Eulogy for Alex Salmond: He did more for his country than anyone in the nationalist movement

The following is a eulogy delivered at Alex Salmond’s funeral service by Fergus Ewing MSP.

I remember when Alex and Moira came to the Grantown on Spey show in my constituency in 2016.  Arriving a bit late – perhaps not for the first time – but staying on even later. Alex had a cheery chat with anyone and everyone that wanted to speak to him. Whether at an audience with royalty or the humblest person in the land, Alex had time for everyone. As Burns wrote in A Man’s a Man for a’ That: “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp; the man’s the gowd for a’ that.”  

He relished – he loved meeting people – whether in Grantown or any and indeed every part of Scotland. For Alex, in his unstinting effort there were ten thousand Grantown shows…

Every conversation with Alex was peppered with humour and anecdote and laced with shafts of insight. In the early days of our reconvened parliament, I remember him informing me that the SNP CD had just come out. It was a fundraiser – a CD  – ( to younger members that is a compact disc recording music) of songs sung by figures in the SNP then. On it, Alex sang a duet of The Rowan Tree with the famous singer Anne Lorne Gillies. “I was rather good,” he opined. Somewhat gingerly, I asked if my version of Scots Wha Hae was OK. After a  significant pause he said: “Fergus, you belted it out!” Damnable but true…He was right on both counts!  

A keen golfer, on another occasion he confided to me that he was the Open Champion. I said sarcastically that I had not noticed him beating Jack Nicklaus, Seve Ballesteros et al...He then clarified, it was the Isle of Colonsay Open champion…He grinned.

When on TV or radio he always had a plan, as well as a turn of phrase or quip. I laughed out loud one day in June when I heard him speak on the radio about the actions of the former Scottish Tory Leader Douglas Ross, who had to resign after an ill-judged ousting of David Duguid. “It was,” he said, “the first time in Scottish political history when a rat deserts a sinking ship only to seek to clamber aboard a gravy train…”. Each of us have countless stories of his wit, wiliness and warmth and kindness.    

To regain independence for our country it is blindingly obvious that we have to persuade the unconverted. Alex was able to reach out to all groups in society, notably those who previously may have harboured doubts about the party or the viability of independence, and those in the business world.      

He was respected and trusted by everyone in that business world and that mattered. And mattered hugely. For example, in 2008 and 2013 he intervened to save the Grangemouth refinery from closure – and he and he almost alone – succeeded in both cases. I think he may not have told the story in public about the 2013 campaign, though he told me. Suffice to say, that he persuaded both BP and Jim Radcliffe of Ineos to do a deal, and the reason he could do so was that they held him in high esteem. No one else in the SNP could have done that. Now is not the time to comment on the current events. But suffice to say, Alex as FM would have moved heaven and earth to secure the survival of the plant.   

As a leading economist, he was at ease in the boardroom. A leading Scottish banker told me that Alex came in the referendum campaign, to a board meeting in London, and despite the company comprising some of the finest financial brains in the land, they never laid a glove on him.

A friend who was boss at FMC Technologies in Dunfermline was showing Alex round his machine room which had about 80 machinists working on the yellow 'trees' for the subsea sector. There was just one young female worker, and the TV cameras were filming the chat as he went round speak to the workers. The TV homed in on the sole female. On camera, she said she was enjoying the work, even though the only female amongst males. After the TV cameras had turned off having  got their footage, Alex asked what her boyfriend thought of her working there. She said, “He thinks I’m a hairdresser”. Alex guffawed with laughter. That wee vignette illustrated a constant truth: wherever he went, he didn’t have just the perfunctory Starmer-like robotic briefest of chats with members of the public, who are kept at a safe distance. No, no, no. He struck a chord with people he met, leaving them with a story to tell their pals.    

It was his endeavour and his leadership that won over many friends in the Scots Asian community, and established a strong bond with leading figures in the Roman Catholic Church and community.      

He was respected and feared by his political opponents like no one else in the nationalist movement before or since. His good friend David Davis MP would have been here but for another commitment which he could not cancel.

His political achievements were colossal as has been fairly reported – by at least some journalists. In the 1980s the SNP was going nowhere… and indeed on that journey,  travelling at a very slow pace. He transformed the party through many tough years, eventually leading the SNP to victory in 2007. Thence to an overall majority in 2011 and in a strategic performance redolent of a chess Grandmaster, outmanoeuvred the UK establishment in securing the referendum.    

Contrary to some recent and rather pathetic attempts to re-write history, it was Alex who led the referendum campaign – but not just that, he utterly dominated. He put in performances in debates on TV which were brilliant and at times, almost mesmeric.  

Similarly, Alex made the success of the modern SNP.  He secured the jobs of countless MPs and MSPs. He made them. They owe their living to him. Without him, they would never  have been elected.     

As my late father was wont to say, in a tone reminiscent of the Reverend I M Jolly, “Never do anyone a favour or they’ll never forgive you.”

Ladies and gentlemen, given the remarkable achievements of his life, I cannot in this short eulogy do justice to Alex. But something that I can do, working with many others – something that I have sought to do when Alex was with us – is to seek justice for Alex. And for the cause of truth and democracy. In that task I am devoted. But that is for one day…but not for this day.

Gathered here today, with Moira and his family – to whom he was devoted and who so was devoted to him – area many of his true trusted friends. It is an honour, a real honour, to be asked to and to deliver this eulogy.  

Alex did more for his country of Scotland than anyone ever in the history of the nationalist movement. He was our finest leader and a great man. He was my and your dear, dear friend.  

Alex, we will not see your like again.