Charles Kennedy
Documentary airs claims of abuse against late MP
Close friends and former colleagues of the late Charles Kennedy, including several in Lochaber, have opened up in a new television documentary about what they claim is the cruel social media abuse the Highlands MP endured prior to his death in 2015 at the age of just 55.
The BBC ALBA programme, Tearlach Ceannadach: Labhraiche Lochabair / Charles Kennedy: A Good Man Speaking, broadcast on Tuesday evening at 9pm but is available on the BBC iPlayer for 30 days, tells Mr Kennedy’s story from his upbringing on a Highland croft, his dogged fight for the largest parliamentary seat in Britain, to his rise to leader of the Liberal Democrats and ultimately his resignation due to alcoholism and the loss of his seat in 2015.
With his politics steeped in the Highland tradition and armed with the knowledge of how society operated for his forebears, the Fort Williamborn Mr Kennedy took those ideas and applied them to the international stage.
He was 23 years old when he won the Highland seat Ross, Cromarty and Skye, launching a 32-year career in politics.
Mr Kennedy, a former pupil of Lochaber High School, rose through the political ranks of his party and went on to lead the merged party, the Liberal Democrats. However, he never forgot his Lochaber roots. From his stance on the 2003 Iraq War to the fight to save the Fort William Sleeper train, he stood on principle.
Ultimately his battle with alcoholism led him to resign as leader of the Liberal Democrats. The programme details how the 2015 General Election campaign was a campaign unlike anything seen in the Highlands before.
Journalist and former Labour MP Brian Wilson tells the programme how Mr Kennedy had someone working full-time deleting the abuse towards him on social media.
‘Charlie was grieving the death of his parents, the loss of his best friend and trying to hold a family together. Nobody could have been well equipped to deal with that. It was beyond belief the things that were being said and done,’ said Mr Wilson.
‘What Charles was subjected to had nothing to do with his politics, had no respect for what he’d done in politics or in public life and had no respect for his personal circumstances.
‘It was naked abuse and denigration of the worst kind. I think what was done to him was cruel beyond words.’
His close friend and former brother-in-law James Gurling reveals that Mr Kennedy had anonymous, very aggressive notes left on his car and put through his letterbox.
He says: ‘The level of anger and vociferous nature of the campaign surprised and really worried him.
‘You begin to wonder what’s in those people’s minds that they think that is an appropriate way of doing things.
‘All politicians get shouted down in meetings and get called all sorts but, generally speaking, that’s in a public view that the community can judge is fair or not.
‘This was something quite different.’
Mr Kennedy lost his seat in 2015, famously describing it as ‘the night of the long sgian dubhs’.
He died a few weeks later and was buried on land in Lochaber dating back to the 18th century when Cameron of Lochiel gifted burial rites to the Kennedys of Cluny for their support during the Jacobite Rebellion.
Among the other contributors to the programme are Hugh Dan MacLennan: his childhood friend, also from Lochaber; Duncan Ferguson, from Plockton, a Lib Dem supporter and headteacher; Mary Ann Kennedy, a friend of Charles and a Lochaber constituent; David Green: Charles Kennedy’s aide from 20132015; and Catherine Macleod from Lochaber.