New book from Norman Campbell

My old mucker Norman Campbell, of Radio nan Gaidheal fame, has written another book, this one a biography of the Rev Archie Cook, the 19th century Free Church crusader.

"One of Heaven's Jewels" tells the story of the life and times of Cook and the 19th century Highland church. His preaching was preserved on many Highland bookshelves into the 20th century in copies of "Cook's Gaelic Sermons". This is the story behind the legend.

The pulpit and the congregation were driving forces of politics in the 1800s and the radical land reform movement helped tear the Presbyterian church apart. Cook was bang in the middle of that upheaval and this book gives you a flavour of the spiritualism and the politics of the age. You can buy it through the click-through below.

Cue drum roll, here's the plug:

A fearless minister who influenced wide areas of the Highlands and islands is the subject of a new book -- One of Heaven's Jewels -- published in aid of Bethesda Care Home and Hospice on Lewis.

Vast numbers of west coast fishermen and herring women heard him preach at the Gaelic services he set up in Wick in the 1820s and this helped bolster the new wave of evangelical ideas in places like Lewis and Skye. His brother Finlay was the first evangelical minister in the Church of Scotland in Cross in Lewis. People can still recall hearing anecdotes of preaching by Rev Archie Cook of Daviot or reading his Gaelic sermons. The original Free North church in Inverness was built for this Arran-born preacher who attracted thousands of hearers at communion seasons.

Cook would challenge landlords face to face about plans to evict individuals he knew and Cook fearlessly criticised the competitive tenancy where people were forced to bid against each other for the right to pay rent on crofts or farms. The losers in the process often had to leave the Highlands and author Norman Campbell suggests the clearances in Arran during Cook's childhood may have radicalised him.

One of Heaven's Jewels tells how Archie Cook's generation lived and worshiped. A warm-hearted mixture of community, social and church history, it describes a man of deep spiritual discernment who was loved for his ability to detect and encourage the least sign of genuine spiritual life, while also exposing hypocrisy. A man of action, he would tramp through deep snow to keep preaching .

It also tells of a time when preachers were the celebrities of their day and when the Scottish Gaelic culture was dominant from western and southern Caithness to the south of Arran in the Clyde estuary. Campbell also places the stirring events of these days in Scottish and British political and historical context. Some of the issues such as Patronage (where the landlords and councils and crown chose ministers up until the late nineteenth-century) went right to the heart of debates about freedom and state recognition of religions.

The first six chapters describe the revival-era atmosphere in Arran where Archie Cook grew up, as well as his three pastorates and the famous struggle by the Daviot people during the Ten Years' Conflict to call him as their minister. Several further chapters describe urban grass-roots evangelism in Inverness, the 1857-1861 revival movement in the Highlands, the Union controversy, the early Inverness career of the Rev Duncan Macbeth (now better known for his later Ness ministry), Cook's friendship with Rev Jonathan Ranken Anderson, communion seasons and the Separatist movement. The last two chapters discuss the possible influences that his mentor, the godly Dr John Love of Anderston, Glasgow, had on Cook's thought, and Cook's own emphases.

The paper-back sells at £19.99 pounds and all profits will go to the Bethesda Care Home and Hospice in Stornoway. One of Heaven's Jewels has 27 colour photos, several black and white pictures, 278 pages and reflects many year's worth of research by Norman Campbell. It is available in Borders Inverness, Roddy Smith's (Stornoway), the Blythswood book-shops in Dingwall and Stornoway, Harris Christian Bookshop (Tarbert) and on-line at the Bethesda Care Home web-site shop:

http://shop.bethesdahospice.co.uk/daviot/index.jsp

Brown tackles Afghan war as support falters

Gordon Brown will this morning pledge to stay the course in Afghanistan against mounting political and public disquiet over the eight year military campaign that has now cost 230 British lives.

At the end of grim week for British soldiers in Afghanistan Mr Brown is due to make a major speech in London in which he will restate his personal determination "not to walk away" from the war.

With increasing numbers of voters questioning why British troops are losing their lives in Afghanistan the Prime Minister will use speech to define the mission to deny Al Qaeda at training ground on the Afghan-Pakistan border from which to plot attacks on the UK.

With Remembrance Day approaching Mr Brown is due to set the mounting British losses in Afghanistan in the context of the sacrifice of British soldiers in WW1 and WWII, saying the fallen in the conflict would be remembered as heroes who "fight to protect freedom both in our nation and the world".

An as yet unamed serviceman from the 3rd Battalion, The Rifles was killed yesterday in an explosion in Afghanistan bringing to six the number of soldiers killed in the last 48 hours. This year 93 British service personnel have been killed in Afghanistan, making it the bloodiest year of the conflict to which 9500 troops are now committed.

SAS troopers are still seeking a rogue Afghan policeman who turned his weapon on British soldiers, killing five and wounding six, on Wednesday. The UN yesterday began withdrawing more than half its foreign staff from Kabul after five of its employees were killed in an attack last week.

With a call for British withdrawal by the former Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells adding to the sense that a tipping point is approaching for British involvement in Afghanistan a poll for Channel 4 news showed that public support for the war has fallen sharply.

Two weeks ago the Yougov poll showed 42% of the British public thought the Taliban could be defeated, while 48% thought they could not. Following the deaths of five British soldiers on Wednesday and President Karzi’s much-challenged victory in the recent election, just 33% of those questioned think the war can be won, while a clear majority, 57% think victory is no longer possible.

As a result, 35% now think all British troops should be withdrawn immediately – compared with 25% two weeks ago. Only 20% think they should remain in the country "as long as Afghanistan’s government wants them there" – down from 29% two weeks ago.

Lord Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader who was vetoed by President Karza for the role of UN representative in Afghanistan, said the government had "completely failed both to make a cogent case for this war or to convince us that it has a strategy worthy of the sacrifices being made."

He added: "There is a real chance we will lose this struggle in the bars and front rooms of Britain before we lose it in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan."

Today Mr Brown is expected to say that Britain will not be deterred by setbacks and while he will emphasise the international nature of the forces in Afghanistan he will not bring any fresh news of an increased contribution from European Nato allies.

Despite the killing of five troops by an Afghan policeman they were training Mr Brown will state that the mentoring strategy will continue "because it is what distinguishes a liberating army from an army of occupation’.

Labour left-winger Paul Flynn MP said last night that politicians were "deluded" about the mission and that Britain was relying on an Afghan police force that was "endemically corrupt" He said: "We cannot succeed in Afghanistan and we must stop now sending our young men out there to die in vain."

Playing catch up

Task saturated is what the helicopter pilots call overload and that's how it felt at Westminster yesterday. There was the Kelly report on expenses, five dead in Helmand and Kim Howell breaking ranks calling for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and David Cameron making a major policy announcement on Europe. In the middle of all that I had to go interview Culture Minister Ben Bradshaw about broadcasting in Scotland.

With each of these big stories it feels as if we are close to arriving at a tipping point.

Howell's interview on Afghanistan was gloomy indeed. He's no left winger, he's no dafty, he knows the situation on the ground and he's linked into the intelligence community through his supervision of the Intelligence and Security Committee. More tellingly, on the day of five deaths in Afghanistan, no Minister stood up to contradict him.

Gordon Brown will make a "major" speech on Afghanistan tomorrow, which we reckon will be a retrenchment and a commitment to keep on keeping on. Instinct, and the front pages of the newspapers today, says that he has a very short time to start spelling out a very clear exit strategy or he will end up behind the curve of public opinion.

On Europe, Cameron made his big speech and while it will mollify neither his own Euro-sceptics or the Europhobic British press it confirms his status as a lucky politician, and you need luck as well as policies and skill to become Prime Minister.

He will hope he has now parked the issue of Europe for a parliament and that the tears before bedtime will be well out of the way before a general election. Europe has a nasty habit of biting the Tory Party in the bum though, and UKIP might benefit. But while dropping a referendum pledge might cause internal divisions the voting public don't give too much of a toss.

Expenses - the saga of the year is not over yet but the Kelly report goes a long way to cleaning up the image of parliament, even though there are genuine doubts about the new rules discouraging less well-off people from standing.

You can read my take in the Herald page on expenses and thanks to Jo Swinson and Michael Connarty for taking time to stick their heads above the parapet.

I should point out, for the record that the quote from an anonymous MP "This is tempting - I could sack my wife or divorce her" should not be attributed to Tom Harris MP who appears in picture next to the article with Carolyn Harris, his wife. I'd hate to land the blogpin in trouble.

Beware the Ides + 10 of March

March 25th 2010 - that's the latest rumoured date for a General Election. The morning lobby is usually a dull run through of the Prime Minister's day but the BBC's Carole Walker threw a spanner in the works by asking if Ministers were preparing for a March 25th general election.

It is probably the first of many rumours we'll hear about possible dates. This one apparently emanates from the Labour whips office. It concurs with what staff in the Palace of Westminster have been saying for weeks and dispenses with the need for a difficult budget but that could mean nothing - or everything.

No "tartanisation" without representation?

It was inevitable after the publicity surrounding the French parliamentary vote for people living abroad that there should be a similar debate about granting British ex-pats not just voting rights in UK elections but their own "constituency" MP too.

There's an article in the Guardian today about granting ex-pats not just voting rights but their own MP in the House of Commons which is persuasive, up to a point.

I remember Ron MacKenna, former Herald hack turned lawyer and food critic, launching a late campaign to be elected as an ex-pat member of the Italian parliament a few years ago.

But where does it stop you ask, all this ex-pat political voting power? What about voting rights in Scottish parliamentary elections for the estimated 800,000 Scots living in England, the kingmakers over the water?

Should they have a say in a referendum, if it comes to it, on the future of their own country?

All power to the workers at the Free Press

It's official - the West Highland Free Press, my old newspaper, has been bought over by its staff from the shareholders of West Highland Publishing, including the founding editor, Brian Wilson.

When the idea of sale was first mentioned there were obvious concerns about what might become of Am Paipear Beag and its tradition of combining local news and radical journalism with lamb sale prices and first rate shinty coverage. This outcome guarantees an independent editorial and commercial future for the paper.

In the West Highlands the newspaper, and its politics, are taken foregranted as part of the landscape but in the context of British journalism it's important too. The Free Press is the only survivor of the flourishing alternative publishing movement of the 1970s and just about the only weekly periodical I can think of, apart from the New Statesman, that maintains a solidly left of centre editorial line. It also just happens to be a very good local newspaper.

Its values and its journalism are safe in the hands of Ian McCormack, at the helm now for 33 years and possibly the longest-serving newspaper editor in the country. The rest of the staff that I know are completely rooted in Skye and I have no doubt they're capable of carrying on what they have been doing to a large degree anyway, running the company smoothly.

Ian (or "James Shaw Grant" as we're now calling him) is the most modest of media barons. He is one of the unsung heroes of the Free Press who kept the presses turning, week after week, when lesser men would have been defeated by faulty technology, power cuts, winter ferry timetables and my bad spelling.

The changeover marks the end of an era for Brian Wilson, though hopefully not the end of his involvement in the paper. You can read Brian's thoughts in the Free Press itself and he gave a stirring and superbly fluent Gaelic interview to the BBC yesterday.

I gave him a quick call the other day to wish him well after handing over ownership of the paper that he founded in 1972 as a long-haired graduate newly arrived in Kyleakin along with Jim Wilkie, Jim Innes and others. He said he felt quite unsentimental about the whole thing and I didn't believe him for a second.

I feel a great attachment to the paper myself, although I only worked there for five years. Brian and Ian set me on the path to journalism and the paper has been the foundation stone for many lifelong friendships. It also nurtured for me an enduring love affair with the Isle of Skye, which I have still to confess to the Isle of Lewis.

The Free Press, I believe, has had a far more fundamental effect on its readers - mirroring and defending the language and the culture of the modern Highlands, broadening and strengthening a sense of community. It can pretty much claim to have vanquished the influence of Highland landlordism through campaigning, exposure, ridicule and by fostering in its columns the debate that culminated in the community land ownership movement.

If you had to sum it up you'd just say the Free Press has made people feel more confident about their own place and that's no small achievement for any paper. A lot of that is due to Brian Wilson who for most of these years has been the embodiment of the Free Press, just as much as the paper made him a substantial political figure in Scotland long before he became an MP.

He told me the other day he didn't want to carry on with the Free Press for another 20 years, but when he has time for reflection he might find he doesn't have that much choice in the matter. I can't imagine the paper without "Brian Wilson Writes", unlesss he starts "Brian Wilson Blogs", and he's always been a late adopter.

The Highlands will have to cope with the change, I'm sure the West Highland Free Press can. Meala naidheachd oirbh.

Nimrod lawyer looks for criminal charges

John Cooper, the lawyer representing some of the Nimrod families in their negligence case against the Ministry of Defence, is considering whether there are now grounds to pursue the private companies named in the damning report into the crash.

He was on radio this morning expressing as much astonishment as anyone else at the incredible complacency within the MoD, BAE Systems and Qinetiq, that were laid bare in the report published yesterday.

The inquiry by Charles Hatton-Cave, a leading aviation lawyer, is the most damning indictment of institutional failure that anyone in Westminster can remember reading.

Here' s a summary I did for the Herald of its main findings:

THE 14 men who died on board Nimrod XV230 on September 2, 2006 stood no chance of surviving the fireball that consumed their aircraft over Helmand Province.

Before the first onboard fire warning lit up their fate was sealed not by any mistaken action on their own part – indeed they appear to have acted "with calmness, bravery and professionalism" in the face of certain death.

They were killed aboard an ageing aircraft, that was overdue for replacement, by three decades of design mistakes, by complacency in the private support industry responsible for
their safety and by a culture of cost cutting at the MoD that valued business models over old-fashioned airworthiness.

Charles Haddon-Cave, the leading aviation lawyer who wrote the highly critical report, identified "a failure of leadership, culture and priorities" as contributory factors.

The largest loss in a single day for the MoD since the Falklands represented a "systemic breach" of the military covenant of care for the armed forces and devastating failings on the part of the Ministry of Defence, BAe Systems and QinetiQ, he said.

He named 10 individuals five from the MoD, three from BAe Systems and two from QinetiQ who bore responsibility for the "yawning gap between the appearance and the reality of safety" in a system not fit for purpose.

CAUSE OF THE CRASH

The earlier RAF Board of Inquiry and the coroner’s inquest found that the explosion was caused by fuel leaking into a dry bay and igniting on contact with a hot air pipe. Fuel couplings should not have been in the same compartment, the inquest was told. Mr Haddon-Cave said that overspillage from mid-air refuelling may also have been a cause.

Once the fire ignited the crew had no means of tackling the initial flames. They issued a Mayday and attempted an emergency descent to Kandahar air base, but at 3000ft the aircraft exploded, broke into four pieces and hit the ground in 12 seconds. The fire, and the bad design that allowed it to happen, could have been avoided if earlier warnings had not been ignored.

The report noted that design flaws introduced at three stages, each 10 years apart, played a "crucial part" in the loss of XV230. A Nimrod Safety Case, drawn up by BAe Systems with help from Qinetiq, between 2001 and 2005 was meant to identify "potentially catastrophic hazards before they could cause an accident"

SAFETY FAILURES

Mr Haddon-Cave said "failure" or "failings" 24 times in his press briefing.

"Serious design flaws" with the aircraft had "lain dormant for years" his report stated.

"Warnings from as early as 1998 that "the conflict between ever-reducing resources and ... increasing demands, whether they be operational, financial, legislative, or merely those symptomatic of keeping the old ac (aircraft) flying" and that close attention should be paid to safety standards were ignored.

As well as a safety review that was "riddled with errors" the inquiry found there was an assumption by those involved that the Nimrod was safe because it had flown successfully for 30 years.

This contributed to the "general malaise" that fatally undermined safety.

ORGANISATONAL
NEGLIGENCE AT MoD

Mr Haddon-Cave accused the MoD of sacrificing safety to cut costs. The department sustained a "deep organisational trauma" during the strategic defence review from 1998 to 2006 that led to a distraction from airworthiness as the priority. .

Senior officers focused on the priority of achieving the "strategic goal " of a 20% reduction in costs in five years against a backdrop of increased operational demands.

"Airworthiness was a casualty of the process of cuts, change, dilution and distraction commenced by the 1998 strategic review. These failures of leadership and the failure to keep safety at the top of the agenda contributed to the loss of XV230." said Mr Haddon-Cave.

One former senior RAF officer told the inquiry: "In the 1990s you had to be on top of airworthiness, by 2004 you had to be on top of your budget if you wanted to get ahead."

Delays in procurement for a replacement for the Nimrod aircraft also contributed.

PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE

The 585-page report singles out 10 people for criticism. Five are from the Ministry of Defence – including two very senior military officers of four-star rank – three from BAe Systems and two from QinetiQ.

At the MOD General Sir Sam Cowan, who has since retired, whose task it was to unite the separate logistics support agencies for the Royal Navy, Army and RAF into a single Defence Logistics Organisation, was criticised for the "Stalinistic efficiency" with which targeted cost cutting by 20% by 2005

He did not give enough thought to the impact of imposing his target and should have realised it
could come at the expense of safety and airworthiness, the report said.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Malcolm Pledger, who has since retired, succeeded Gen Cowan as chief of defence logistics in September 2002 despite later admitting to Mr Haddon-Cave’s review he did not believe he was fully qualified for the job. He was "handed a poisoned chalice" and was torn between delivering the 20% cost savings and supporting the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. That does not save him from criticism,

The report said he should have questioned whether it was "feasible, realistic and sensible" to achieve the 20% goal at the same pace and within the same timescale. "There should, at least, have been pause for thought," the report said.

Air Commodore George Baber and Wing Commander Michael Eagles were slated for accepting the flawed BAe safety case and delegating much of the task to an MoD civil servant Frank Walsh who was "out of his depth" and since retired.

BAe Systems managers Chris Lowe, Richard Oldfield, and Eric Prince bore "primary responsibility" for the company’s failings in relation to the safety case. Mr Haddon-Cave also said defence firm QinetiQ bore a "share of responsibility" for the failure of the Nimrod safety case in not properly carrying out its role as independent adviser.

LESSONS TO
BE LEARNED

Overall, Mr Haddon-Cave said many of the organisational causes for the loss of XV230 echoed other major accidents including the loss of the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, the sinking of the Marchioness and the King’s Cross fire.

He said the MoD was committed to addressing the "numerous weaknesses" in the RAF’s system for ensuring the airworthiness of its aircraft. It has grounded all Nimrods whose engine-bay hot air ducts had not been replaced but the inquiry had found no reason to recommend the grounding of the Nimrod MR2 fleet which is due to come to the end of its service life within months.

The two named RAF officers, who are still in service have been stripped of their responsibilities for safety and the RAF would now consider if any "further action" would be taken against them. A team has been put in place within the MoD to implement the report’s recommendations.

Mr Haddon-Cave concluded: "In my view, XV230 was lost because of a systemic breach of the military covenant brought about by failures on the part of all those involved. This must not be allowed to happen again."