leadership of the SNP.
Nicola Sturgeon was the new leader, but Devo-John (Swinney) was back in a very influential position. This also brings us back to British State infiltration of the SNP.
Within espionage circles there are four accepted reasons for why people betray a cause. The acronym for those reasons is MICE, which stands for: M – money; I – ideology; C- compromise; and E – ego. Compromise is, essentially, blackmail. I’ll leave it to others to decide who within the SNP might fall into each category.
It’s also worth mentioning that there are different types of traitors. Not everyone is an agent of MI5 or Special Branch: some are known as ‘assets’. Their job is simply to listen to what they hear from colleagues or party members, and pass-back anything they think would be of interest to the British State. Agents are different: they have been placed within an organisation, such as the SNP, and have been given specific tasks to carry out. Tasks such as undermining the organisation and neutralising its effectiveness in challenging the control of the British State.
How many British State agents and assets are there within the SNP? Who knows? Well, obviously, the British State knows. I will say, though, that I remember reading a statement made by a former Special Branch agent who had infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP was a tiny left-wing political party, but it had been so heavily infiltrated that the agent recorded in his statement that he felt when he attended some meetings most people there were either MI5 or Special Branch. Agents and Assets didn’t know each other, they were all carrying out their roles independently.
If the British State had so heavily infiltrated a tiny socialist party, how much attention would it have directed to a Scottish political party that had risen to the brink of power? Today, after all that has happened, I still see SNP loyalists claim the party has not been infiltrated. That assertion is just insane.
During ‘the troubles’ in the north of Ireland, the British State had infiltrated the IRA to such an extent that one its agents was a man called Freddie Scapiticci, codenamed ‘Steaknife’. Scapiticci was the IRA’s Head of Internal Security, and he was an MI5 agent.
In the 1970s, when British governments feared powerful trade unions, particularly the National Union of Mineworkers, a Special Branch agent was a man called Joe Gormley: he was the National President of the Mineworkers Union. You can’t get higher than National President, and he was a Special Branch asset. In the bitter, year-long Miners’ Strike of 1984-85, papers prepared for then Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher showed MI5 were receiving reports from one of their agents called Roger Windsor. Windsor was the Chief Executive of the NUM. Still, though, SNP loyalists argue the British State has not infiltrated the party.
In 1984, a woman called Cathy Massiter went public about her former work as an MI5 officer. One of the reasons Cathy Massiter gave for leaving MI5 was that the job had changed, she said it had become more political. She added that the role of MI5 had changed from counter-espionage to domestic surveillance.
Recently, I spoke with a senior serving-officer of Police Scotland. They spoke on condition of anonymity and stated there were some questions they would not answer. I started the interview with the core question: has Police Scotland infiltrated the SNP? The officer replied that they could not answer that question. Before I said anything more, the officer added, ‘Although, by giving that answer, I have probably told you what you want to know’.
Police Scotland does not actually have a Special Branch, but if you press them on the matter, they do admit to having officers who carry out duties that are normally associated with the work of a Special Branch. One other thing the Police Scotland officer said chimed with what Cathy Massiter said when she left MI5. The officer said that since the creation of Police Scotland, the job had become much more political. They felt that the most senior officers in the force were taking direction from politicians and Civil Servants. They also offered the opinion that the same relationships existed in the Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service.
If that is the case, it certainly explains some recent prosecutions in Scotland. It would also throw light onto the comment by outgoing Police Scotland Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, when he told The Times newspaper that, “our close relationship with Nicola Sturgeon complicated the criminal investigation into the SNP’s finances”.
I used to know Nicola well. We are both from North Ayrshire and cut our political-teeth fighting a dominant Labour Party in our local area. We also later served together as SNP MSPs, albeit for only a year, before the party expelled me. Nicola’s leadership of the SNP – with the input of Devo-John Swinney and Angus ‘BBC World Service’ Robertson – has returned the party to the brink of disaster. Back in the mists of time, I once suggested that Swinney and his clique were not interested in independence. They would take it if it fell into their laps, but they were never going to fight for it. All they wanted was to get their backsides onto the back-seats of Ministerial Mondeos and to be ‘important’ Government Ministers in a devolved Scottish government within the British Union.
How captured the SNP has become was encapsulated for me in the final letter Nicola Sturgeon wrote as First Minister of Scotland. It was a letter of resignation to the English King, Charles III. The final sentence of the letter, just above Nicola Sturgeon’s signature, read: ‘I have the honour to be, Sir, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant’. No-one who sees Scotland as a progressive, potentially independent country, could have signed their name to such a grovelling letter to the pinnacle of the English/British establishment. To also see Nicola and then Humza Yousaf bow their heads to the English King confirmed the total capture of the SNP by the British State.
When I saw Nicola’s letter and the bowing and scraping to the English King, I was reminded of an incident that took place in Ireland in 1916, shortly after the Easter Rising by Irish freedom-fighters. Edinburgh-born James Connolly was the Commander of the Irish Citizens Army at the rising. He had been so badly wounded during the fighting that the British had to strap him to a chair in order to execute him by firing squad. A few days later, Lillie Connolly, James’ widow, went to the British headquarters to retrieve her husband’s effects. She was met by the man who had ordered James’ execution, Major General Sir John Maxwell, who held out his hand as Lillie approached him. Lillie held his gaze and her hands remained firmly behind her back.
One of the many messages Scots need to learn from Ireland is the actions of Lillie Connolly. Some things do not deserve civility or respect or obedience. She faced-down the authority and power of the English. While Scotland has leaders who bow to the English King, and who sign letters as the King’s ‘humble and obedient servant’, Scotland will never be an independent country.
The SNP is completely compromised, it has been captured and controlled by the British State. I’m now in my sixties and for the first time in my life I am thinking that I might not see independence. In the last two years, four of my best friends have died. They all supported independence and voted SNP. They never lived to see the sun rise on the morning of Independence Day. I know all of us have lost such friends who fought so hard over the years for independence, but never lived to see it.
The reality we face means we may have to go back to square-one and start all over again, build the independence movement all over again, through the Alba Party led by Alex Salmond. There are so many of us who built the SNP from a party on the fringes of the political spectrum to a party the people of Scotland trusted sufficiently to put them into government. If we have to do it all over again, we can. This time, though, we need to look-out for those whose loyalties lie not with the interests of Scotland, but in maintaining British State control of our people and assets.
You have to hand it to the British State, it has played a blinder: today’s SNP is so corrupted by British agents that it has sidelined independence and embraced gender policies that make the party unelectable. For the British State that is job done.
The people of Scotland are the sovereign power, not the SNP. In terms of the Independence Movement, the SNP is the past. The future is Scotland United for Independence. One pro-independence candidate in each constituency that the people can unite behind. Despite the SNP, independence is still achievable.
NOTES
My life-story is told in my first book – Was It Something I Said? – including my time in politics and what actually happened during my time in the SNP Whips Office, and as a Member of the Scottish Parliament. My two other books, Outspoken – Part One and Outspoken– Part Two, take us through the eventful last ten-years of Scottish and UK politics, from the Independence Referendum to the present day and the British State capture of the SNP. All three are available from Amazon Books. If you don’t want to buy from Amazon, they are also available from Lulu Publishing.
This article was first published in August 2023 by barrheadboy.com and grousebeater.wordpress.com.
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