By Jamie Stone – Liberal Democrat councillor for Tain and Easter Ross on Highland Council and former MSP for Caithness, Sutherland, and Easter Ross (1999-2011)
One day in the spring of 1983 a fiddler came and played to the kind ladies who helped my parents with their cheese business in Tain.
The fiddler was Charles Kennedy’s father Ian and it was a very different approach to electioneering.
That difference was to be the outstanding hallmark of Charles’s glittering political career.
His 1983 General Election victory for the Social Democratic Party in Ross, Cromarty and Skye was a surprise, not least to the hitherto incumbent Conservative MP Hamish Gray, latterly Lord Gray of Contin who was Margaret Thatcher’s energy minister.
And the reason that it was a surprise – on an election day when the tide was flowing the Tories’ way – goes down to Charles himself.
“Oh, I met that Mr Kennedy fellow in Invergordon today!” said my wife brightly when I came home from my shift in the Nigg fabrication yard.
“Did you dear”
“Yes, and he was awfully nice!”
And then the following week she said: “I bumped into Charles today in Alasdair Rhind’s shop in Tain this morning”
“Oh, so “Charles” is it now? I mused
She went on: “And you know, I did like him – and so did all the other people in the shop; I even think he might win”
On the eve of poll Charles’s last hustings was in Tain.
And in the middle of the capacity audience sat my mother – his cheese business host of three weeks earlier.
Charles looked directly at her and said: “Hello, Mrs Stone, good to see you again!”
Did the old Tory vote for him? I rather think she did.
Charles won that seat through an extraordinary ability to connect with people from all walks of life.
A visit to a school to talk with a class? Why not? And he did so with aplomb.
And this was back in an age when it was rare for MPs to descend from Mount Olympus to the chalkface, to where the children of ordinary people were.
During my own school days an MP never once crossed the threshold of any of the schools I attended.
Hello Mrs Mackay – Hamish – Mr Mackenzie – whoever.
Along with Charles’s natural friendliness and genuine interest in other people went an astonishing memory for names and faces.
He could effortlessly pick on a conversation that had last taken place years before.
As I embarked on my own political career, one much encouraged by Charles, his was a technique that I still strive to emulate.
After he lost his seat last month I left him a voicemail offering sympathy and also help if he needed it.
The next day he sent me a text message.
It read: “Ta so much for your cheering voicemail.
“I’m quite fine – in London catching up with Donald and Sarah (son and ex-wife) and signing off on Commons’ transition admin.
“Not giving up the political fight, albeit hopefully in a different context.
Catch up soon! CK”
But my prince, my dearest friend in politics, is gone.
Taken from us so before his time.
His is a tragic loss that will be felt the length and breadth of this land.
Though I shall miss him desperately, his example will live on.
If you care about decency in public life, then it must.