People of the 20th Century
JIM WALLACE

Jo Grimond, a winner at ten General Elections, had been MP for Orkney and Shetland for 33 years when he decided to retire from the House of Commons. It would be an awesome task for whoever was selected to take over the mantle.

In the end, it was Jim Wallace, who would not only represent the Northern Isles for the remainder of the century but would see Jo Grimond’s dream of a Scottish Parliament become reality, and actually take a share in government.

Following Jo Grimond’s decision to stand down, the local associations agreed a short list of four contenders to be the Liberal candidate.

They were Shetland businessman Vivien Owers; the Orkney councillor Hugh Halcro-Johnston, a 46-year-old farmer from Orphir, who, a decade later, would become county convener; Richard Jenkins (32) a former captain in the Queen’s Own Highlanders, now farming in Evie; and Jim Wallace, the man who won the nomination on the first count.

Jim Wallace was then a 29-year-old Edinburgh-based advocate who had already contested the General Election for the Liberals in his native Dumfriesshire in 1979, the same year that he was called to the bar, having earlier graduated from Edinburgh University and Downing College, Cambridge. He was engaged to Rosie, who would become his wife three weeks after the 1983 General Election.

Fourteen years on and the result of the General Election on May 1, 1997, saw Jim Wallace’s fourth victory in the Orkney and Shetland seat and, for the first time, he emulated Jo Grimond’s regular achievement of getting more votes than all the other candidates put together.

Nationally, Tony Blair was returned as Prime Minister in a landslide Labour victory. There was not one Conservative MP returned in Scotland, so Jim Wallace could claim to be the leader of the largest opposition party in Scotland.

Following the announcement of the Scottish Parliament, Jim Wallace said he would seek to stand as the Orkney Liberal Democrat candidate for the new Parliament – although, for the lifetime of the present Parliament, he would remain as the Westminster MP for Orkney and Shetland.

Two out of every three voters who went to the polls in Orkney voted for Jim Wallace on May 6, 1999, as he became Orkney’s first ever Member of the Scottish Parliament.

A week after the election, Jim Wallace, as leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, struck a coalition deal with the majority Labour group of Donald Dewar and became Deputy First Minister of Scotland.

It was the first time for 80 years that an Orkney representative had achieved senior ministerial rank; since Robert Munro, the MP for the Northern Burghs (which included Kirkwall) was Secretary of State for Scotland in World War One.