The death of the solicitor and Scotland-UN Committee member William McRae has never been satisfactorily explained. He was shot just a few days after a similar attempt on the life of Scotland-UN founder and secretary John McGill, FSA Scot, at the height of repressive measures that the Thatcher regime in London was taking against Scottish nationalists generally and Scotland-UN in particular. It is now known that Special Branch police were shadowing him at the time, but the true story of his murder may never come to light. Willie’s efforts were not in vain, because the Scotland-UN Committee that he helped to found later cracked the home rule nut for the first time in 300 years with a brilliant international diplomatic action that restored the Scottish Government and Parliament, and thereby gave the SNP the key to the door for its independence project. We asked John McGill to record his memories of Willie McRae and the events surrounding his death. His narrative also illustrates the atmosphere in Scotland after the disgraceful unionist coup d’état in 1979.

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