At this time in an election campaign, when the polls have closed and we wait for the counting to start, thoughts can sometimes turn to elections of the past. Magnus Grimond is particularly well placed for this and we asked him for some memories.
I suppose that for me growing up in Orkney in the 1960s and 1970s as the son of the M.P. and leader of the Liberal Party, Jo Grimond, elections were part of the family business. Indeed, my first election was in October 1959, a matter of months after I was born and when my father had already been in Parliament for nine years. Legend has it that I was carried around the country in a Moses basket by mother, Laura, while she campaigned in support of my father.
But that is cheating. When Howie asked me to write these words, they were specifically to be about reminiscences of Orkney elections. They were a long time ago and I was quite young, but I do remember them as exciting times. I suppose it is the sort of excitement that many people get from watching sport. Like a football match, there is the thrill of the battle, the uncertainty of the result and – one hopes – the exhilaration of victory. In my case, I also had a very personal interest in the outcome.
Despite that, for some reason, I never attended my father’s “count”. It is funny to think now of how little fanfare there was surrounding the election outcome. I remember my father coming home after the result had been declared in Kirkwall on one occasion and him simply saying as he came through the door: “I slipped in.” There was no Instagram, or Facebook or Whatsapp hyperbole. The only photographic record was usually just a picture in The Orcadian the following week.
Of course, the local paper played a big role in the campaign. Liberal Orkney was a “paper within a paper” rolled out at every election to push the campaign and written by several very talented supporters like Ernest Marwick and Jack Twatt of the old Orkney Herald. This and every part of the Orkney election campaign was masterminded from a gloomy and old-fashioned upstairs dining room in Edwin Eunson’s parents’ house in Victoria Street. The fustiness of the surroundings belied the well-oiled machine that lay behind. For anyone who can remember “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” television series from the 1960s, it was rather like the little tailor’s shop which hid the entrance to the U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. Within that unassuming house, the Liberal committee room was the nerve centre of a crack group of election “agents” who swung into gear once the vote was called.
Helpers and hecklers
I only remember the names of a few indefatigable helpers, like Jeannie Learmonth, Alex Doloughan, Jackie Robertson and Jim Troup. There were many, many more, all through the islands. But the person who towered over the organisation was Edwin Eunson. The campaign centred around public meetings, and a meeting with Edwin in the chair warming up for my father was a treat. With his tall stature, bushy eyebrows and unmistakable guttural, gruff tones, Edwin had an unmatched presence as a chairman. He skewered opponents and relished the cut and thrust of debate, including skilfully neutralising the often noisy hecklers. Edwin never seemed quite at home selling ship’s chandlery and paint at Nicol Spence, his shop in Bridge Street. It came as no surprise to me when he became convener of Orkney Islands Council some years after its launch in the 1970s.
Again, it is odd in these days of social media to think how important were public meetings in the 1960s and 1970s. They could often be very well attended and noisy affairs, notably in Kirkwall and Stromness. Questions addressed to the speakers were not by any means confined to the parochial, ranging across national and international affairs.
My father would also feel the need to go around all the islands to hold meetings, which were mostly in rather draughty parish halls, with the odd Calor Gas heater if you were lucky. A few committed souls would generally show up, but I know on one occasion in Hoy my father faced an empty hall. He had primed Gerry Meyer, editor of The Orcadian and stringer in Orkney for the Press Association, with a copy of the speech to be distributed to the national papers. He must have rung Gerry to say that he couldn’t give the speech but it could still be sent out, to which he was told that if the words hadn’t been spoken he couldn’t possibly give it out. My father claimed that he therefore had to deliver his speech to an empty hall – or possibly to a few Blackface sheep.
Posters and leaflets
The election battle was waged not just with the spoken word but with posters and leaflets too. The back of every road sign was fair game in those days as a hoarding for political advertising. Perhaps the most memorable slogan I remember was “Vote for Jo the man you know”, but often it was just “Vote Jo”. Until quite recently, these war cries could be seen executed in paint on a few places around the county, including my old school in Firth. Where they weren’t painted, a great deal of youthful energy, a certain amount of petrol and a lot of fun was expended in driving round the county tearing down Tory posters and pasting up Liberal ones in their place.
As ever, elections brought out the best in Orkney humour. My favourite was the old lavatory that was erected on a bank by the main Kirkwall-Stromness road, near the Harray road end, with a sign above referring to it as a Tory seat. Running it a close second was “Don’t Fiddle, Ban-Jo” from the Tories.
Not election-related, but along the same lines, the famous visit of Willie Ross, then Labour Secretary of State for Scotland, to Orkney in 1967 elicited an outpouring of Orkney wit. For some reason that I now forget, he was a very unpopular figure in Orkney. As a result, and as far as my memory goes, his visit prompted the first tongue-in-cheek calls for Orkney to go “Back to Norway”. And on the wall of the Tormiston Mill in Stenness was adorned the cry “Free Orkney”, below which a few years later some wit simply added “Butter”. Such was – and I hope still is – the cut and thrust of political debate in Orkney. Witty, independent, well-informed and tolerant. Long may it continue.
