News

'Piper' Alastair Campbell's bizarre front page Irish News headline

Gary McDonald and his daughter Cherry attempt to wrest their family bagpipes from Alastair Campbell at a NI Chamber of Commerce dinner in Belfast in December 2010
Gary McDonald and his daughter Cherry attempt to wrest their family bagpipes from Alastair Campbell at a NI Chamber of Commerce dinner in Belfast in December 2010 Gary McDonald and his daughter Cherry attempt to wrest their family bagpipes from Alastair Campbell at a NI Chamber of Commerce dinner in Belfast in December 2010

FORMER Labour Party spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who was yesterday unceremoniously kicked out of Labour for voting Lib Dem in the European Elections, made front page headlines in the Irish News more than eight years ago - bizarrely for bagpiping, not politics.

Booked to speak at a Chamber of Commerce dinner in Belfast City Hall in December 2010, he asked organisers to provide him with a set of bagpipes, which he later admitted he often plays to help him deal with his well-documented bouts of depression.

The problem is, the Chamber then contacted a McDonald (this writer) . . . unaware of the deadly rivalry between the clans Campbell and McDonald, which dates to the 1692 Glencoe massacre.

Back then the Campbells, who were seen as the oily politicians of the day, went to Glencoe to persuade the McDonalds to swear allegiance to King William (who happened to have won a not insignificant battle at the Boyne two years earlier).

When my forefathers dithered over their decision, the Campbells became impatient and butchered 39 McDonald chiefs. Another 40 people, mostly women and children, died of exposure after their homes were torched as the blood-soaked Campbells rode smirking out of town.

Where once it would have been sacrilege for a McDonald to lend his bagpipes (or anything for that matter) to a Campbell (there remains a McDonald family-owned pub in Glencoe with a sign reading: 'No hawkers or Campbells'), the instrument was duly loaned for the night.

And as the Irish News reported on pages one and three, the hatchet was buried between the clans - but for one night only . . .