Gordon was so brave, so beautiful. I’m heartbroken
IFIRST met Gordon Aikman in 2006 at Edinburgh University. I was working as a welfare adviser and my first job was to support idealistic students like him with their grand plans to change the world one step at a time. We became the firmest of friends.
Gordon wasn’t just handsome, he was beautiful. Kirkcaldy born and bred, he was a rare exception at an often stuffy Edinburgh University: Scottish; working class; fiercely intelligent; and great fun.
He was always studious and diligent, but he partied hard. He loved to dance and he was great at it. He was one of those infuriating people who’d demand one more round, be the last to bed but the first to get up and put his running shoes on, chastising everyone else for ceding to their respective hangovers.
He worked part-time while at university to make ends meet, but not in bars and cafes like most. He travelled home to Fife where he coached gymnastics. Better money and still doing his bit for his home town and roots.
His passion for equality and righting injustice took him to the Labour Party. But he was never tribal. For Gordon, politics was about what you were for, not what you were against.
I started working in the Scottish parliament as a researcher to Labour politicians in 2007. Gordon joined me there in 2008. I was good but he was better. The best, in fact.
He was meticulous. But he also had this tremendous instinct for a story or a line. If there was anything in a haystack of data to needle the Government with, Gordon would find it and exploit it. He was promoted quickly and repeatedly.
HE earned the nickname Mr 14 Per Cent in the Scottish parliament after it was revealed that 14 per cent of all freedom of information requests the Government had dealt with had come from Gordon. When the independence referendum was called and the Better Together campaign was formed in 2012, there was no more obvious a choice for a director of research than Gordon Aikman.
By this time I was a politician and it was often his job to make sure I knew my stuff and argued the best possible case for the Union.
Together we sat and prepared Alistair Darling for the TV debates, just as we sat and watched the referendum results roll in. He was at the heart of so many seminal moments in recent political history. During this time at Better Together Gordon discovered he was ill.
After numerous tests the devastating news came. It was terminal, motor neurone disease (MND). But Gordon kept working at Better Together for as long as possible and at the same time devoted as much time and energy as he could to raising awareness of, and hard cash for, MND Scotland.
He raised half a million pounds in no time at all, but the significance of that sum is dwarfed by his political achievements: changing the law for terminally ill patients, doubling the number of MND specialists, guaranteeing sufferers’ rights to communication aids.
There are so many achievements to point to. I had the privilege of being at Gordon’s wedding to Joe Pike. It was one of the happiest days of my life and I will treasure the memories. Just on Monday of this week, I sat with Gordon listening to the chief MND nurse talk about just how transformative his work had been for fellow sufferers.
She shared these stories in the reception of a world-leading research centre into neurological conditions, where some of the money Gordon raised will be used to find and fund a cure for MND. That was the last time I saw him.
The last time we ate together was Burns Night, the week before. We ate haggis, neeps and tatties and talked about Brexit and Trump. I asked his thoughts about First Minister’s Questions the next day, as I always did. He had the sagest advice. MND is a neurological condition where the body attacks its own nervous system. It starts at the very tips of the fingers and toes and works its way in to the core of the body, wasting muscle as it goes, leaving the patient trapped.
For someone who had pushed his body to the limits both mentally and physically, there was particular brutality to Gordon’s fate.
His life was a short but very well lived one. His legacy is a generation of people who understand MND like no other and are committed to fighting it, through the tireless energy of fundraising and the fiercest intellects researching. Both head and heart, how fitting.
MND took Gordon’s last breath, but it will never take his voice.