The Reverend Angus Smith
‘Wee Free’ minister who made headlines in 1965 trying to stop a Sunday ferry service to Skye
THE REVEREND ANGUS SMITH, who has died aged 90, was a minister in the fundamentalist Free Church of Scotland – the “Wee Frees” – who made headlines in 1965 when he lay down on a road leading to the slipway at Kyleakin on the east coast of Skye to prevent cars coming off the ferry from the mainland.
The protest was the culmination of a nine-month campaign by islanders against proposals by the Caledonian Steam Packet Co, a subsidiary of British Rail (now Caledonian Macbrayne or Calmac), to introduce a Sunday ferry service to the island.
In the run up to Smith’s protest, a petition sponsored by the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland and the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland was signed by 3,883 people out of Skye’s population of 7,400. The service, it declared, was a “desecration of the Biblical Sabbath”.
But their pleas fell on deaf ears. On Sunday June 6 Smith and another minister led protesters at Kyleakin Free Church in a Gaelic prayer service, then Smith marched them out to the narrow road leading to the slipway as the first Sunday ferry arrived. As police asked them to move, Smith told his followers in Gaelic, “Seas eir an toiseach!” – “stand fast before them” – then lay down in front of the first car.
After a 25 minute struggle, more than 30 policemen managed to clear some 50 islanders, mostly crofters, off the road, lifting some bodily, including Smith. “It took seven constables to move one 20-stone crofter,” reported The Daily Telegraph.
Then the demonstrators held an open-air Gaelic prayer meeting and sang the 40th Psalm: “I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined unto me and heard my calling”.
Fourteen, Smith included, were hauled away and charged with breach of the peace.
But not all Smith’s fellow Sabbatarians supported the demonstration. After all, by demonstrating on a Sunday the protesters themselves were breaking the Sabbath. The Rev Archibald Macvicar, clerk to the Church of Scotland described the occasion as “the most massive breach of the Lord’s Day that Skye has ever known”, while a
Free Church elder accused the demonstrators of making an “exhibition of themselves and the island,” adding: “It was sad to see them following each other like sheep.”
Inevitably, perhaps, Smith became known as the “Ferry Reverend”.
Angus Smith was born in Govan, Glasgow in 1928 to parents from the Isle of Lewis. Ordained in 1958 into the Free Church of Scotland, he served as minister at the Snizort Free Church in Skye, before moving in 1968 to Lewis, one of the last bastions of Sabbatarianism, as minister of Cross Free Church, Ness. In 1986 he was appointed Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly.
He retired as minister of Cross Free Church in 1997 but remained steeped in controversy to the last.
In 1996 he was named in court as one of several accusers during the trial, on four charges of sexual assault, of the Free Church theologian Donald Macleod, a professor of systematic theology at the Free Church College in Edinburgh, whose comparatively liberal and reformist views, including his tolerant approach towards the rights of Roman Catholics, brought him controversy and enemies.
Macleod was cleared of all charges, the court finding that his female accusers “had all lied in the witness box to further the ends of [his] enemies in the Free Church of Scotland”. During the hearing it was alleged that he had been the victim of a conspiracy involving ministers from within the church, including Smith, who also happened to be his brotherin-law.
The revelation prompted Smith to issue a statement denying the claims and accusing Macleod of describing fellow ministers as “Nazis” and “ayatollahs” and putting “blasphemy in the West Highland Free Press”. “I am loath to say anything about the Donald Macleod affair and I have carefully kept these matters from my pulpit, but deliberate distortion, untruth, and confusion in the minds of people force me to act,” the statement read.
But the row continued. After being cleared, Macleod was the subject of moves to have him removed from the church on charges of heresy, and there were accusations that the church had failed to investigate more allegations about his private life.
Meanwhile Macleod’s claims that Smith and other church figures had conspired against him was subsequently dismissed by a Free Church committee, only for the decision to be later overturned, prompting Smith, in 1999, to petition the Isle of Lewis presbytery, challenging it find out which one was lying: “Either there was a conspiracy against Prof Macleod by us, or there wasn’t. If Macleod is right, then I am a liar. If I am right, he is a liar. If the presbytery finds there was no conspiracy, then it must clear my name.”
Macleod described the petition as “a piece of nonsense” and dismissed it as part of the campaign against him. Subsequently, a number of Macleod’s critics formed a new denomination, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing).
Smith went even further, leaving the Free Church for the ultra-calvinist Free Presbyterian Church – also known as the “Wee Wee Frees”.
He continued to thunder from the pulpit until earlier this year. In 2006 he laid part of the blame for the decline of the Sabbath on the Royal Family, politicians and television soaps, “which portray an immoral culture involving drink and drugs”. In 2009 he protested when Caledonian Macbrayne proposed a new Sunday ferry service between Lewis and Ullapool, predicting that crime would rise on Lewis as a result and the services would bring “things that terrified parents”.
When the vessel due to make the first Sunday crossing broke down due to a faulty exhaust the day before, Smith hailed it as a reminder of “God’s providence”, though in the event another ferry was drafted in for the inaugural Sunday sailing.
“Neither Calmac nor its managing director understand that the God of the Sabbath was speaking to them,” Smith protested. “It means nothing to them. If they do not have a heart or an ear to hear, they may as well be pagans. Calmac is fighting God – not the people of these islands.”
Asked if the breakdown was divine intervention, a spokesman for Caledonian Macbrayne said: “I really do not think there is anyone here qualified to comment on that one.”
Smith was married and had four children.
The Reverend Angus Smith, born 1928, died August 28 2019