"LET’S PUT IT TO THE VOTE… £1m private cash for Scottish referendum over Section 28… 23 co-sponsors helping pay for the ballot", cried the Scottish Mail. Keep the Clause’s Jack Cassidy refused to answer the Sunday Herald when they asked what brought this particular business group together and exactly how many were clients of Jack Irvine’s PR company Media House. He dismissed their questions as "irrelevant." Many of those putting their names forward as sponsors of the referendum were part of the Entrepreneur Exchange network, and at least four of them winners of the top entrepreneur award sponsored by The Herald. It seemed like it was all coming together for the Keep the Clause campaign. It used a standard political technique: Scour the opponent’s record for potentially embarrassing views; quote them out of context; don’t be put off by your own shortcomings on the issue; just get together some plausible allies to lend authority to your attack. And here they all were: -
Sir Tom Farmer, a devout Catholic, a personal friend of Cardinal Winning and a papal knight of St Gregory the Great. He was a former chairman of Scotland Against Drugs when the sacked Keep the Clause frontman David Macauley fronted it. Sir Tom Farmer established Kwik-Fit in 1971 and sold it to Ford in 1999 for £1billion. He ploughed £6 million into Hibernian football club where Jack Irvine worked briefly as PR.
Tom Hunter is Scotland’s richest man. He made £260 million selling his Sports Division business to JJB Sports and allows Jack Irvine to handle his personal PR. His 20 per cent stake in the Reality Group, net him a further £7million in May 2000 when the company was sold to Great Universal Stores. He is married with two children. Alf Young, a respected business writer and a personal friend of many of the sponsors of the referendum wrote in The Herald: "Tom Hunter, says it doesn’t really matter whether he thinks Section 28 should be repealed or not. ‘This issue is now one of democracy.’ Come off it, Tom. You believe there is a genuine majority in Scotland for keeping Section 2a. I suspect there is an even more decisive majority in favour of higher taxes on the very wealthy, like you… Were that cause to be given the same PR welly Brian Souter and Keep the Clause have given Section 28, Tom, polls would soon be telling us a decisive majority of Scottish voters want you and I to pay higher taxes. Would you, Brian and all the other sponsors be willing to bankroll a referendum on that issue in the name of democracy? I think I know the answer to that one."
The homophobic convener of the Church of Scotland’s Board of Responsibility, Anne Allen’s mug was now frequently shown in the Daily Record in the form of a soft, friendly tilted portrait that looked like it had been shot in a Hollywood studio in the forties. Forget it! When Edinburgh council were carrying out a survey of homophobia she wanted to know why people who were disgusted at the activities of homosexuals weren’t being surveyed too.
Brian ‘Soapy’ Souter and his wife Betty who are both members of the evangelical Church of the Nazarene based in Kansas, USA. This Church has its own publication house that distributes its propaganda in tongues across the globe. With a personal wealth estimated at the start of 2000 at over £565million, Brian, boss of Stagecoach, was regaled as Scotland’s richest man. That was before hit lit the screens in the City to cry of SELL! SELL! SELL!
Also on the list is Brian Souter’s 57-year-old sister Ann Gloag, Scotland’s richest woman. At her height she was richer even than the Queen - with a personal fortune that has been estimated at more than £100 million and an annual dividend payout of £4 million. She also owns the £2 million Beaufort Castle in Invernesshire and a yellow Bentley with the number plate: 1 ANN. Gloag’s son Jonathan committed suicide in 1999 when he was found hanging from a tree. He stood to inherit the Stagecoach empire, had what the Scottish Mail described as "a loving and pretty wife and three small sons," a £450,000 mansion bought by his mother and, after trying to work in his mother’s business, left to become a chef. Sensitive Jonathan took his domineering mother’s side in her divorce with her husband Robin who set up a bus company of his own before Ann joined forces with her brother to drive him off the road. Robin Gloag’s name wasn’t mentioned at Jonathan’s funeral. Ann and Brian’s elder brother, the Rev David Souter, conducted the service. Ann Gloag made what is believed to be Britain’s biggest donation to a Christian charity giving £4 million to a Danish organisation that converts old car ferries to ‘Mercy Ships’ or floating hospitals, relief centres and missionary bases. She also donates money through her Balcraig charity and her PR is handled by - guess who - Jack Irvine. However hard sympathetic newspapers tried to paint Gloag the caring and benevolent woman, nothing can escape the fact, Keep the Clause spent, according to one estimate, £4 per head of the population of Scotland to persuade them to support a bitter and divisive anti-gay law.
Jim Sillars, former MP for Glasgow Govan and deputy leader of the SNP, now a regular columnist in the homophobic Scottish Sun. He thinks gays need an age of consent as low as possible to keep a "stock of homosexual young males… to ensure a continuous supply of sexual partners. …Sex objects, to be used."
Gerald Weisfeld, connected to Tom Hunter through the retail trade, helped his wife Vera build up the ‘What Everyone Wants’ discount chain before selling it for £50 million.
David Moulsdale is a close friend of Tom Hunter and owner of Optical Express, now the fifth largest chain of opticians in Britain. Jack Irvine’s Media House works for Optical Express. You might now want to get your glasses from Vision Express; Jeffrey Black; Boots; Lizars or knock a pair out from the bottom of a couple of bottles of Irn Bru!
Pat and Alex Grant both set up Norfrost in Caithness, one of the largest refrigeration businesses in the world. Although the couple have no children of their own, Pat’s son by a former marriage made a headline in ScotsGay: "Half-baked Clay," this occasional member of the International Church of Christ posted homophobic posters up in Edinburgh. He (sort of) enjoyed gay sex in the past. He says he was so "tormented by guilt" that he subsequently tried to take his own life. The Sunday Mail once referred to Clay’s mother as the Ice Queen. She is a close friend of Souter’s sister Ann Gloag through the Scottish Business Trust and communicates with her son through solicitor’s letters. Scottish editions of the Sunday Mirror quoted her 35-year-old son Clay: "All I want to do is hug her. I just want us to be like a normal mother and son." Pat Grant said: "I don’t want anything more to do with him. I don’t couldn’t care less what he says or does. I’ve heard it all before. I pay his mortgage and his bills - he costs me £20,000 a year. I am not interested in rebuilding our relationship." Clay has since fallen back into the clutches of fundamental religion.
Hugh Adam, a trustee of the Keep the Clause campaign and a former director of Rangers Football Club. Adam also ran the Rangers Pool Division. After letting off a statutory ‘I’m not homophobic, but…’ rant in the Scottish Sun, proceeded to reveal just that. He told them: "My difficulty is that I cannot persuade myself that homosexuality is other than an abnormality. That does not mean, of course, that its practitioners are diminished in any way as human beings. I know that there are many people with the same views as myself but decline to speak out for fear of being branded politically incorrect. I urge them to come out." Nasty stuff!
John Cameron, a Fife landowner and farmer who was chairman of the National Farmers’ Union of Scotland. He was also railway advisor to Brian Souter’s Stagecoach and director of South-west trains, best remembered for its refusal to grant the partner of a lesbian subsidised travel.
Donald Macdonald, who had worked his way to the top at Stakis Hotels before he established a chain of hotels of his own, Bathgate-based Macdonald Hotels. In June 2000 they announced a £100m joint venture with the Bank of Scotland and Royal Bank of Scotland to build 10 upmarket city centre hotels. Shop around; there must be better beds to shag in! Macdonald announced an 8 per cent increase in underlying pre-tax profits to £13.8 million in 1999. Macdonald Hotels is engaged in a joint venture with Sheffield University for a 110-bedroom hotel as well as a number of other ambitious hotel projects. After the announcement, Macdonald shares raised their total dividend by 9 per cent to 6.0p with a final pay-out of 4.0p. Its shares firmed half-a-penny to 178p. Asked if the company was vulnerable to takeover Macdonald said the board owned more than 30 per cent and there was probably another 20 per cent or 30 per cent in "very friendly hands". They include Standard Life, Scottish Equitable, Scottish Mutual and Edinburgh Fund Managers. Their rival is Thistle Hotels.
George Russell, chief executive of Scotland the Brand which promotes Scottish products was approached by Brian Souter with whom he has long-standing personal and church connections. "I’m not in the same church, but we follow the same Saviour," he told the Sunday Herald.
Sir David McNee, formerly Chief Constable of Strathclyde Police and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1977 to 1983 when Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.
Fergus Ewing, an SNP MSP for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber and deputy shadow minister for tourism, small business and the Highlands and Islands.
Lord MacKay of Clashfern, is a retired former Lord Chancellor and was a member of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Say no more!
David McLetchie, leader of the Scottish Conservatives and MSP for Lothian was asked to sign up to this list by Keep the Clause, leaving only enough time check with a couple of his colleagues before doing so. Not all the party appeared to be entirely happy with McLetchie aligning himself so closely with this outfit.
Andrew Welsh is chairman of the powerful audit committee of the Scottish parliament.
Bill Hughes, once the Treasurer and Deputy Chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party, a key figure in the Scottish division of the CBI and an elder in the Church of Scotland. He was also an architect of Scottish Enterprise as well as a chairman of Grampian Holdings, a company Jack Irvine has done PR work for. The Scottish Mail, proclaiming itself "the favourite newspaper of Britain’s leading businessmen" claimed: "It was his Christian duty to support moves to retain Section 28." Then allowed him to let off a tirade of militant gobbledegook: "As a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of marriage and that the traditional family unit is critically important. It is the ideal state of affairs in which to propagate a child. This stance is strongly taken by our minister, Alistair Horne, and the membership of the church are totally behind him." Nurse? Screens!
Neil Hood, Professor of Business Policy, director of Strathclyde University’s International Business Unit and advisor to Scottish Enterprise, a non-executive director of Kwik-Fit - Sir Tom Farmer’s former company - and of Grampian Holdings whose former chairman is Bill Hughes. Neil Hood is also a lay preacher.
Vali Hussein, vice-principal of the Islamic Academy of Scotland, which promotes research in Islamic Jerusalem, told the Scottish Mail how his deep religious convictions led him to take a stand. "I firmly believe the promotion of homosexual acts is completely immoral and is a terrible thing to teach innocent children in schools. I do not want such things in schools. We respect family values and want children to grow up in a normal environment and not be brainwashed into thinking something abnormal is normal." Fundamental Muslims stone lesbians, gays, bisexuals and people of transgender to death. Great fun for the kids!
The Scottish Mail swaggered: "There is not a fanatic, a crank or a so-called ‘homophobe’ among them." The Daily Record crowed: "This time, Souter doesn’t stand alone. He had put together an impressive bunch of backers from every walk of Scottish society who share his rage at the Government’s arrogant refusal to listen to public opinion over gay sex lessons in schools. Along with church leaders, they include academics…" yes, all two of them!
You must have been surprised to hear, that the Daily Record - accused of homophobia even in newspapers sympathetic to Section 28 - in an award ceremony organised by media and marketing magazine The Drum, was made Scottish newspaper of the year for best news coverage! The tabloid beat its chest at the annual Royal Bank of Scotland newspaper awards: "The Record continues to be a caring, family newspaper," it crowed. The chairman of the judging panel was former Herald editor Arnold Kemp, who writes for the Observer in Scotland and who recently suggested Brian Souter might purchase The Herald. Other judges were Boston Globe editor Matthew Storin; Endell Laird, former editor of the Daily Record; Cameron Grant, former chairman of the Institute of Public Relations; Giles Brooksbank, of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising; and David Appleton, head of group media relations at the Royal Bank of Scotland. (The chairman of the Scottish Daily Record, Sir Angus Grossart, is also vice-chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland and managing director of merchant bank Noble Grossart whose portfolio includes Souter’s Stagecoach. Interviewed in the Sunday Herald, he said: "I have a lot of respect for Brian and… he has the right to do this"). The former editor of the Daily Record, Endell Laird said: "The Daily Record takes news stories and gives them a good punchy angle." Some of its victims could testify to that!
