Lord McCluskey, judge who took on SNP, dies aged 88
He also defended Macca over cannabis
ONE of Scotland’s top former judges, who became a staunch critic of SNP justice policy, has died aged 88.
Lord McCluskey, also well known for representing Paul McCartney in a cannabis case, was a giant of the Scottish legal and political scene.
He was Solicitor General for Scotland in the 1970s before his elevation in 1976 to a crossbencher in the House of Lords, where he sat until stepping down in March.
The peer called for former justice secretary Kenny MacAskill to quit after it emerged the go-ahead had been given for armed police to attend routine call-outs.
He warned the firearms move could pave the way to the ‘Americanisation’ of Scottish policing.
Lord McCluskey also condemned the prosecution service’s ‘loss of independence’ under the SNP and ‘worrying instances of the police being too close to the executive’.
His death yesterday was announced on Twitter by his nephew Niall McCluskey, an advocate, who said: ‘He was a great man and an outstanding lawyer.’
Lord McCluskey, who died following an illness, is survived by three children. Nicola Sturgeon said he was ‘one of the outstanding lawyers of his generation’, while Gordon Jackson, QC, dean of the Faculty of Advocates, said he had been a ‘giant of Scots Law’.
John McCluskey was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1955 and worked as a defence lawyer then as a prosecutor.
He is remembered for a rare appearance in the sheriff courts, at Campbeltown, Argyll, in 1973 when McCartney was accused of growing cannabis. Lord McCluskey got all but one charge dropped on technical grounds and the star admitted growing cannabis.
To the amusement of the court, the QC argued his client had a genuine interest in horticulture and a £30 fine was imposed, with Lord McCluskey asking if his client could be given time to pay the penalty.
In 1974, he became Solicitor General for Scotland in Harold Wilson’s Labour Government, became a High Court judge in 1984 and retired in 2004, as Scotland’s longest-serving judge.
Lord McCluskey was also the judge in the 1992 trial of Paul Ferris at the High Court in Glasgow, at the time Scotland’s longest murder trial, lasting 54 days. Ferris was acquitted of the gangland murder of Arthur Thompson Jnr.
Following his retirement, Lord McCluskey called for the legalisation of heroin, condemning Government drugs policy as a ‘massive failure’.
He was close to the devolution process, working with late Labour leader John Smith on an early version of a Scotland Bill. He said recently: ‘For a devolved administration, [the parliament] has enough powers and I wish it would concentrate on governance rather than so-called independence.’
‘An outstanding lawyer’