Keith Bovey

Solicitor and SNP activist

Born: July 31, 1927;

Died: June 16, 2017

KEITH Bovey, who has died aged 89, was a leading Scottish solicitor for more than 60 years but was perhaps best-known as a passionate activist for the SNP during its drive for what he dreamed would be an independent Scotland.

The son of an engineer at Fairfield's shipyard in Govan, he served as chairman of the SNP for many years. He was also a convinced pacifist, having learnt Japanese during his military service towards the end of the Second World War Two and been devastated by the US atomic bombs on Japan which ended the war but at the cost of the lives of more than 100,000 innocent civilians. He never forgot that. His humanitarianism was also fuelled by his Christian parents who put up Scottish servicemen and Jewish refugees from Europe in their Glasgow home during the post-war years.

As an SNP man, Mr Bovey was probably most famous for the 1978 by-election battle for Garscadden (now roughly the same as the Anniesland constituency) against Labour's Donald Dewar. The April 13 battle was seen as a barometer for SNP support in Scotland at the time since it pitted the "poshies" of Bearsden and Kelvindale against the working classes of Drumchapel and Maryhill.

In the end Dewar won, a major setback for simmering Scottish nationalism, and personally for Mr Bovey. Dewar held the seat with 16,507 votes, Mr Bovey trailing with 11,955.

"Father emerged rather bruised from the experience," Mr Bovey's son Mungo remembered. "But with the unexpected bonus of a friendship with Michael Mitchell, a bus driver from Drumchapel that lasted for the rest of his life."

Whether related to the Garscadden defeat, no-one knows, but Mr Bovey, in 1990, opted to move his offices from Byres Road to Edinburgh - Morningside, no less - without, of course, adopting the local accent.

As a solicitor, Mr Bovey was founding father and early president of the Glasgow Bar Association, where he was greeted for the rest of his life as a national Scottish treasure. During his legal career, he gained a reputation for specialising in the misuse of drugs and published a text book which is still studied by law students today. His expertise was sought in countless court cases, where his focus was usually on whether drugs case defendants were personal users or suppliers.

In one case, in Lerwick, the Shetlands, in 2009, Mr Bovey had trouble defending a client named Dutton, whose argument was that he got the drug from a visiting fishermen, thinking it was speed. That did not wash with the sheriff and Dutton was convicted of buying drugs to deal. It was a massive wake-up call to the Shetland Islands where too many wee drams, not drugs, had been all they had to worry about.

Keith Simpson Bovey was born in Renfrew on July 31, 1927, along with his brother Denis and sisters Mary and Anthea, to the Rev Philip Bovey and his wife Phyllis.

After attending Paisley Grammar School, he volunteered for military service when he was 18, after the war in Europe was over but the Pacific war against the Japanese was still raging. He did a crash course in Japanese and, with the rank of Lieutenant, Intelligence Corps, was appointed as an interpreter between the US occupying forces and Japanese POWs. Years later, surviving Japanese prisoners remembered the man with a Scottish accent as a humanitarian gentleman and Mr Bovey always retained sympathy for them and for Japan in general.

Back from the Pacific and at home on Thornly Park Drive, Paisley, Mr Bovey, still traumatised by the effects of the atomic bombing of Japanese civilians, applied as a conscientious objector to further military recall. The War Office replied, by letter: "Sir .... you are not at liberty to resign your commission, and should you fail to comply with a recall notice you will be deemed to have committed an offence an will be liable to arrest and trial by court martial.” Fortunately, with peace in place, recall was not necessary and Mr Bovey was able to continue with his legal and political career.

He studied law at the University of Glasgow and got a legal apprenticeship with the big firm Maclay Murray and Spens on George Square, marrying his sweetheart Helen Cameron in 1950 and opening his own legal practice, Keith S Bovey, at 313 Byres Road. Helen, also a Glasgow University law graduate and qualified solicitor, dealt with the conveyancing work while he focussed on criminal defence.

Their offices - which, in deference to his professional and marital partner became Bovey and Bovey - had the advantage of being near the BBC HQ and the university, gifting them an eclectic client base. Their friend, the journalist Gordon Casely, recalled the coupled driving around the West End of Glasgow in their Citreon 2CV, with Mr Bovey's famous bowler hat "stickin' oot" through the rolled-back canvas top.

Mr Bovey's son Mungo, now a leading Edinburgh-based Scottish advocate, said in his funeral eulogy on Monday: "Father was a bit mischievous and not a tidy person." Mungo recalled that when Glasgow police investigated a break-in to his father's Byres Road office, they thought the office had been "worked over pretty badly. In fact, the burglars hadn't touched it."

Mungo also recalled that his father was an avid birdwatcher, taking his children on summer holidays to the Western Isles, cramped into the alleged back seats of various sports cars, including a white Triumph TR6, to observe Keith's beloved feathered friends.

Keith Bovey died in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh after suffering a stroke. He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Helen, son Mungo, daughter Jenny and grandson David.

PHIL DAVISON