John MacCormick

John MacDonald MacCormick (20 November 1904 - 13 October 1961) was a Scottish lawyer and advocate of Home Rule in Scotland.

Early life

MacCormick was born in Pollokshields, Glasgow, the son of Donald MacCormick, a sea captain who was from the Isle of Mull. MacCormick was educated at Woodside School, and studied law at the University of Glasgow (1923-1928). He became involved in politics while at university, and joined the Glasgow University Labour Club and the Independent Labour Party. In September 1927 MacCormick left the ILP and formed the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association (GUSNA), which was designed to promote Scottish culture and nationalism and self-government. The association was sufficiently neutral to act as the honest broker between the various nationalist organizations which would merge to form the National Party of Scotland (NPS) in April 1928. MacCormick was a talented speaker and organizer, and served as the national secretary of the NPS. MacCormick was often known by his nickname "King John", which he said came from a heckle during a debate he was participating in when upon a question from the floor whether a devolved Scotland would retain the monarchy, or would be a republic, someone interjected and said: "no, it will be a kingdom and John MacCormick will be our king."

The failure of the NPS to make an electoral breakthrough led him to question current tactics and he concluded that the party's fundamentalist wing was frightening away potential support because of its support for republicanism and independence. In consequence, MacCormick initiated a campaign to redefine the policy of the NPS, to make it more moderate and to tone down demands for independence. He first stood for Parliament as an NPS candidate at the 1929 general election, when he came third in Glasgow Camlachie, with 1,646 votes.

SNP

In 1932, MacCormick began to make overtures to the right-wing Scottish Party, believing that, as the Scottish Party included a number of members of the Scottish ‘establishment’, their conversion to the cause of home rule would enhance the credibility of the nationalists. In order to secure an accommodation, MacCormick purged the NPS of radical elements, and moved the policy of the NPS towards that of the Scottish Party. His endeavours paid dividends, and in 1934 the two parties merged to form the Scottish National Party (SNP). MacCormick himself was not a dogmatic politician, and described himself as a radical, by which he meant a form of centrist liberal. His response to the failure of the SNP to make an electoral impact in the mid-1930s was to search for alternative strategies. He considered the basic problem to be that, although many people in Scotland favoured home rule, they were not, on the whole, willing to put the issue above conventional party loyalties. The solution, MacCormick argued, was to make the other parties take home rule seriously, and to demonstrate widespread support for the cause. In 1939 he launched the idea of a Scottish national convention, which would bring together all sections of Scottish society and all shades of Scottish political opinion in favour of home rule. He had made contact with both the Labour and Liberal parties, and although the first meeting, scheduled for September 1939, was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War II, MacCormick pushed negotiations throughout the war.

He resigned from the party in 1942 following his failure to persuade the party to adopt a devolutionist stance rather than supporting all out Scottish independence and due to the victory of Douglas Young over his favoured candidate William Power for the chairmanship of the party. Along with a number of dissatisfied delegates to that year's SNP conference he established a Scottish Convention (not to be confused with a 1990s of the same name to campaign for home rule for Scotland) and later formed the Scottish Covenant Association.

Later MacCormick also took the decision to join the Liberal Party as he viewed them as being the party most closely allied to his devolutionist ambitions for Scotland.

He stood for parliament at Inverness unsuccessfully on three occasions, in 1931 as a candidate for the National Party of Scotland, in 1935 as a candidate for the Scottish National Party and in 1945 as a candidate for the Liberal Party. In 1937 he was the unsuccessful Scottish National Party candidate in the Glasgow Hillhead by-election.

His last attempt to enter parliament came at the 1959 General Election, when he stood for the Liberal Party at Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, again finishing second.

Personal life

MacCormick married Margaret Isobel Miller in 1939, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. Their elder son, Iain (1939-2014), served as SNP Member of Parliament for Argyll from 1974 till 1979 (and was a founder member of the Social Democratic Party. Their second son, Sir Neil (1940-, was

Professor of Law and Vice-Principal of the University of Edinburgh and elected an SNP Member of the European Parliament in 1999.

Iain Somerled MacDonald MacCormick (b. 1939), was SNP MP for Argyll from the February 1974 election to 1979, and their younger son, (Donald) Neil MacCormick (1941–2009), became regius professor of public law at Edinburgh University and a vigorous SNP candidate at elections, and was knighted in 2001.

MacCormick was survived by two sons. The first, ,

Later events

He was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1950 as GUSNA's candidate, serving until 1953; he was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws by the university in 1951. This association with GUSNA also saw the formation of a political friendship with a then young law student at Glasgow University, Ian Hamilton, who had run his campaign to be elected rector.

He was involved, along with Hamilton, in the removal of the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950 and its return to Arbroath Abbey. He was also responsible, again along with Hamilton, for MacCormick v. Lord Advocate, the constitutional challenge over Queen Elizabeth using the title the second, rather than the first in Scotland—there having been no Elizabeth I of Scotland.

In the 1951 he formed the Scottish Covenant Association, a non-partisan political organisation which campaigned to secure the establishment of a devolved Scottish Assembly. This covenant was hugely successful in securing support from across the political spectrum as well as in capturing the Scottish public's imagination (over 2 million signed a petition demanding the convocation of an Assembly). However, in the long run it proved unsuccessful in establishing the assembly MacCormick so craved, and it would not be until nearly 40 years after his death that Home Rule would be secured.

In 1955 MacCormick had a book detailing his activities in the home rule movement published, entitled The Flag in the Wind.

In the film Stone of Destiny MacCormick is played by Robert Carlyle.