Salvo's North-East Hub or The Brian Allan Show

 My purpose in writing this piece is not to cause distress to the Alec Salmond Fan Club. My reservations about Mr. Salmond are clearly expressed in Settler Watch Lynn and the Road to Devolunion; https://troostories.blogspot.com/. My purpose in this piece is to tell of a well-intentioned attempt to support the pro-independence claims of Salvo.

          By trying to make something work you find out more about it. After five months of frustrated effort I complained to the High-Heid Yins of Salvo about their organisational structure and the way in which it worked to waste the energy of anyone who genuinely believed that Scotland should return to the fold of sovereign nation states.

On the 7^th May 2023 the Salvo Secretary, Jan Hendry sent an electronic document to those who had joined Salvo in an area from Dundee to Forres. This document was a call to form Salvo’s North-East Hub at a Meeting in Aberdeen. The document of 7^th May had a draft constitution attached and a list of positions to be filled by willing Members.

          The Meeting was organised and overseen by Brian Allan who introduced himself as an activist with Aye Aberdeen. The Meeting duly appointed four office-bearers. Leigh Dubbels took responsibility for the Convener/Coordinator role; Wilma Bruce, Treasurer; Brian Allan, Membership Secretary; Louis Mair (author), Minutes Secretary.

          A few days later I looked in my in-box for the document of the 7^th May as an aid to writing a draft minute. I found a similarly styled document dated 8^th May. This document also purported to have come from Jan Hendry. The 8^th May document had a significantly different list of office-bearers. No-one at the 9^th May Meeting had mentioned these alternative posts. I wrote to the Salvo Secretary asking for clarity.

          Some days passed before Jan Hendry replied. I was told that my query had caused the Salvo secretary some confusion; the document had been composed and sent by someone else. My next attempt at writing the draft minute involved a more careful look at my electronic in-box. I found the 7^th May document but when I opened it the list of Hub positions was not as I remembered it. My rough notes agreed with my memory. I asked a friend if you could alter an e-mail once it was in the recipient’s in-box. I was assured that this could not be done. I then wrote to Jan Hendry to ask for clarity. The Salvo secretary told me that the document had been edited. Jan Hendry was exceedingly vague about who had edited the document which looked like an e-mail but was not an e-mail.

          I cannot say with certainty who forged the 8^th May document. I can however speak five languages and everything I know about literary criticism suggests that Brian Allan is the prime suspect. I cannot say with certainty who edited the 7^th May document; once again I suspect that it was Brian Allan. My draft minute contains Hub posts that cannot be traced in the paperwork.

In June 2023 the North-East Hub’s Membership Secretary organised an admin-team meeting. Three of the four Hub Officers were present with a fourth figure by video conference. It was not clear what the Membership Secretary wished to discuss. The Convener/Coordinator was keen to tell me that she had given up the Convener’s duties and was now a Coordinator. It seemed probable that Leigh Dubbels had been schooled in this confused piece of thinking. I suggested that Miss Dubbels should resign from her post if she no longer wished to take the responsibility. I then asked Brian Allan what post he held with Salvo’s central organisation. Mr. Allan said, reluctantly, that he was a member of the “Core Group”. I had to leave to catch a bus, forgetting to ask the name of the lady on the video-link.

          Not long afterwards I learned that a Researcher had been appointed and her name was Dot Jessiman. This appointment was clearly not a Hub appointment. The name sounded familiar and I found it in a circa November 1993 newspaper cutting. A Dot Jessiman had been involved in a publicity stunt which benefitted Alec Salmond. In 1993 Alec Salmond had achieved favourable press reports in both the Scotsman and the Press and Journal over his association with New Scots for Independence. This hollow sham was fronted by Dot Jessiman. New Scots for Independence was never heard of again. Alec Salmond claimed to be leading the SNP towards Scottish independence. The Scotsman and the Press and Journal are virulently empire-loyalist newspapers. Dot Jessiman is currently a member of Alec Salmond’s Alba Party.

I was unable to attend the July “Admin Team Meeting”. It was around this time that Brian Allan claimed that he had become the ‘Chair’, presumably of the Admin Team.

           For the August Meeting the entire Hub was invited and an agenda was sent out by Leigh Dubbels. Item 1 on the agenda was the appointment of a Chair and a Secretary. This was achieved very promptly and the Meeting moved on to the kind of chaotic discussion that had been a feature of the May Meeting. The agenda was completely forgotten. Brian Allan gave the Meeting a long ramble about the need to copy leaflets given him by the central organisation. This led to the rapid appointment of two people who seemed to have known that this was coming. They were designated Chief and Deputy Clerk. It looked to me as though Brian Allan had created non-jobs for two of his cronies.

          In September there was a “Bonfire of the Vanities” night on the 18th. The Aberdeen clique around Brian Allan organised a bonfire on a river bank near the beach. It is a spot where people often light fires and no-one who saw it would have thought it unusual. I am not sure how many bonfires were lit between Dundee and Forres by the 400 Members of Salvo’s North-East Hub. I organised a bonfire on Tap o Noth, a prominent hill near Rhynie. I took a photograph of this fire and on the 19th September I shared my picture with the North-East Hub’s facebook page. My photo was approved for others to see by Brian Allan (Admin); on the 29th September. If you wanted to minimise the impact of a campaign that is how you would do it.

          In August I had attended a North-East Hub Meeting. The Hub appointed Dave Greig to the position of Chair. The new Chair was enthusiastic about his role which he saw as that of a secretary, much in the way that Brian Allan understood the structure of organisations.

          As far as I can re-construct the story of my exclusion from the September Hub Meeting it runs as follows: the Chair, Dave Greig, wrote an invitation to all Members to attend a Meeting on the 14th September. As he did not have access to the Hub’s mailing-list he entrusted his mailing to Brian Allan to send out. Dave Greig would have been pleased to receive a copy of his own mailing on the 11th, he would have had good reason to assume that Brian Allan had sent the mailing to all the Members.

           However Brian Allan had deleted my name from the mailing-list before informing everyone else about the Meeting. On the afternoon of the 14th September Brian Allan seems to have phoned Dave Greig to ask him to contact me by telephone to ensure that I knew about the Meeting. Brian Allan had my telephone number, Dave Greig did not. Brian Allan knew that I lived 25 miles away from Aberdeen, Dave Greig did not. Dave Greig sent me a text-message telling me about the Meeting, three hours before it began.

          I then phoned Dave Greig and was assured that I had been told about the Meeting by e-mail on the 11th September. I had been looking for something else on the 12th and knew this to be untrue. Ten minutes after the end of my call to Dave Greig I missed a call from Brian Allan. When I called him back he had nothing to tell me.

          By these Machiavellian manoeuvres Brian Allan could claim that I had been informed about the Meeting but I had chosen not to attend. To his lasting credit Dave Greig resigned from the position of Chair shortly thereafter. I have previously been involved with organisations which degenerated into cults of personality. They were always unable to pursue their stated aims.

          Salvo has a constitution which mentions a Core Group, two Guardians and a number of Stewards. How these people are appointed and the relationships between them are not available in writing. In practice without some unseen power in the background the organisation could not work. In pursuing the constitutional path towards independence, Salvo does not work.

          Salvo’s published material does not challenge the great lie about the Holyrood Assembly. There is no constitutional link between the colonial assembly at Holyrood and our 1706 Parliament. There is no link between the Holyrood Assembly and Scotland’s constitution. Tony Blair was being honest (for a politician) when he likened the Holyrood Assembly to a Parish Council. Mr Blair did not say ‘English Parish Council’ but his audience would have understood him; hopefully at lest one hundred Scots will also understand him.

          The people I interacted with and learned about during my five months with Salvo’s North-East Hub were mostly supporters of Alec Salmond. The money to pay for Salvo’s expensive glossy leaflets may well be coming from the generous pension that a grateful Emperor of London pays to Mr Salmond. Like Aye Aberdeen, Salvo seems, to me, to be a hollow sham that will attempt to divert our energy into constitutional cul-de-sacs. Other similar new, improved and allegedly pro-independence organisations are springing up at an alarming rate. If you want to take part in a just struggle you should find out about them and be quietly and politely sceptical.