Archie MacPherson is Scotland's Bill O'Herlihy, his voice the one that has narrated Scotland's often difficult football story for generations of fans. In the film Trainspotting, his commentary for Archie Gemmill's famous goal against the Netherlands in the 1978 World Cup – specially revoiced by him for the film – was coupled with a sex scene.
In Dundee yesterday, however, MacPherson's serious side was on show as he stood on a stage in the Caird Hall, alongside Labour's Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown.
Now 74, the broadcaster said he could no longer stay silent in the face of Scottish National Party charges that the National Health Service was in peril unless voters said Yes to independence. Saying that he was there “as a pensioner”, MacPherson, who has turned to writing crime novels in his retirement, said: “It turns my stomach to see the SNP trying to make political capital out of this.”
The pro-independence "Yes, Scotland" campaign, dominated by the SNP was promising a Wizard of Oz-style "yellow brick road" to voters in the September 18th referendum, he warned. "That was a road, remember, that ended in deception, defeat and fantasy, it is time to get up off your backside," he told the Better Together event, largely attended by Labour Party supporters.
Brown and Darling, who ended up as enemies, joined together yesterday as concern grows in the No campaign that the lead it has enjoyed for two years is under pressure.
Brown has been active in the campaign for a No vote for months, but not as a member of Better Together – the cross-party coalition, including the Conservatives, led by Darling. Brown still touches a nerve in Scottish Labour, despite the reputational damage he suffered in London before and after his three years in No 10 Downing Street came to grief in 2010.
Beginning his speech, where he moved around the stage, rather than standing at the lectern, Brown spoke of the benefits in health and welfare that Scotland enjoyed from UK. His speech was quickly interrupted by a heckler, Mike Barile, who, it turned out, is a former teacher who was struck off the teaching register for assaulting two pupils.
Telling Barile to wait until questions were taken, Brown attempted to continue as the latter called him a liar and the audience had turned away to watch the mini-drama at the back of the room. “It is a pleasure to be here again,” said Brown, his voice becoming hard to hear as the crowd bayed “Out, out” to Barile. Brown could be faintly heard talking about Dundee as a “a town with two Premier League teams”.
Eventually, order was restored. Brown embarked on a passionate defence of the UK’s health and welfare system, “one built by four nations that is the envy of the world”.
Scotland’s pensions were backed by a country of 65 million people, he said, not by 5.5 million as would be the case after independence – a key argument that the No side has been making to good effect with OAPs.
Scotland’s pensioners get £425 million more that a straight division of resources would justify “for very good reasons” because, with more elderly and more disabled, Scotland’s needs were greater. Illustrating the increasing tempo in the campaign, Brown felt the need to declare his love for Scotland: “None of us will yield in our patriotism to any nationalist,” he said.
Brown is likely to become even more visible in the weeks to come, following the SNP’s decision to target Darling, a former Labour chancellor of the exchequer.
The SNP returned to the tactic yesterday, producing the House of Commons register of members’ interests to show that Darling had taken £10,000 for a speech to a private health company in London. “Ordinary Labour supporters across Scotland have been confused by the No campaign’s bizarre decision to try and defend what is Tory privatisation of England’s NHS.
“The fact that Alistair Darling himself is pocketing thousands of pounds from the process is perhaps the unfortunate explanation,” charged the SNP’s Bob Doris. Such charges – that Darling is nothing “more than a Tory front-man” – are evidence of the increasingly bitter tone that has begun to infect the referendum debate over the last week.
Before he ended, Brown delivered a swingeing cut against the 635-page White Paper on independence that was produced last year by the Scottish government.
MacPherson's latest book, Silent Thunder, Brown added, was a tale of derring-do by two Glasgow men who stood up to bullies and did the right thing. Turning to the broadcaster, the former prime minister said: "It is a far, far better work of fiction than that other work of fiction, the Scottish government's White Paper."
