Scottish Mysteries. Willie McRae.

Willie McRae (18 May 1923 – 7 April 1985) was a Scottish lawyer, orator, naval officer, politician and anti-nuclear campaigner. In the Second World War he served in the British Army and then the Royal Indian Navy. He supported the Indian independence movement and for much of his life was active in the Scottish National Party (SNP).
McRae, who struggled with alcoholism and depression, died by suicide in 1985 after crashing his car in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands, shooting himself in the head with a revolver. McRae’s death spawned conspiracy theories among Scottish Nationalists that he had been assassinated by the British security services. These conspiracy theories were rejected by his family. Two plays related to McRae’s life were staged in 2014, which prompted renewed interest in his death and the establishment of a privately funded “Justice For Willie” campaign. The campaign reported in 2016 that it had been unable to find any evidence to undermine the official suicide verdict.

Early life and education

McRae was born in Carron, Falkirk, where his father was an electrician. McRae edited a local newspaper in Grangemouth at the same time as reading history at the University of Glasgow, from which he gained a first-class degree. After the war McRae returned to the University of Glasgow and graduated again, this time in law. He authored the maritime law of Israel and was an emeritus professor of the University of Haifa. After his death a forest of 3,000 trees was planted in Israel in his memory.

War service

In the Second World War he was commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders but transferred to the Royal Indian Navy, in which he became a lieutenant commander and aide-de-camp to Admiral Lord Mountbatten. He supported the Indian independence movement.

Political activities

McRae became a solicitor and an SNP activist. In both of the 1974 General Elections and in the 1979 General Election he stood for Parliament as the SNP candidate for Ross and Cromarty. In October 1974 he only lost to the Conservative Hamish Gray by 633 votes, but in 1979 Gray’s majority increased to 4,735. In the latter year he also contested the SNP leadership, coming third in a three-way contest with 52 votes to Stephen Maxwell’s 117 votes and winner Gordon Wilson’s 530 votes.

McRae was a vocal critic of the British nuclear lobby. Early in the 1980s he was a key figure in a campaign against the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority plans to dispose of nuclear waste in the Mullwharchar area of the Galloway Hills. Representing the SNP in a public inquiry, McRae asked difficult questions of the UKAEA and famously declared at one meeting that “nuclear waste should be stored where Guy Fawkes put his gunpowder.” The authority’s plans were rejected, and McRae was credited with “single-handedly” preventing the area from becoming a nuclear waste dump.