“Andy, everyone loves a winner.”
“Not in my country they don't.”
Andrew Greig, Preferred Lies
When I read a newspaper in Hollywood I've often thought that if the word
success dropped out of all its news reports and articles, the paper would
just fall apart. So too in Scotland, but the word would then be failure. For
much of my life I've thought of exchanging the bogus bonhomie of California,
forever wishing me a nice day, for the honest aggression of Scotland, where
it's assumed that I've made other arrangements to get through my day. What
is it in our culture that accentuates the negative and puts down our
positive achievements?
When I brought a contingent of 95 people over to Scotland for the world
premiere of my movie Entrapment, at the Edinburgh Film Festival, the
tabloids put their heavies in the hotel just to upset me. Success is a red
rag to them. They want to take you down. They just want you to fail so that
they can report on your discomfort. That's why Billy Connolly refuses to
have newspapers anywhere near his home.
Some of that antipathy may stem from Connery's support for the Scottish
National Party
In the mid-Sixties I became interested in politics in Scotland when Winifred
Ewing was campaigning for the Scottish National Party in the Hamilton
by-election against formidable odds. Since Labour had captured 71.2per cent
of the vote at the previous general election, Ewing's sensational victory in
1967 made headlines across the UK and sent shockwaves through the other
Scottish parties. Yet when she arrived in Westminster, MPs treated her
deplorably.
All I have ever campaigned for is to have Scotland considered as an equal
partner with England. I am for a Scotland that makes her own decisions, a
sovereign state that will be a voice in Europe and around the world. I would
also like to banish all aspects of feudality in Scotland. A couple of
statistics substantiate it: for example only 4 per cent of all the companies
owned in Scotland have their head offices in Scotland. The rest are in the
South or abroad.
In 1995 I deposited $1.2million in an off-shore account and donated the
monthly interest of around $8,000 to the Scottish National Party. This was
curtailed in 2001 when new laws prohibited political parties accepting money
from people not on Britain's electoral register. As the honorary chairman of
the American Friends of Scotland charity, I helped to fund Alba House, a New
York townhouse on East 64th Street as a hub for Scottish culture, art and
business in the city that never sleeps. To accentuate the positive, the
Scottish International Education Trust (SIET), which I initiated and
co-funded over 35 years ago, has since boosted the careers of many young
talents in Scotland. But what's the purpose of this if our politicians don't
follow suit?
When New Labour latched on to celebrities for its Cool Britannia image, I was
invited to Chequers to be courted by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They were
anxious to win my public support for their devolution referendum plans.
Despite my impression that Scottish devolution was just an irritating
irrelevance for Tony Blair, Cherie took me aside afterwards and said, “Now
you really will go to Scotland and campaign, won't you?”. I found it quite
insulting. I don't play the guitar. But in the end I went. It resulted in a
photo opportunity featuring Gordon Brown and me crossing the Forth, framed
against the cantilevers of the Forth Bridge. Gordon had the decency to send
me a thank you fax. I never heard a word back from either Cherie or Tony
Blair.
I was as critical as anyone when the Royal High School, on its commanding
site, was passed over as the new Scottish parliament and a new building was
fast-forwarded into construction before all its requirements were known. But
at the opening I forgave what the First Secretary Donald Dewar had
commissioned, for I was thrilled with what the Catalan architect Enric
Miralles had achieved in that remarkable complex of buildings at the end of
the Royal Mile. Despite the Greek tragedy of their early deaths, Miralles
and Dewar's posthumous achievement has been endorsed by the people. Within a
year of its opening the parliament was one of the most popular visitor
destinations in Scotland. Unlike the cost over-runs of Blair's vacuous
Millennium Dome, at least here we had a happy ending. If the parliament cost
over £400million, consider that it will cost more than £4,000million to half
de-commission the fast breeder nuclear reactor at Dounreay.
During an interview at the 2006 Edinburgh Film Festival I was asked what film
had made the greatest impact on me. My immediate response was Black Watch.
That this was a play, and not a film, came as some surprise to the audience.
But what a play... When Alex Salmond, became Scotland's new First Minister
in June, 2007, I suggested that he should invite a performance of Black
Watch at the opening of the Scottish parliament. What an unforgettable
evening that became. “Can you imagine that happening in London?” said the
director, John Tiffany, turning to the posttheatre gathering. “Talk about
putting art at the heart of things.”
Infuriating accusations and why Labour tried to block my knighthood
At the heart of Connery's uneasy relationship with the media is his
suspicion that they are more interested in negative publicity than good news.
For someone who is a private person who also happen to be a public figure, I
am a very easy target. I've been accused of professing to give to charity to
avoid tax. Yet I pay tax every time I work both in the UK and the USA,
although I receive no state benefits from either country as I live
permanently in the Bahamas. When Kevin Costner asked me to play a cameo role
of Richard the Lionheart in his Robin Hood movie (just five lines of
dialogue and one day's shooting for $500,000) I decided to split the entire
fee between SIET and the universities of St Andrews, Dundee, Edinburgh and
Heriot-Watt. When I announced this at an Edinburgh press conference there
were sneaky comments inferring that my donations were a complicated tax
dodge. This had happened before when I gave over a $1 million to initiate
SIET, won from round-the-clock work on Diamonds are Forever. It happened
again when I sent £50,000 to save the London Youth Theatre and $80,000 for a
laser machine for the treatment of throat cancer in Manchester. When a
notorious tabloid newspaperman accused me to my face of tax dodging, I lost
it. The idea that funding medical research would in any way line my pocket
was despicable beyond belief. I told him to shut his face, and left.
My reward came soon. At Dundee we immediately struck gold. My donation was the
very first received by Professor Sir Philip Cohen, the driving force behind
the Wellcome Trust Biocentre at Dundee University, set up in 1997. Cohen was
able to winkle out much more from serious medical funders who couldn't
believe that this brilliant scientist's research programme had been
jump-started by Robin Hood Prince Of Thieves. In the ten years since its
foundation this innovative research centre has now passed the £100million
mark in research funding. Ranking alongside Oxford and Cambridge in the life
science stakes, Dundee is now recognised as a hub for biomedical and life
sciences research. More than 260 scientists and support staff have joined
the Biocentre. 51 different nationalities are represented in the 650 now
working at the university's school of life sciences. Well, that's some
success story.
Given my background, if anyone should vote Labour it's me. So it came as a
surprise to discover that I had been put up for a knighthood by two
Conservatives, Michael Forsyth, the former Secretary of State for Scotland,
and Virginia Bottomley, former Secretary of State for National Heritage. It
was only after Labour's successful referendum, which I had done my best to
support, that I found out that their proposal had been “discouraged” by the
junior Scottish Office minister Sam Galbraith and eventually rejected by
Scottish Secretary, Donald Dewar. Why? Because there was too much publicity
associating me with the Nationalists. In 1998, a year after Scotland had so
wholeheartedly endorsed the idea of a Scottish parliament, the former Labour
minister Peter Mandelson called me up to explain that there had been a
“misunderstanding”. I was eventually knighted by the Queen in the Palace of
Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, in July 2000.
As my lifetime in movies unfolded on the 60ft screen in front of my family,
close friends and colleagues, they brought back to me lots of terrific
memories. Memories with people who are fun and industrious, gifted and
enthusiastic - these are all the qualities that I find admirable. To receive
the American Film Institute's life achievement award that magical evening in
2006 was quite humbling. “You know making movies is either a utopia,” I told
the many talents gathered in front of me in the Los Angeles Kodak Theatre,
“or it's like shoveling shit up hill. Tonight I suppose we put down our
shovels and remember the good times.” Well, I've had many.
Copyright Sean Connery 2008
Extracted from Being a Scot, by Sean Connery and Murray Grigor.
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20
