And you think running with one shoe was tough?
He won athletics gold with one bare foot. Now Brian Whittle is entering politics… as a Tory in one of Labour’s safest seats
THE moment when a rangy, curly- haired youth f rom South Ayrshire became the darling of sports fans all around the world occurred in Stuttgart on a hot August evening in 1986. Brian Whittle, son of Troon, was about to have his local status upgraded from ‘favoured’ to ‘anointed’.
Running the third leg of the 4x400m relay final at the European Athletics championships for Great Britain, Whittle prepared to receive the baton from Kriss Akabusi, knowing that the gold medal was within his team’s grasp.
What happened next has become one of the most iconic moments in the history of British athletics.
Akabusi trod on Whittle’s running shoe, pinning it to the track and forcing the 22-year-old Scot to run his race without it.
Unfazed by this potentially calamitous twist of fate, Whittle ran a personal best time of 45.09, ensuring that the British team, which also included Roger Black and Derek Redmond, took the gold medal.
It was the start of a ten-year athletics career studded with gold and silver in European, Commonwealth and Olympic Games.
Brian Whittle’s one-shoe shuffle in Stuttgart though, was merely daunting. Almost 30 years later he has set himself a challenge that some might describe as downright ominous.
Yesterday he formally announced that he had become Scotland’s newest political candidate, having been given the nod to stand in the solid Labour constituency of Kilmarnock and Loudoun… for the Tories. To state that Whittle faces an uphill task is akin to saying that Madonna’s dress designer had a sleepless night on Thursday. This is a neighbourhood that is red in tooth and claw, returning the formidable Cathy Jamieson by a majority of almost 27 per cent at the 2010 Westminster election.
So what has possessed Whittle at 50 years of age and now a successful businessman specialising in events and sports marketing to enter politics in the bear-pit of North Ayrshire while carrying a big blue target on his back?
Only last month he launched a multi-platform social media website, DemonSport. ‘It’s a sports social media website but it gives sportsmen and women the opportunity to create their own sporting social media profile and get access to national and international coaches.’
If it’s another challenge he’s looking for, could he not have elected for something a little more tranquil: swimming with saltwater crocodiles perhaps, or maybe some light relief work in Syria?
‘It was the independence referendum that finally tipped me over the edge. I just felt compelled to stand. I thought there was a deluge of nonsense spoken in the independence referendum.
‘During the course of it I found myself becoming so disappointed and disillusioned that campaigners on either side had missed a major opportunity to have a proper debate about Scotland and its future.
‘I think that most of the politicians avoided most of the main issues around independence. Instead they indulged in a depressing exercise in mud-slinging which to me seemed to be characterised by childish claims of the “I’m more Scottish than you” variety. I thought: “This debate doesn’t represent my country”.’
Whittle has already caused some consternation among his party’s strategists by insisting that he be described as ‘an unconventional Tory’ in the election literature. ‘Good luck with that one,’ I tell him.
Yet how else to describe a Tory who opposes the bedroom tax and who speaks fondly of the late and still much-missed Scottish Labour leader, John Smith?
He’s never really been overtly party political. ‘I’d always been fond of the Billy Connolly maxim that the desire to become a politician should bar you from ever becoming one,’ he says. ‘But I’ve always maintained an interest in general politics.
‘Don’t expect me to agree with everything that Central Office puts out or glibly to disagree with everything that the opposition says just because they’re the ones saying it.
‘Of course there are core beliefs which will always put you and me on either side of the debate. I believe in low taxation and low borrowing; you believe in higher taxation and higher borrowing.
‘I reject the notion that Tories must always come from affluent backgrounds. I want to dispel that. These days all our main parties draw from all parts of society.
‘I grew up in the little South Ayrshire village of Symington in a council house background before we all moved to Troon. My mum and dad both worked very hard to get ahead and both were Conservative voters.
‘Real politics is about how we raise capital and then how we spend it. The rest follows from this and yet this was largely avoided during the independence referendum. One side said, “We’re going to spend loads of money because we’ve got oil” and the other side said, “No, you can’t, because there’s actually a lot less oil”.’
This though, is just the warm-up as he gets to the essence of his message, which is all about education. You feel that once this man, one of his country’s finest athletes, gets into his stride there will be trouble and glorious strife ahead for friend and foe.
‘Education has to be my core message. The Tories say they’ll give the NHS an extra £2billion while Labour says they’ll give it £2.5billion, but that’s just applying a sticking plaster to the problem.
‘They’re not looking at the root causes of the issues we have within our health service or at the heart of our welfare system. Apparently, obesity costs the NHS £8billion a year while a high proportion of those cases attending accident and emergency are drink and drug-related.
‘We have a cultural and societal issue here. There are areas in the US where children are being born with a shorter life expectancy than their parents. We can’t be far off such a situation here.
‘I’m fed up with politicians who say that the trouble with the NHS is that we’ve got an ageing population. An ageing population’s brilliant. I’m really glad I’m going to get an extra few years in my dotage.
‘The problem is that we have an increasingly unhealthy population. It’s slid over the past 30-40 years and it will take at least another 20 years of consistent investment to make it better.’
I begin to form the impression that if the Tories could distil and bottle the essence of Whittle’s views on education and giving an equal chance to children who daily encounter dire social challenges, they could stage something of a recovery here.
Politics in Scotland has, for a generation now, offered voters a choice of Left or Lefter still. A dash of blue here and there is long overdue if we are to regard ourselves as truly democratic. And on education both of the big parties of the Left have become lazy and vulnerable.
‘We need to ensure all children have the chance to learn from good teachers,’ says Whittle. ‘One of my three daughters, Carly, is a teacher and she has educated me about some of the issues that her pupils face. I had opportunities to play sport and to be in a debating club and a drama club.
‘I even sang in two school operas, for heaven’s sake. I pay £15 an hour for childcare for my youngest daughter. If her school said to me, “Your daughter wants to come along and do an art class or sport after school, but it’ll cost you £5” I’d bite your hand off.
‘We need to think about paying teachers and coaches to take extracurricular classes after school. Take my £15 and put it in the pot to provide this. Obviously many won’t be able to afford it. But that’s where the Government comes in and helps. Thus, it’s not just a handout but an investment against future problems. Take my money and use it to fund health and lifestyle education.
‘I’ve spent most of my life trying to get kids into sport. Now we must stop waiting for children to come to us. We’ve got to go to them.’
Whittle has already rehearsed and fine-tuned his educational philosophy in his own family. He coached Carly,
‘The referendum tipped me over the edge’
his eldest, who represented Scottish schools in athletics and went on to play netball for Scotland at junior level. By way of a reward she has given him two grandsons.
His middle daughter, Rachel, is studying to be a midwife and has won 14 Scottish national titles in athletics and gained medals at UK level.
He lives in East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, with his wife Julia and the youngest of his three daughters, sixyear- old Emma. ‘I also have two grandsons to deal with, so I suppose I should forget about any notions of a peaceful old age,’ he says.
One morning in the early 1980s and with the exhortations of school coaches still resounding in his head, the Ayrshire laddie was first warmed by the possibilities of greatness and with it the chilly realisation that it may be unattainable.
The young Whittle had been called up for his first senior athletics event representing Britain in an interna- tional athletics meeting with the might of the old (and jellied to the eyeballs) East Germany. Now he was in a meeting room where, it seemed, every great British athlete of the time was gathered. And what a time it was.
‘When I walked into the room I saw Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Daley Thompson, Roger Black, Kriss Akabussi, Steve Cram, John Regis and Colin Jackson. And then over there I could see Tessa Sanderson and Sally Gunnell. That’s how you keep your feet on the ground. No matter how good you think you might be there’ll be others who are better, but you can still contribute to the team. What a team, though, eh?’
He trained every morning and evening and throughout his 44minute lunch-breaks at work in the ICI plant at Ardeer in Ayrshire. He knew they were 44 minutes precisely because his boss told him every single day while tapping his watch: ‘You might like your running but just remember where your bread is buttered.’
Once, this model of self-sacrifice and hard work achieving their just rewards was a paradigm for Conservatism in Scotland. Somewhere along the way though, these old and solid foundations crumbled between a haughtily imposed poll tax and the shady virtues and instant gratification which seemed to characteri se the new l ords of the Tory manor.
Whittle believes that if the Tories can recapture that essence of what once made ordinary working people vote for them not very long ago then they – and he – have a chance.
‘But you’re facing Armageddon in Scotland,’ I say. ‘You can’t have Armageddon on top of Armageddon,’ he shoots back. ‘We’ve had our Armageddon and so now the only way is up.
‘My challenge will be to get a message and some ideas out there that might make people look at some issues differently and look at politicians differently.
‘The word “politician’ doesn’t sit well with me, but I know I’m in that bracket now. I know I’m standing in a very socialist area and that it will be hard work. But once, many of these people voted Tory and my job is to make them consider us again, but by putting some new ideas on the table.’
He is convinced that, in Ruth Davidson, the party in Scotland now has a leader who can deliver a 21st century Conservatism that can chime with ordinary Scots again. ‘If she wasn’t the head of the party, I wouldn’t be doing this. She alone dispels many of the myths about politicians because I think she really believes what she says and that is important to me and many other Scots.’
Several years ago when a business venture was engulfed by the global financial meltdown, Whittle found himself attending his local benefits office for Jobseeker’s Allowance. Every fortnight the man at the window would shout for everyone to hear: ‘How can an Olympian not get a job?’ Whittle was humbled. ‘But he made me realise that fame is a fickle mistress.’
We’ll never know if the man at the DHSS realised he was playing the role of the slave employed to whisper warnings into the ear of conquering generals when t hey returned in triumph to Rome. ‘Sic Transit Gloria,’ he would say: ‘All glory is fleeting.’
‘We’ve had our Armageddon, the only way is up’