A LAWYER CALLED WILLIE McRAE
"A GHAISGICH NA FEINNE GLUAISIBH"
["heroes of the Fingalians
advance"]McGuigan had only once met Willie McRae
when he canvassed him at his home on the heights behind Fa
Kirk. He didn't know who Willie was and Willie never told McGuigan
that he was not only a member of the S. N. P. but was also
their candidate for Ross and Cromarty in the highlands. However Gerry
observed that Willie had taken note of his face and Gerry wondered
about this. In July 1973, Gerry had gone to work in Inverness
and set up residence at Channonery Point, right next to the
lighthouse where the Brahan Seer, Coinneach Oir had been boiled to
death in a tub of oil by the chief of the Clan MacKenzie several
hundred years before, just across the Beauly Firth from Inverness.
Apart from putting a curse on the MacKenzies, Coinneach Oir had also
predicted the coming of the Caledonian Canal.
Gerry got in with the Inverness members
of the S. N. P. He almost immediately became aware of an
organization called The Army For The Provisional Government, [A.
P. G. ]. He had vaguely heard of them before and he was now to
become acutely conscious of their activities. He met an architect
called Willie Bell who told him all about this organization of
which Bell was a member. He told Gerry that their leader
was an ex S. A. S. man called Anderson. They also had two Irishmen whom
Willie Bell believed were members of the Special Branch of the
Irish Republic! Another prominent member was a giant of a man who
was very good on the fiddle. Willie Anderson had a revolver
and, said Bell, threatened to kill anyone who didn't come join him.
"You must be prepared to die for Scotland", Anderson would
say. They were sticking out like a sore thumb and Gerry warned Bell to
have nothing to do with them. Bell replied that he couldn't leave
as he was frightened that Anderson would kill him. To
Gerry it looked like a set-up.
From then on Gerry gave the Inverness
branch a wide berth, but he did get one piece of good news. The
Inverness people thought that he was a "bit of a wet". Good,
unlike the S. A. S. and the A. P. G. , Gerry was not a " sore
thumb" anyway. Don and Gerry had often wondered what an
S. A. S. man could do if he was on his own, when he
didn't have all the technical back, esprit de corps, and not least the
moral backing of the Government behind him. Events would show
that Willie Anderson was in fact ex S. A. S and was also an
explosives expert. It wasn't a set up and all Anderson did was to lead
his army into ten year jail sentences for having possession of
gelignite. This demolition expert did not know that you could get
all the explosives and detonators that you needed from
Woolworths and no need to go blundering about the country stealing
gelignite. They never used it of course and the giant fiddler
disappeared after giving evidence against them. The Irish also
disappeared without sound or trace. However the A. P. G.
provided the Tartan Army with as dense a smoke screen as they could have hoped for. The police thought
that the A. P. G. was in reality the Tartan Army. By this time the
authorities had realized that the Border Clan and the Tartan Army
were one and the same thing, if not the 100 Organization, and
they would spend all their time concentrating on the A. P. G. which
name they thought was just another of the many names being used by
the Army to confuse them; which they were. But
nevertheless Gerry got a funny feeling that he was under observation. Whilst on
a visit to the South Gerry visited "X" who told him
that he had had a visit from the police asking a lot of questions about
him. What kind of a guy was he, what did "X" think about
him etc. "X" told them that Gerry seemed to be an ordinary sort of
character. Probably the police were just doing a routine check on new
members of the Inverness branch. Obviously they were
watching Bell and noted that Gerry had visited Bell at his house and
suspected that Gerry was in the A. P. G. Gerry's boss had also made
some obvious remarks which let Gerry know that they had visited him as
well. Everything seemed to be too obvious. Gery smelled danger.
About this time there was an election
campaign on and Gerry went up to a town called Dingwall to
listen to the candidate Willie McRae. McRae was a well known
Glasgow lawyer specialising in criminal cases. Although Gerry didn't
know it at the time, Willie had once been a member of
the British Secret Service in India and spoke fluent Urdu and Hindi.
After the meeting he spoke about this and that with Willie and
to his surprise perhaps found that Willie knew him from the time
that he had canvassed him at his home in Fa Kirk. Willie was a
very busy man and met lots of people in the course of his work
and politics but he remembered McGuigan. A bell rung in
McGuigan's head but he didn't know why. He told Willie where he lived
and invited him to call anytime he happened to be in the area and
he did just that. One dark and stormy night the bell went and
there was Willie McRae at the door. They talked and the
conversation turned to bombings. Willie said that whoever they
were they would eventually get caught. Gerry agreed. What would
happen after that ventured Willie; who would take up the cudgels.
Everything was versed in the third person with various scenarios being
drawn. Gerry said he reckoned that they were simply after home
rule and seemed to be doing a good job of it. But supposing
they got caught before finishing the job, went on Willie.
Perhaps someone should set up a shadow tartan army which would wait in
the shadows and strike when the time was ripe. He eventually
left but before leaving he asked McGuigan if he had ever heard of
the statue to the Duke of Sutherland in the small town of Golspie
fifty miles North. Gerry had of course heard of this monstrous
memorial to the gauleiter who had raped the whole of Sutherland and
emptied its Glens. It is like having a statue of Adolf Hitler in
Israel. John Diefenbaker the one time premier of Canada had a
mother whose family was a victim of this man who got the lands
after the 45 rebellion. Gerry would later hear that someone had blasted
the monument. Was McRae head of the A. P. G. ? Unlikely thought
Gerry, he was too intelligent for that scene. If Gerry had known
McRae's history he would have assumed that Willie McRae was a
government agent. He wasn't of course and Willie would eventually be
murdered by the British Secret Service in 1985 This story is
dealt with in some detail by that other book "Britain's Secret
War". Was McRae in league with Pitcaithly of Special Branch? Was the
young man who suggested the name Tartan Army one of McRae's men?
McRae as a leading light in the S. N. P. would know of George
Ronald's claim that McGuigan was behind it all and would not fail to
notice, unlike the Fa Kirk police, that the Sword and all the
bombings were within less than one hour from McGuigan's home . Did
Willie set up an army? Are they waiting to strike? Who knows?