The nation mourns the best taken from among us. It is as though there is a catch in Scotland’s breath.
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Ian Hamilton, you are outrageous, how dare you write words that raise the heckles in my neck, stirring passions I had nearly forgotten - more to the point, how outrageously feeble has been the national response? It appears the useless glitterati of the Beckham’s deserve more coverage than a leader of men, and the once proud labour party is reduced to near pathetic silence.
Ian has it about right here. There is not much that needs saying.
“The man’s the gowd for a’ that”
There is a fulsome tribute to Jimmy Reid in The Herald today with a text of his rectorial speech. He would surely have grinned to see all the members of the Labour Party, many of them supporters of the New Labour that the same man rejected, queuing up to pay their respects. I wonder how many of them phoned Rothesay for a chat with the nat!
I only spoke to Jimmy once although I saw him occasionally at SNP gatherings. He was a member of the Isle of Bute Branch.
I was sitting on a bench on Oban Peir on a late summer’s evening several years ago watching the sun go down in the west when he sat at the other end of the bench, silent in his thoughts. I didn’t recognise him at first but we got into conversation touched base and he told me his mother was from Mull. I am sure that is what he told me although I have since read that it was his mother’s father that was actually from the island. I told him that my father’s mother was a native of Tobermory but had to leave to work in service on the mainland. He nodded in understanding stating that it was all too common an experience. “Maybe we’re related? ” he said. However tenuous the link I would like to think so.
Jimmy once said that that the answer to the question; how much does a man get if he buys ten things for a shilling each and sells them at two shillings each should be ‘thirty days’.
To the students [of Glasgow University] I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
I wonder how many lives this speech changed. rip Jimmy
August 11th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
For a very short period of time Jimmy Reid was my journeyman. I had always hoped that one day I would meet him again. Alas !!!!!
August 12th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
God bless Jimmy Reid.
A rare icon of real Scottish values and political principle.
Will we ever know his like again?
August 12th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Ian Hamilton, you are outrageous, how dare you write words that raise the heckles in my neck, stirring passions I had nearly forgotten - more to the point, how outrageously feeble has been the national response? It appears the useless glitterati of the Beckham’s deserve more coverage than a leader of men, and the once proud labour party is reduced to near pathetic silence.
August 13th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Ian has it about right here. There is not much that needs saying.
“The man’s the gowd for a’ that”
There is a fulsome tribute to Jimmy Reid in The Herald today with a text of his rectorial speech. He would surely have grinned to see all the members of the Labour Party, many of them supporters of the New Labour that the same man rejected, queuing up to pay their respects. I wonder how many of them phoned Rothesay for a chat with the nat!
I only spoke to Jimmy once although I saw him occasionally at SNP gatherings. He was a member of the Isle of Bute Branch.
I was sitting on a bench on Oban Peir on a late summer’s evening several years ago watching the sun go down in the west when he sat at the other end of the bench, silent in his thoughts. I didn’t recognise him at first but we got into conversation touched base and he told me his mother was from Mull. I am sure that is what he told me although I have since read that it was his mother’s father that was actually from the island. I told him that my father’s mother was a native of Tobermory but had to leave to work in service on the mainland. He nodded in understanding stating that it was all too common an experience. “Maybe we’re related? ” he said. However tenuous the link I would like to think so.
August 17th, 2010 at 1:20 pm
There will be no bevying. and there wasn’t.
Yes indeed Ian he was a good player. And he won the match.
August 19th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Jimmy once said that that the answer to the question; how much does a man get if he buys ten things for a shilling each and sells them at two shillings each should be ‘thirty days’.
October 8th, 2010 at 8:56 am
To the students [of Glasgow University] I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”
I wonder how many lives this speech changed. rip Jimmy