Leadership race hopeful at Smith
Leonard learns more about party’s founding father
One of the main contenders for the vacant position of Scottish Labour Leader was in Stirling last week.
MSP Richard Leonard confirmed over the weekend he was a candidate for the post following the resignation of Kezia Dugdale.
However on Thursday Mr Leonard, a Stirling University politics and economics graduate, returned to the area to tour the Cunninghame Graham Library at the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum.
Robert Cunninghame Graham was a writer, politician, journalist and adventurer who became the first ever socialist MP when elected in North Lanarkshire in 1886.
He went on to found the Scottish Labour Party in 1888 with James Keir Hardie and, much later, the Scottish National Party in 1934.
The library, opened last year, houses the collected works of and about this giant of the early socialist movement in the United Kingdom.
Whilst the library is free and available to visit by appointment at any time, every Thursday it is staffed by volunteers who are on hand to answer questions from visitors.
As secretary of the Keir Hardie society, Mr Leonard was keen to reinforce the ties with the Cunninghame Graham society. He toured the library and the museum with Cunninghame Graham Society secretary Gerry McGarvey and Smith Art Gallery and Museum Trust chairman Colin O’Brien.
Mr Leonard said: “Keir Hardie and Cunninghame Graham were there at the very dawn of the Labour movement and without them, our political landscape would be different and poorer. I am passionate about ensuring people have access to history so we can learn from it and I wanted to meet the volunteers here at the Stirling Smith Art Gallery who are doing so much to keep the legacy of Robert Cunninghame Graham alive.
“My visit reminds me of the Great Dock strikes of 1899 which Cunninghame Graham supported and stood with the dockers fighting for a minimum wage for their work. These were also the docks which operated a policy where men would gather at the gates, sometimes two or three times a day, and hope to be called on to work. The dockers knew this as the ‘call-on policy’, but today we might describe it as a zero hours contract. Each generation fights for what is right, but the similarities of what has gone before can provide context and help focus today’s efforts.”
Mr McGarvey said: “Cunninghame Graham is such an amazing character. In his day, he was such a dynamic figure as both a politician and a writer. But he was also an Argentinian cattle rancher and a British aristocrat. He travelled to Morocco disguised as a Turkish Sheik and he prospected for gold in Spain. He befriended Buffalo Bill in Texas and taught fencing in Mexico City. He founded the forerunner of both the Labour Party and the Scottish National Party. The more you find out about Robert Cunninghame Graham, they more you want to know.”
Cunninghame Graham died in 1936 in Argentina but is buried at Inchmahome Priory on the Lake of Menteith.