Eric Mackay

Editor of 'iron principles and honesty' who presided at 'The Scotsman' from 1972 to 1983

Eric Beattie Mackay, journalist: born Aberdeen 31 December 1922; staff, Aberdeen Bon-Accord 1948-49; staff, Elgin Courant 1949-50; staff, The Scotsman 1950-52, 1953-83, London Editor 1957-61, Deputy Editor 1961-72, Editor 1972-83; staff, The Daily Telegraph 1952-53; married 1953 Moya Connolly (died 1981; two sons, one daughter, and one son deceased); died Edinburgh 16 May 2006.

Eric Mackay was the 13th and one of the great editors of The Scotsman. He was the mentor and rather formidable editor of a parade of journalists who have subsequently become famous - Neil Ascherson, George Jones, Arnold Kemp, Gus Macdonald and James Naughtie, to name but a few. "Eric understood what it meant to be Editor of The Scotsman," says Naughtie:

He had broad shoulders. He was hewn from north-east granite. He was a man of iron principles and honesty. He lifted the editorship above the throng. He cared about his paper with a deep passion and at a turbulent time in politics, he was determined to make it creative and stylish as well as fair. He was a brave man. Most journalists want editors like Eric Mackay; too few get one.

Mackay's treatment of me throughout the Scottish devolution campaign of 1976 to 1979 was a tiny example of what Andrew Marr terms his "iron belief in fairness". Mackay passionately believed in devolution and the establishment of a Scottish Assembly leading inexorably to a Scottish Parliament. In opposing this, I was the arch-foe, along with Robin Cook and Brian Wilson, later MP for North Ayrshire and Minister of Energy.

Mackay made certain that the views of the Labour Vote No campaign in the devolution referenda were faithfully and accurately reported in his paper. Furthermore, he would invite us to talk to him and listened to what we had to say - sometimes stretched out on his sofa but always with total courtesy.

He was born in Aberdeen in 1922, and, after a rigorous academic education at Aberdeen Grammar School (for which he was always grateful), enlisted in the Fife and Forfar Yeomanry. As a second lieutenant in 1944 he was in charge of an armoured car in the sweep across the Belgian border. Though he was very reluctant to talk about it, I pressed him to say what had happened. It was terrible - as the vehicle commander he was standing up in the gun turret when a mine exploded beneath the vehicle, killing all his crew outright and causing severe injury to his own leg.

He spent two years in hospital, part of the time at Bridge of Earn in Perthshire; there was every likelihood that he would lose his leg. His son Davie Mackay recalls the surgeon as saying: "Stick him outside and see if the fresh air helps." Eric Mackay made light for the rest of his life of the limp caused by one leg's being shorter than the other.

My last long talk with Mackay was during my opposition to the Falklands War when virtually the whole of the British press agreed with the very public observations of the Conservative MP Sally Oppenheim that I was a traitor to the country. Not so Mackay.

I do not pretend that he was as critical of Margaret Thatcher's decision to go to war in the South Atlantic as I was, but it was clear both from what he said and from his editorials that he thought that war was absolutely the last resort and that the British prime minister had not done everything she could have done to avoid conflict. He was particularly moved by the case of the Welsh Guardsman Simon Weston who had incurred terrible facial wounds when the Sir Galahad was set on fire. Mackay knew what war and grievous injury was like.

After Aberdeen University, Mackay's first job was on a small Aberdeen paper, the Bon-Accord, from which he went to the Elgin Courant. He joined The Scotsman as a sub-editor in 1950 but moved briefly to The Daily Telegraph, and then back to The Scotsman as deputy chief sub-editor in 1953. He was plucked out for stardom by Alistair Dunnett, another great editor of The Scotsman, to become London Editor in 1957.

It was in London that an episode established his reputation among cognoscenti journalists. The Scotsman alone in the British press had day after day been running stories about the brutalities perpetrated by the government of Dr Hastings Banda in what was then Nyasaland and is now Malawi. The British government were hugely embarrassed. There had been a news clampdown imposed. They were not sure how the information was getting to The Scotsman. Mackay received a summons from the Foreign Office, to see the Foreign Secretary no less, the Earl of Home. Home received Mackay with these words:

Eric, I appeal to you to tell me where you are getting your information. I appeal to you not as Foreign Secretary, not as a senior member of the Conservative Party but as a fellow Scot to tell me and to desist from doing something that is very harmful to Britain.

Mackay's response was to turn on his heel and walk out of the room without saying anything. The fact was that, as a devout member of the Church of Scotland and happily married to the Roman Catholic Moya Connolly, he had contacts amongst Church of Scotland missionaries and Roman Catholic priests who were feeding him information about Banda. He was determined that this unpalatable information should be brought to the attention of his readers.

He returned to Edinburgh as Deputy Editor in 1961 and, to my own first-hand knowledge, virtually ran the day-to-day affairs of the paper when Dunnett was concerning himself more and more with the European affairs of his owner Roy Thomson, later Lord Thomson of Fleet. He took a great interest in his profession and was the undisputed choice in 1972 as Dunnett's successor. Mackay was Andrew Marr's first editor when he joined The Scotsman in 1982 and recalls him as "punctilious and fact-driven":

On the surface he showed a kind of weary pessimism. As a young potential recruit, I was interviewed by him and made some glib remarks about "quality journalism". Eric rose from his sofa, looked across at Princes Street and barked: "Quality journalism my foot. Do any of those people out there want quality journalism? It's all over!"

Marr recollected that he and his contemporaries were slightly scared of Mackay, but that's how it should have been.

Mackay followed Dunnett in believing that the Editor of The Scotsman should be an Edinburgh persona, and there was no better host at the time of the Edinburgh Festival, when he would invite his contributors and friends from London and abroad to theatre productions. He was a scholar of the British theatre.