EDITORIAL COVERAGE

Campaigners in Line for Herald Award
By Douglas Fraser

Publication Date: 06.11.06

THREE senior Holyrood front-benchers will battle it out for the award of Scottish Politician of the Year. Ross Finnie, the Environment and Rural Development Minister and Liberal Democrat MSP for theWest of Scotland, is nominated for his consistency after seven years inthe cabinet and sure-footed handling of crises such as the avian flu scare in Fife. Andy Kerr, the Health Minister and Labour MSP for East Kilbride, is also in the running for the top award, partly in recognition of the executive's successful implementation of the smoking ban. Nicola Sturgeon is also there, having led the SNP's Holyrood team in to serious contention as a potential government after next year's election, with a consistently feisty performance against Jack McConnell in the debating chamber.

The awards will be announced and presented next week at a dinner that marks the high point of the Holyrood year. They are in their eighth year, like the parliament, and organised by The Herald. Past winners include Donald Dewar, Jim Wallace, George Reid, Jack McConnell, Malcolm Chisholm and Margaret Curran.

With the support of Diageo, the drinks company, they will be presented on Thursday next week at the Prestonfield Hotel in Edinburgh. For the third time, the awards will recognise the most effective Public Campaign or Campaigner of the Year, which has previously gone to a Scots couple fighting for gun control in Turkey and Glasgow school girls demanding action on dawn raids on asylum-seeker families.

This year, the shortlist returns to the issue of immigrants, in that Shetlanders could be recognised for their successful campaign to stop the Home Office deporting Sakchai Makao, a Thai who has made Shetland his home. The other public campaigns in line for the award include the Clydebank-based groups that have been raising the rights of former industrial workers suffering from asbestosis. This year, they worked alongside lawyers, MSPs and the media to secure support from executive ministers to close a loophole on compensation for the illness.

Families Against Corporate Killers is in the running for its attempts to hold company bosses to account for the deaths their companies cause. Working with Karen Gillon, they were not wholly successful at Holyrood, but are still on the case in Westminster.

Another of the recent additions to the recognition of MSP achievement is that of the Johnnie Walker Award for Progress. This could go to Stewart Maxwell, SNP MSP for West of Scotland, who played a vital role in pushing for the smoking ban and is now making the running on promoting responsible drinking of alcohol. Also making progress over the past year has been Dennis Canavan, the Independent MSP for Falkirk West, who succeeded in pushing on to the statute book his bill that will create a national St Andrew's Day holiday.

The seven-member Green group of MSPs is in the running for making progress in advancing green policies. Westminster MPs are only eligible for one of the awards, that of the Best Scot at Westminster. While John Reid is the best known of the three short- listed, having taken the 'dysfunctional' Home Office by the scruff of the neck, he is up against Angus MacNeil, the SNP MSP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Western Isles), who sparked the police inquiry into alleged cash-for-peerages, which has led to several arrests and the probable interviewing of the Prime Minister.

Mohammad Sarwar, Labour MP for Glasgow Central and the most senior Muslim MP in Britain, is in the running for his role as a community leader and a link between Britain and Pakistan, on diplomacy and community relations. Three are also in line to be named Free Spirit of the Year, in recognition of the MSPs who go against the political grain. It features Fergus Ewing, who is in the SNP's lead team, but some how manages to pursue a conservative line on issues where his party tends to be more liberal and left-wing.

He is up against Karen Gillon, the Labour MSP who fought against her own party's ministers to get a corporate homicide bill through Holyrood. The other nominee is Tommy Sheridan, the left-wing MSP. Not only did he win a defamation action, but the Scottish Socialist Party was split and the Solidarity grouping was formed from part of the wreckage, the whole process driven largely by the force of his personality.

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