HERALD columnist John Macleod has published a foul lie about my father, Malcolm K Macmillan (View from the edge, May 1). I deeply regret having to break silence and respond. I feel demeaned by the contact. In replying I also reward Macleod with the very publicity he so avidly seeks, thus contributing to an ill-deserved income.
My father died in 1978. I loved and respected him hugely. A great many other people did, too, even political rivals. Unfortunately many others - including Macleod - did not know him, but would still seek to defame him.
Much has been written about him since 1970 - ranging from the merely ill-informed, downwards through malicious sniping, all the way down to the deliberately contrived lie. Writers have been variously motivated by anything from honest political zeal to a cheap ''professional'' urgency to met copy deadlines without even a token attempt at some basic honest journalistic research.
Some were never quite able to conceal a rank, morbid compulsion to undermine and destroy the standing of a fine, decent, honourable, caring, and successful politician. Oh yes, 35 years' good tenure spells success. - and in a constituency which Macleod characterises as fickle and maverick.
Macleod likes to appear cynical and controversial. What happened to fairness, balance, and truth? In fact, there are many decent and honourable politicians who are also successful.
The same goes for journalists. My father was a truly fine journalist. He researched his work thoroughly. He was fair-minded and he never wrote anything he couldn't back up with facts. This involved much more work than simply writing down the first rumour, prejudice, or lie that came to hand and rushing it off to press. But as a result he never wrote anything that fell beneath his own high standards - moral or legal.
I was with my father in June 1970 when he lost the Western Isles. He was angry, but he was never humiliated. I was with him in February 1974 when he stood and lost as an independent and, yes, he was sad, but never bitter. He was always too large in spirit for that. I was with him in his last days, and he was as warm and
loving as his illness could possibly allow. I knew my father. Quite clearly, John Macleod did not.
M K Macmillan was never a drinker - it is a foul, low, and cowardly lie to claim that he was.
It does no credit to The Herald that it permits such scurrilous material to appear in its pages. This opportunity to redress the balance is therefore welcome and
very important.
My father taught me that you have to take some unfair knocks in life and shrug them off. So for 30 years I studiously ignored the lies, jibes, and distortions of a procession of nyaffs seeking to score cheap points and to re-engineer his story to suit their own personal, political, or journalistic expedients or cravings of the moment. Much of it had to be written off as simply someone else's point of view - even though I knew differently.
Perhaps if I didn't encourage them they'd gradually drift away and scavenge over someone else. But when some type utters lies and grossly defames my father, they mustn't be allowed to get away with it - and to make a cheap and easy living from it.
Macleod clearly likes his work. It gives him a bit of power he couldn't otherwise get close to - not among the real heavyweights who could really hit back. He wouldn't have lasted half a round with MKM, even (typically) hitting below the belt. Those who can, do; those who
can't, snipe. And all at a safe distance of, say, 20 years.
It has reached the perverse, counter-productive stage where this curious and pathetic little crusade to chip away and degrade my father's reputation now seriously risks enhancing it. Why won't MKM lie down? What is it he had
that Macleod cannot handle, and so must try to destroy?
Is it truly just due to some sad, deep-rooted psychological hang-up? Doesn't Macleod realise that he can never make his own little candle glow brighter by trying to snuff out the beacon of a man who was, after all is said and done, a towering lighthouse by comparison?
I believe I know what Macleod's problem is. After he's gone, will anyone write to The Herald to defend him? Indeed, will anyone even bother to attack him? I don't think so. And there I think you have it.
Malcolm Macmillan,
2 Newhall Farm Lane,
Kinrossie, Perth. May 12.
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