Willie McRae
The publicity this week about the mysterious death of SNP activist Willie McRae 25 years ago, prompted Andrew JT Kerr to remind me that I had published an article about this a couple of years ago.

Without comment, here is the piece published in the Scots Independent in December 2008.

 

Truth stranger than fiction

Colin Darroch
 
The crash scene moved mysteriously into a different sheriffdom
Stephan Adolphus Kock died peacefully at his home in Argyll at the end of October. He was born in Czechoslovakia and moved to the UK via Rhodesia. He obtained UK citizenship, based himself at the Special Forces Club, and managed to infiltrate the highest levels of the Ministry Of Defence, Foreign Office, Downing Street, and Astra Holdings PLC - which was at the centre of the Scott Inquiry into the arms to Iraq affair in the 1980s.*

Michael Meacher MP’s Commons Question on Kock’s duties was answered by the Prime Minister with great care on 24th May 1994 –

“Mr Kock performed no official duties for any Government Department during the period 1964-1979. It remains the Government’s policy not to comment on the contacts which an individual may or may not have had with the security (MI5) and intelligence (MI6) agencies.”

Most people have now forgotten Stephan Kock’s appearance before Oban Sheriff Court in 1990 when he was fined £650. What had happened? Two men were travelling in a van on a remote Argyll road when they suffered a puncture. As they were trying to change the wheel, a car drew up. Kock got out of the car and beckoned the van driver over. But instead of offering to help them, Kock suddenly shouted “I am a soldier you know” and then fired two pistol shots over the van driver's head. The victim commented - “It is not the kind of thing that happens in the countryside in the middle of the night.”

As Kenny Dalglish would say -"maybes aye, maybes no".

On the morning of 6th April 1985, an Australian tourist spotted a crashed Volvo car beside the A87 between Invergarry and Cluanie. The driver, prominent SNP activist Willie McRae, was slumped over the driving wheel. He had been on his way from his home in Glasgow to his holiday cottage in Kintail to prepare for the Public Inquiry into expansion of the Dounreay nuclear plant.

McRae was rushed by ambulance to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness and later transferred to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where he died the next morning. It was several weeks later before the public was informed that Willie had been shot through the head and that this had not been detected until he was admitted to Aberdeen Royal. The Crown Office declared that the death was a ѕυιcιdє and that there were no suspicious circuмstances.

No Fatal Accident Inquiry was held despite widespread public concern about the matter. If Willie had committed ѕυιcιdє - no one could explain why there no obvious signs of this at the crash scene - no cartridge cases at the car, no powder marks on the body (which would be expected if the gun had been fired at close range). There was no explanation why the only gun to be found was in a stream 20 yards from the car. The police later admitted that two shots had been fired from the gun, and as the rear car window was shattered, it was almost certain that McRae had been shot from outside the car. Even the crash scene appeared to move mysteriously into a different sheriffdom.

Not the kind of thing that happens in the countryside in the middle of the night? Does anyone know where Stephan Adolphus Kock was on the night of 5th/6th April 1985?

* For more details on the Arms to Iraq scandal see In the Public Interest by Gerald James, published by Warner Books.

http://www.scotsindependent.org/