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Fury at diplomat’s contempt for Tartan Army
HOW I hope it’s only superstition that the spirit in which we welcome the new year determines our success or otherwise for the following 12 months.
It’s a few years now since I made my own shortbread and swept and scrubbed right up to the bells and nothing terrible has happened. So maybe I’ll get away with starting 2009 with murder in my heart.
When I should have been looking forward with optimism and determination, knowing I’d finished off the business of the old year to the best of my ability, I’ve done little but mull over events of 30 years ago.
The cabinet papers were published for 1978, the year Scotland went to Argentina convinced we had one of the world’s best football teams and came home sadder, but wiser, fans of the beautiful game.
Although Ally MacLeod’s boys didn’t get through to the final stages there was that magic result against the Netherlands and Archie Gemmill’s goal.
Therapy
But it still took a long time to get over it and part of the recovery therapy was for Scots fans to develop a whole new strand of humour about their team’s near misses and sometimes crazy results.
They re-invented themselves as the world’s best supporters so the disappointment of Argentina was absorbed — until we read the private notes recording what high-flying civil servants and diplomats really thought of the Scots.
Hugh Carless, British charge d’affaires in Buenos Aires, whom the Scots had every right to expect to be supportive and sympathetic, wrote to his political bosses in London derisively dismissing the Scots as “provincials”.
His comments didn’t say we had rotten luck in having Willie Johnston sent home for taking his usual, over-the-counter pills for hay fever. His despatch recorded not a word of support for the bewildered player nor an account of any attempt by the embassy to bolster the team’s morale.
The 30-year gap between the events and the publication of the cabinet papers recounting the Establishment view did nothing to disguise the contempt in which we were held.
Nor did the time lag diminish my feeling of outrage on reading the proof of the snobbishness and lack of respect shown to the Scots team and fans.
Girning
But my complaints aren’t all historical. Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, the cabinet’s man in Scotland, is currently girning about The Homecoming, promoted by the Scottish Government to welcome Scots scattered across the globe in the year of Burns’s 250th anniversary.
He accuses team Holyrood of failing to use the services of British embassies, by implication much-needed by the “provincials.” I’m sure some would give support, but I’m just as sure British diplomats will still have some 21st-century Carlesses in their ranks.
But if I was angered and outraged in turn by this year’s spilling of beans from 30 years ago my support was confirmed for the Freedom of Information laws.
We now don’t have to wait to ask questions about the armed forces’ resources.
In contrast to only now learning of the two days’ worth of ammunition available for the RAF in 1978, and the choice of whether to defend Faslane or the English Channel, before defeat by Soviet forces after less than a fortnight we soon learned troops in Iraq had to buy boots, share body-armour and use unstable weapons.
MPs in the Wilson and Callaghan era were kept in the dark about such things.
Today’s MPs, however, have the means of finding out the truth and therefore the responsibility of dragging into the light for judgement by the people the true facts about further involvement in Afghanistan.
But my appetite’s been whetted. I can’t wait to read the cabinet papers for 1979 . . . the year of the rigged referendum.
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Margo
MacDonald
