As is clear from our immediate and excoriating piece, we hold no brief to defend the conduct of the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Liberal Democrat, Alistair Carmichael MP. Nor do we see any conceivably acceptable excuse for his part, during the General Election campaign, in the concoction and ‘sharing’ with the press of a false story about what Scotland’s First Minister said to the French Ambassador.
However, our unequivocal condemnation of Mr Carmichael does not mean that we are blind to the hypocrisy of the organised lynch mob demanding – for their own party political advantage – that he stand down from his seat.
Seeking the validation of one’s constituents in a by-election is always the honourable thing to do – but was also not chosen by Scotland’s former First Minister, Alex Salmond, in the series of much more serious direct lies he was forced to admit he told the Scottish electorate in the indyreg 1 campaign.
These lies were designed to buy votes on false currency to take a country into an independence it could not economically have survived under the dodgy prospectus on offer. Carmichael’s execrable stunt was not in that league.
However, there is an orchestrated hunting expedition by the SNP to run Carmichael out of Orkney and Shetland. This would get a by-election the SNP would summon the troops to win, taking them to 57 out of 59 Scottish seats at Westminster and with no Scottish Liberal Democrat presence whatsoever in that parliament.
This is politics and this is a democracy, so the SNP are at liberty to try any game that might work to their advantage.
But let us be clear that there is no moral high ground here. Mr Salmond’s lying antics are a matter of historical record and cannot support his ‘shock, horror’ stance on Mr Carmichael’s activities. And Mr Salmond is not the only one whose virgin clothing should be seen for what it is.
Another pot entered the list of bold warriors against the leaking kettle a few days ago: SNP Highlands and Islands List MSP, Mike Mackenzie.
On 24th May, BBC Scotland reported that Mr McKenzie was calling for Mr Carmichael to stand down, saying that the MP’s constituents ‘deserve to know the whole truth and in my view would be best served by Mr Carmichael standing down’.
Ironically, Mr Mackenzie has been deployed by his party to work up the SNP activist brigade in Orkney and Shetland since his surprise election from the Regional List vote in the SNP’s majority triumph in the Scottish Election in 2011.
That deployment was understood to have been driven in part by the need to keep him largely away from Argyll and Bute, where he lives and where his personal and business behaviours have made his acceptance difficult in areas of the constituency.
Something of a Jekyll and Hyde character, Mr Mackenzie is genuinely motivated by learning but has a pragmatic approach to business – in which, of course, he is not alone in accepting that others can lose in their association with him.
He is also prone to insisting on having his own way and he has a proven temper to help him get it.
In one of these episodes, he used physical violence and threats against a frail and elderly ferryman, George Doyle, who made a complaint to the police which was investigated. Mr Mackenzie was interviewed by the police; afterwards issuing an apology and an explanation that he had been frustrated with the council and had taken it out on the ferryman.
It has to be said that only a bully would have chosen to take anything out on a thin and elderly man who was clearly in no position to defend himself.
Following this incident, Mr Doyle – who had been working the ferry alone in the periodic lack of an appointed co-ferryman, wrote to his employers Argyll and Bute Council.
He described himself as ‘terrified’, asked for protection and said that he was not prepared to work the ferry alone again - for fear of being vulnerable to repeated assault from Mr Mackenzie.
This incident came to our attention when we were investigating a campaign to force out of his job the latest departure – newer than Mr Doyle – in the line of Easdale ferrymen who also had stories to tell.
Our concern was twofold.
We were exercised by the series of campaigns against ferrymen who refused to work at the bidding of a local community company and its officers rather than of their employer, Argyll and Bute Council. Six or possibly now seven Easdale ferrymen have left their job, with Mr Doyle’s departure directly attributed to the history of his treatment by Mr Mackenzie.
We were worried by the extent to which the council, with precedent after precedent to go on, oft left these workers with no protection whatsoever against recurring, persistent and sustained campaigns of harrasment and abuse, sometimes of the most malevolent possible kind. [All of this is published and in the public domain.]
Since Mr Mackenzie has now chosen to join the holier-than-thou predation pack chasing Mr Carmichael, For Argyll no longer feels any need to offer him the shelter of anonymity we had earlier done in the series of articles we published in early 2014 on the treatment of Easdale ferrymen in which he played a prominent, if not a leading part.
The incident with Mr Doyle is described below, as published in a section of the article of 16th February 2014, Indictment of council handling of Easdale junta’s serial abuse of ferrymen.
This was also not an isolated incident in aggression by Mr Mackenzie. On one occasions he picked a physical fight with an OAP outside the island’s bar; and he offered violence to something like five residents on different occasions, with a couple of these incidents also investigated by the police.
Council culpability, offer of violence to ferryman and police involvement
An example of the gravity of the situation ferrymen have been left to deal with in arrangements for late ferry services comes from an incident where Mr Doyle was subject to abuse at a level that he had to report the matter to police for his own protection.
This came on 21st December 2002, long before Eilean Eisdeal bought the harbour on behalf of the entire community but at a time when one of its then directors in particular was manifestly out of control in the extremity of his demands and his behaviour.
From July 2002, Argyll and Bute Council had known that Mr Doyle’s then co-ferryman was due to retire in mid-December that year.
They took no action to replace that member of staff in timely fashion.
This meant that, from the retirement of his co-ferryman in mid-December 2002 to early January 2003, a period of about three weeks and at a lively time of the year, Mr Doyle was working alone on the ferry, every single day.
At this time the ferry service was single-manned and operated year round ‘on demand’. This required presence and readiness to sail at any time within working hours. The council organised no relief for Mr Doyle. If he needed a second man or cover for any reason he had to organise this himself.
On 21st December 2002, a Saturday – during the period that Mr Doyle was single-handedly running the ferry, the rampant director of Eilean Eisdeal approached him in the morning and demanded an 11pm ferry that night. Mr Doyle had had no indication that the council had been asked for this service or had agreed it. He said he coudn’t do it. He was single handed and physically could not take on extra night-time work on top of what was already a two man job.
The director in question said nothing, got on the ferry over to the mainland and when he later returned, waited until the only other passenger had reached the top of the slipway. He then turned aggressively to Mr Doyle, grabbed his lapels and pulled him close, face to face, and spat out: ‘You’ll be down on that slip for the eleven o’clock ferry. If you’re not, I’ll get you. You won’t know how, or when. But I’ll get you’.
George Doyle says that he was ‘terrified’. He reported the incident to the police. For Argyll has seen the police report which Mr Doyle had obtained later under Freedom of Information. It records that a police officer attended on the Sunday morning and that the man concerned had: ‘a grievance with Argyll and Bute Council and conceded that he had taken it out on Mr Doyle inappropriately.’
It reports that the man had ‘agreed to apologise to Mr Doyle and, on checking, the report confirmed Mr Doyle as saying this was accepted.’ We will return in a future article to swift and malicious retributive action taken by this man against Mr Doyle and to that ferryman’s later and desperate plea, in writing, to his employers for protection against this same person – which produced no action.
A final irony?
The rumour mill from Holyrood is suggesting that Mr McKenzie may be stood by the SNP as the candidate for Orkney in the 2016 Scottish Election.
This is plausible because he now has connections there and because this would take him out of play in what might otherwise prove a contentious attempt to stand him here in Argyll and Bute.
