James Davidson
Scottish Liberal MP, farmer and former naval officer who was once accused of espionage by Moscow
JAMES DAVIDSON, who has died aged 90, was in turn a naval officer accused of “espionage” in Moscow; a farmer in north-east Scotland; a Liberal MP and foreign affairs spokesman; and chief executive of the Royal Highland Agricultural Society and Show, Scotland’s premier farming event.
During Davidson’s single term as MP for West Aberdeenshire, the spotlight fell on his past as assistant naval attaché in Moscow. The Kremlin vetoed him as vice-chairman of the Great Britain-ussr Association, claiming he had been involved in espionage. Davidson disputed this, insisting: “My job was just to keep my eyes open. Every country in the world does this sort of thing and there is nothing surreptitious about it. I was not a spy – just an observer.”
William Vassall, jailed for 18 years for spying for the Russians, had worked under him as a clerk. “I submitted an adverse report on him because he was extremely inefficient and had an unpleasant character,” Davidson recalled. The suspicion was left that Vassall had filed a similar report on Davidson to his Soviet spymasters, who took their revenge years later.
At Westminster, Davidson urged Harold Wilson’s government to dissociate itself from America’s conduct of the Vietnam War. But he took a robust line with Young Liberals who sided with communist North Vietnam, insisting that Britain’s priority should be to help America extricate itself from this “fearful predicament”.
He was an early devolutionist. Just before the Nationalist Winifred Ewing’s spectacular victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election, he wrote to the SNP suggesting they cooperate with the Liberals to secure a Scottish Parliament. A year later he promoted a Bill for referendums on the future government of Scotland and Wales, which was defeated 81-13 after disparaging comments from Labour ministers.
James Duncan Gordon Davidson was born on January 10 1927, the son of Alastair Davidson and the former Valentine Osborne. Following his father to sea, he enrolled aged 13 at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth, attracted by the “glamour of the uniform and the Service gas mask and helmet carried by cadets”.
With the war nearing its end he obtained a place at Downing College, Cambridge. But the Navy refused his release and it was several years before he could complete his education, at Downing and in Paris. Meanwhile he qualified as a Russian interpreter, and in 1952 was posted to Moscow; he was there for the death of Stalin and the brief thaw with the West that followed.
Leaving the Navy in 1955, Davidson farmed in Aberdeenshire, joining the area executive of the National Farmers’ Union. He became an active Liberal, as the party in Scotland recovered from near-extinction. From 1962 he sat on the Scottish Liberal executive, and in 1964 he contested West Aberdeenshire, cutting a 12,000 Conservative majority to 4,675.
In 1966 he captured the seat by 1,195 votes, becoming foreign affairs spokesman in a still tiny parliamentary party. After Jeremy Thorpe succeeded Jo Grimond as leader early in 1967 – Davidson’s vote proving decisive in Thorpe’s defeat of Emlyn Hooson – he also became defence spokesman.
Davidson led a protest by Liberal MPS throughout Britain against England’s victorious 1966 World Cup challenge using the Union flag, rather than the cross of St George. He twice introduced Bills to abolish Scotland’s feudal system, questioned how lethal green monkey disease germs from Porton Down research establishment had been exported by a German scientist to Russia, condemned plans to close Inverurie locomotive works after British Railways had assured its future, and joined the all-party campaign against fluoridation.
After barely two years Davidson, then 40, decided Westminster life was not for him. He passed the candidacy for West Aberdeenshire to Laura Grimond, wife of his former leader and Asquith’s granddaughter, who in 1970 lost heavily to Lt-col “Mad Mitch” Mitchell of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders; it took the Liberals two decades to regain the seat.
Davidson moved from the Commons to the Royal Highland Showground at Ingliston, close to Edinburgh Airport. The Royal Highland was just 12 years into its tenure of the site, and over two decades he oversaw the development of the show and the ground’s extensive facilities, and promoted the Society’s work in support of Scotland’s rural industries and experimental farming. He edited the Society’s bicentennial history in 1984, and retired in 1992.
James Davidson was appointed MVO in 1947 and OBE in 1984. He was the author of Scots and the Sea (2003), and an autobiography, Thinker, Sailor, Shepherd, Spy (2009).
He married, first, in 1955, Catherine Jamieson, with whom he had a son and two daughters; and, secondly, in 1973, Janet Stafford, with whom he had a further son.
James Davidson, born January 10 1927, died June 29 2017