Leonard Small

Notes from ‘The Holy Goalie’ (1993) – the autobiography of R. Leonard Small (1905-1994)

Scottish Amateur International Goalkeeper and minister of:

St John’s Parish Church, Bathgate 1931-35; West High Church, Kilmarnock 1935-44; Cramond Church, Edinburgh, 1944-56; St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh 1956-75. 

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1966-67.

Foreword by the very Rev. Dr. David Steel [father of the politician Lord Steel]:

He became minister of four very different charges: in Bathgate; Kilmarnock; Cramond; and St.Cuthbert’s in the centre of Edinburgh. He had the good sense to become engaged to Jean before he was called to his first charge, and they began their married life in the manse at Bathgate.

Preface:

From the age of 15 to around 26 I played football in the position of goalkeeper. At school I played in the morning for the school, and in the afternoon for the town team [the Bass Rock]; at University I played for and captained the team; while at New College I played as an amateur in a professional team, St. Bernard’s FC in the 2nd Division of the Scottish League, and in 1929 played for Scotland in an Amateur International against England.

When I came to live in my present retirement house my neighbour across the road, Mrs Alistair McKinlay, told me that one of her sons, having been told who was moving in across the road, reacted: ‘Oh! The holy goalie!’ After the choice of title had been made and the work was proceeding the same lady handed me a cutting from The Guardian, which stated, under the title ‘Holy Goalies’ that the Pope had been a goalkeeper and so had Cardinal Hume! This seemed to suggest it might not be a bad idea to have the Protestant Team represented.

Chapter 1: It’s all in the genes

On 12 May 1905, my father, the Rev Robert Small, was working in his study, in the Abbey Manse, North Berwick, on a lecture he was preparing on John Knox. The nurse put her head round the door and announced: ‘John Knox has arrived.’

Chapter 2: Formative years

There were many interests beginning then and there which were to last. One still with me is Scouting… I had to sever my connection with North Berwick scouts when I went to live in Edinburgh, but I started a troop from scratch in St. John’s, Bathgate, and also acted as District Commissioner for SW West Lothian.

Chapter 4: Red Letter Days

As I was leaving University in 1928 to go to New College I went to play as an amateur for St. Bernard’s. This was a very old Club currently in the upper half of the Second Division. Their ground was The Gymnasium in Fettes Row, and they enjoyed a sizeable and loyal following of about 3,000, mainly in the Stockbridge area. Once, when playing against Raith Rovers at Stark’s Park, Kirkcaldy, there was a mix up in the goalmouth and the ball went past, no one sure whether it was a goal kick or a corner kick. Voice from behind the goal: ‘Hey, referee… ask the goalie. He’s a meemister … he’ll no tell ye a lee.’

On 1 March 1929 I received a postcard from the Secretary of the Scottish Football Association. I had been chosen to play for Scotland v England at Elland Road, Leeds. We got beaten 3-1.

Also on 1 March  I became engaged to be married to Jean MacGregor a fellow member of the choir in Lothian Road Church.

In the summer of 1930, I preached for July and August in St. John’s Church, Bathgate, where the Rev. John Lindsay had been Minister for forty-four years. During the War years he had been padre to the 10th Royal Scots, who were stationed for a time in North Berwick. [1/10 Royal Scots spent World War I on coastal defence duties.] Already a good friend of my father he had come to know me as a schoolboy and student. He wanted me to succeed him, and went about it quite cleverly. He told no one of his intention to retire but went off for two months to Canada in 1930, putting me in his place ‘on approval’ but secretly.

Chapter 5: Bathgate and the Depression

I was ordained in St. John’s Church, Bathgate, on 10 September 1931.

It was a Congregation of the old United Presbyterian Church, strong and active, and the best giving in the Presbytery. It had a membership of 450, including many professional people among whom were no fewer than forty-five school teachers and two headmasters…. the fact that the Rev. John Lindsay had been for many years the Convenor of the Education Committee of the County Council may have been a contributory factor, but one must not get cynical.

Very early on I came up against two problems concerning the membership, one comparatively minor, the other disastrous. Several of the office-bearers had been officers in the 1/10th Royal Scots stationed at North Berwick during the War, and it cannot have been easy for David Sutherland, James Wright, the town clerk, R.A.Brown, the rector of the Academy and sundry others, to ‘Give his proper place’ to a beginner aged twenty-six, whom they had known as a school laddie. It had to be achieved, as indeed it was, with plenty of mutual patience, if one was to exercise any real leadership among the changes that had to be made after a ministry of forty-four years. 

 [The Lindsay High School was  named in honour of the Rev. John Lindsay. Sutherland Crescent was named in honour of R.D. Sutherland, Provost 1914 – 1920. The Knock was gifted to Bathgate by Lt. Col. D.M. Sutherland in 1936 in memory of his parents and brother:  D.T. Sutherland Provost 1881 – 1893; Mrs Isabella Dawson or Sutherland, and R.D. Sutherland.]

The other problem arose from the vulnerable area of the old United Presbyterian constitution with its artificial separation of the sacred from the secular, enshrined in the two boards of the Kirk Session and the Board of Management. There was a dispute over the organist in the Organ Committee, composed of three from each Board. The organist’s wife appealed to one of the senior elders, who undertook to sort the matter out. He called a meeting of the Kirk Session and, when they were assembled in the Hall, came to call me, without previous warning, to take the chair. I was away at an Induction, so they proceeded to hold a meeting without a Moderator and passed a vote of censure on the Managers for exceeding their authority. Because of the ensuing dispute I had eighteen special Session Meetings during my first year as a minister. What was much more serious, it produced a family feud which ran through the Congregation and infected everything. That was why, after only four years, I felt it better to leave and let someone who had not been involved take over.

Much more serious than any squabbles within the Kirk was the current state of affairs in the early 30s in an industrial town like Bathgate. There were the North British Steel Works, Wolfe’s Shovel Works, Livingston’s Hosiery, Riddochhill coal mine, and  several shale mines. I visited them all. Some stark memories stand out – a girl sitting all day and every day feeding into a chute pieces of scrap metal left when the shovel heads had been cut out, punching holes in discs, so making washers for nails to fix corrugated iron; miners working in a ‘wet’ pit, walking home off the night shift  with their clothes frozen on them, then sitting cross-legged in a wooden tub in the middle of the kitchen floor, with the rafters festooned with clothes drying; men working with pneumatic guns, chipping the rough metal off the castings, their hands going on shaking long after they had finished; one of my elders, his hand protected with leather mittens as he fed the great sheets of metal into the rolling mill – the mitten caught and and chewed his hand in, to be pulped before the power could be  shut off.

Having no job led to poverty and loss of worth and dignity. The ‘dole’ was totally inadequate, and how some of these gallant wives and mothers managed at all I could never understand. They would go to the butcher’s and get a bone for soup, shop around for cheap vegetables, and make a great pan of broth…. that was all they had. I still picture those days in terms of the poor wee ‘shilpit’ bairns brought for christening. Their mothers were undernourished before they were born. Folk today talk about deprivation if they can’t get their forty cigarettes a day. Of course that kind of situation produced cadgers and scroungers. The Public Assistance Office was opposite the Church; being flung out of there they would seek out the Manse to tell their false or exaggerated tale of woe, backed by some bedraggled infant, probably not their own. My wife, coming in the Church gate from shopping, met just such a couple coming out, just in time to hear the wife say to the husband: ‘That was a right soft mark, that was.’ She came in blazing for it was true – up to a point you had to be, rather than miss a case of real need. I tried everything; I made an arrangement with the local grocer to honour a line from me for five shillings worth of groceries, in those days quite a lot … then I found they were selling them for four shillings. You can’t win.

Along with another angry young man in the Congregation, Jim Vassie, who went on to be leader writer on economic affairs for The Scotsman, we tried to do something more positive. We managed to get possession of a disused malt barn. [This was the malt barn of John MacNab’s Glenmavis Distillery. The barn was next to Mill Park football ground between Russell Row and Cochrane Street.] We raised enough money to sponsor a big team of the keener unemployed with their own leaders, shop stewards and the like. They cleared the whole place, creating a combined gym and spots hall on the ground floor; provision for games like draughts, dominoes and chess in the middle; up top we got for the taking away all the tip-up seats from a derelict cinema and made a roomy concert hall. Jim and I cleared out and left the Club in the hands of a Committee. In a short time we had the police after us for running a gaming club. Did I say ‘you can’t win’?

From September to New Year in our first year I played football for the Bathgate team. [Bathgate F.C. played at Mill Park.] Came the Saturday before New Year, I dashed out and dived at the opposing centre forward’s feet, and got his boot across my forehead. I went into the pulpit with a suitably liturgical cross on my brow, but made of sticking-plaster. The office-bearers said that it did not look good and suggested that I stop playing football, so I did. I played throughout my tenure for the Bathgate tennis team; more than half the team were St. John’s anyway. I was also deeply involved in Scouting, having founded a Group in St. John’s, and also acted as district Commissioner for West Lothian South. The latter involved some grim trips on winter nights up the moors to bleak spots like Fauldhouse.

Most important of all, during these years our first two children were born in the Manse  and therefore qualify as ‘Bathgate bairns’. Ronald, born on 14 January 1933, is now Head of the Department of Physical education in Napier University; Colin, born on 6 September 1935, following in the steps of that famous Bathgate bairn, James Y. Simpson, one of the greatest benefactors of mankind as pioneer of anaesthesia, is now a Senior Consultant Anaesthetist in St. John’s Hospital, Livingston.

Chapter 6: Kilmarnock pre-war

On 12 December 1935, we moved to the West High Church, Kilmarnock, and the Manse at 25 Glasgow Road. It was snowing so hard the removal van could not be unloaded…

I played for the ministers and doctors v. the police – the only game I ever played in where the entire crowd was on our side. We won 2-1. A few weeks later Jimmy McGrory, ex-Celtic centre forward, then manager of Kilmarnock F.C., asked me to sign as an amateur; he was stuck for a goalie. And as a good RC didn’t mind if he was holy.

Chapter 7: The War Years

For me the outstanding experience was France, 1940. The Church of Scotland Committee on Huts and Canteens, under the dynamic leadership of Lewis L.L. Cameron, was opening up centres all over north-west France. On volunteering and getting three months’ leave of absence, I was appointed to a team of six – one of whom was Bobby Johnston who had succeeded me in Bathgate…

After that it was clear that France was going to collapse, so I drove around collecting staff from Nantes, St. Nazaire and La Baule, all of us getting out from St. Malo. Just as well, for the next ship out was the Lancastria from St Nazaire… she was sunk with very heavy loss of life.

Chapter 9: Special Occasions

On the last day of 1949, when we had been five and a half years in Cramond, I received an unusual and exciting letter. It was from the Session Clerk of Knox Church, Dunedin, New Zealand, explaining that, being faced with a long vacancy, they had asked Principal John Baillie to suggest some young man who might go out for five months as Guest Preacher, and he had suggested myself…

We climbed Signal Hill which looks down on Dunedin as Arthur’s seat looks down on Edinburgh. Let into the top of the hill was a boulder with this inscription:

This boulder from the Castle Rock Of Edinburgh, Scotland, was sent to Dunedin in 1948, to commemorate the longstanding bonds of friendship between the two Cities.

The City is very Scottish. The co-founders were  a lawyer called Cargill, a descendant of Donald Cargill, the Covenanting preacher executed at the Grassmarket, and the Rev. James Burns, who was the nephew of Robert Burns.

In 1952 I had a phone call from Bill Ward, a Presbyterian minister in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

He had been at New College and had frequented Cramond. He wanted to come back for a time so he asked for a four month exchange. I agreed. Bill and his family arrived just before we left so there was a few days’ overlap including a Sunday. Cramond possesses a rare first edition of the Authorised Version, dated 1611, with ancient spelling and letters like a woodcut; we got Bill to read the lessons from it and he was thrilled.

We sailed on the Queen Mary to New York and took the Greyhound bus to South Carolina.

The Church had two negro janitors, Izzy (Isaiah) and Jerry (Jeremiah); they were in the Church every day, lovingly cleaning and polishing, but they were not allowed into the Service on Sunday. I was asked, early on, to preach in the coloured folk’s Church, and at once agreed. I was pressurised by the ministers of the town not to go: ‘It will be interpreted as being the attitude of the Church of Scotland.’ I replied: ‘That is exactly why I am going.’ and I went.

Chapter12: Australia

In 1962 the Rev Gordon Powell, Minister of  St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, Sydney, invited me to go out for three months as guest preacher to his Church. We travelled in a Comet touching down at Rome, Beirut and Karachi before landing at Calcutta, where we were met by Peter Logan Ayre, who had been one of my successors in Bathgate. Peter took us to the Scots Kirk; it is in the same square as the notorious Black Hole…He also took me to a ‘Centre for the destitute Dying’, run by a nun called Mother Teresa.

We were warmly welcomed in Sydney. The Prime minister, Bob Menzies, came and read the Lesson and welcomed us on behalf of the people of Australia. When Bob came to Edinburgh eighteen months later, to be installed as the first Australian Knight of the Thistle, he kindly sent us tickets for the Service in St. Giles’, and the reception in Holyrood.

There was one mad week when Catherine Marshall, widow of Peter Marshall,

 was there to boost the sales of her new book  To Live Again. [Peter Marshall (1902-1949) from Coatbridge was Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Catherine Marshall wrote his biography A Man called Peter. It was made into a film with Richard Todd playing the part of Peter Marshall.]

After nine years Australia came on the agenda again. Gordon Powell had moved to Scots Church, Melbourne, where there is a famous arrangement known as the Turnbull Trust Preaching Lectureship. The background is that at the turn of the century a farmer’s son from Eyemouth, having lost an arm, was more or less dumped as useless, and went off to Australia. By a combination of hard work and good fortune he became a very wealthy man, and set up the large Turnbull Trust, half the income to be used for the upkeep of the Scots’ Church; the other half to bring out a guest preacher, preferably from Scotland, for three months every third year, when the interest had accrued. This was as a memorial to his sons killed in World War I. Gordon Powell asked me to be the preacher for 1971.

The Scots’ Church was built by a Scot, Willie Mitchell. He had a daughter called Nellie, who sang in Scots’ Choir, and when she developed a professional career she called herself Nellie Melba, from Melbourne.

[0n p.82 there is a photograph of a board giving the names of the Turnbull Trust Preachers. Leonard Small appears three times. Interestingly, Ernest Gordon of Princeton University was the preacher in 1969. He was an officer in the 2nd  Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Malaya when it was invaded by the Japanese. He got away from Singapore but was captured while sailing towards Ceylon. He worked on the Burma Railway and described his experiences in a book called Through the Valley of the Kwai. This was made into a film called To End All Wars. Unfortunately, the film does not bear a strong resemblance to the book.]

I became friends with the Associate, Ray Russell. He had been a Principal Chaplain in the RAAF. During the War, with 12000 Aussie and American servicemen, he had come to Scotland in the Queen Mary. As they sailed up the Clyde an American major said to him, ‘I wonder when the British will get round to building a ship like this?’

[Leonard Small was a Hearts supporter. The first senior game he saw, the Scottish League v the Irish League, was at Tynecastle. He heaps praise on Patsy Gallacher and Alan Morton. On p. 90 he expresses some opinions on the modern game of football.] I am left bewildered and exasperated by the modern game, passing across, passing back, often from ridiculous distances; thank goodness, no one ever passed back to me from near the centre spot! This slow build up seems to me to be spoiling the game as a spectacle. But most alarming of all is the hideous over-commercialisation of the game. I cannot believe that any player is worth a million pounds or more. Players get delusions of grandeur about their importance in the scheme of things.

Chapter 13: Moderator

Functioning for a year as Moderator of the General Assembly is a thrilling and unforgettable experience. [In this year Leonard Small visited many places at home and abroad and he was involved in many activities.]

In the country, talking to the farmers in the auction mart was testing, in Elgin it was hilarious.

They had forgotten I was coming; I had to speak from the auction ring in the company of three black stirks, mooing and bawling. I told them of the country Minister whose congregation of farmers always went to sleep on him. He decided to put a stop to this, so he worked out a scheme whereby, every three minutes during his sermon, he banged the pulpit and exclaimed: ‘God grant,’ and at the word ‘grant’ all the farmers woke up. Some of my audience even smiled.

I got into trouble for some of the other things I did on my other varied visits… lowering the dignity of the office by playing football with the apprentices at Fairfields of Govan, refereeing a football match at Elgin, or going out, in  my robes, for a spin on the Blue Peter Inshore Rescue Boat, after launching it at North Berwick. In Glasgow the Lord Provost laid on an Ecumenical Lunch, with Neville Davidson of Glasgow Cathedral, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Archbishop, and even the Chief Rabbi. That afternoon when I came out of Ibrox after being entertained by Rangers FC, I was picketed by Jack Glass and his supporters with placards saying SMALL MUST GO and JOHN KNOX WOULD TURN IN HIS GRAVE.

Jack Glass missed out on my major iniquity. I became the first Moderator to visit a Roman Catholic  Abbey. I went to Nunraw to visit my old friend Abbot Columban Mulchahy.

The unique and unrepeatable item in my programme was the visit I paid for a month to all the Forces in the Far East, Malayasia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Hong Kong I was taken to the War Cemetery at KaiTak … so many Royal Scots, so many young, all too many with neither name, rank, nor number, just Known Unto God. [The 2nd Battalion Royal Scots was lost when Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in December 1941. The few survivors were put into Sham Shui Po prison camp any many put on the Lisbon Maru  for Japan. The ship was torpedoed and about 900 PoWs were drowned.]

I went to Lisbon for the Centenary of the Scots Kirk…That same Scots Kirk gave shelter soon after to some fifty stranded Celtic supporters who had been watching Celtic winning the European Cup!

Chapter 14: The Parole Board

In the end of 1967, shortly after I had demitted office, Willie Ross, the Secretary of State for Scotland, asked me to become the first Chairman of the newly-formed Parole Board for Scotland…

Drink, beyond all question, in one form or another, and in one way or another, plays a large part in serious crime… There are some crimes that are so bizarre and hideous that you wonder why they do it…Looking back, what shocks me most is not the brutal murders, but the meaningless violence, mostly by youth.

Lord Hunt [Leader of the expedition which first climbed Everest.]  was chairman of the English Parole Board. I knew him from 1963 when we met at a Boys’ Brigade International Camp in the grounds of Trinity College, Glenalmond. Sir John Hunt was the Camp Commandant and I was Chief Chaplain. The staff were sleeping in tents and the first night was bitterly cold. At breakfast we were all moaning about the rigours we had been called on to endure. I said:

 ‘ Sir John, you must think we are all daft, when you remember what you had to endure on Everest.’

‘On the contrary, he replied. ‘I’m going into Crieff this morning to buy a hot-water bottle.’

Chapter 16: The Shadow on the Sun

During Leonard Small’s year as moderator, 1966-67, Jean developed Parkinson’s Disease. She died on 26 October, 1979.

Chapter 17: Iona

Jean and I had our honeymoon on that lovely island. All down the years our holidays in and love for Iona have continued. Our first time back was when Ronald was five months old. [Ronald was born in Bathgate in January, 1933.] Mrs Kirk, a doctor’s widow in our Bathgate congregation, had taken a house in the middle of the village, Mho Dhaiichaid, ‘My Home’, for the month of June, and was not well enough to go, so she kindly offered it to us.

Chapter 18: Retirement

I retired on 30 September 1975, having reached the age of seventy. During my time in St Cuthbert’s I had baptised 884 babies, celebrated 751 weddings, and conducted 1,200 funerals.

Chapter 19: The Bonus Years

Another Chaplaincy, which had lasted longer than any, finally came to an end in 1991. That year the Air Training Corps celebrated the 50th Anniversary of its Founding in February 1941; I had been Chaplain to the Kilmarnock Squadron from the start, and Regional Chaplain from 1953, so decided to call it a day. Including the Special Anniversary Services I had taken part in three Services in St Clement Danes, and three in St. Giles’, and very recently shared in the ceremonial handing over of a Memorial plaque to St. Giles’, commemorating these three occasions. I was very happily succeeded by the Very Rev. John M. K. Paterson, who had served in the RAF during the War. [John Paterson was minister of St. John’s Church, Bathgate 1964-70. He left to become minister of St. Paul’s Church in Milngavie and was Moderator 1984-85. Interestly, Professor John MacIntyre, a former pupil of Bathgate Academy was moderator 1982-83. John McIntyre’s sister was sewing teacher in Bathgate Academy.]

We went on an Ecumenical Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1973. It was truly ecumenical, made up of thirty Scottish Episcopal, with three canons, twenty-two Roman Catholic with Bishop Monaghan, and thirty Church of Scotland. [Bishop James Monaghan was born in Bathgate in 1914. He became a Bishop in 1970 and he died in 1994. Father Andrew Monaghan the well-known radio agony uncle is his nephew. Bishop Vincent Logan is also a Bathgate bairn.] The tour was very well arranged by Canon Ernest Brady.

We spent the second week living in the Church of Scotland Hospice at Tiberias. On our last evening, Ernest Brady explained that we had to leave at 5.00a.m. to go by special bus to Tel Aviv – obviously we could not expect the warden and his wife to give us breakfast at that ungodly hour. I got up and said:

‘On the contrary, I’ve just been speaking to them, and they’ll be delighted to give us breakfast.’

‘What have you got that I haven’t got?’ asked Ernest.

‘Church of Scotland ordination,’ I replied quietly.

Here, we will let Leonard Small have the perfect last word.

Haig Ramsay.

                                                       *          *          *

Notes from ‘The Holy Goalie’ (1993) – the autobiography of R. Leonard Small (1905-1994)

Scottish Amateur International Goalkeeper and minister of:

St John’s Parish Church, Bathgate 1931-35; West High Church, Kilmarnock 1935-44; Cramond Church, Edinburgh, 1944-56; St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh 1956-75. 

Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1966-67.

Foreword by the very Rev. Dr. David Steel [father of the politician Lord Steel]:

He became minister of four very different charges: in Bathgate; Kilmarnock; Cramond; and St.Cuthbert’s in the centre of Edinburgh. He had the good sense to become engaged to Jean before he was called to his first charge, and they began their married life in the manse at Bathgate.

Preface:

From the age of 15 to around 26 I played football in the position of goalkeeper. At school I played in the morning for the school, and in the afternoon for the town team [the Bass Rock]; at University I played for and captained the team; while at New College I played as an amateur in a professional team, St. Bernard’s FC in the 2nd Division of the Scottish League, and in 1929 played for Scotland in an Amateur International against England.

When I came to live in my present retirement house my neighbour across the road, Mrs Alistair McKinlay, told me that one of her sons, having been told who was moving in across the road, reacted: ‘Oh! The holy goalie!’ After the choice of title had been made and the work was proceeding the same lady handed me a cutting from The Guardian, which stated, under the title ‘Holy Goalies’ that the Pope had been a goalkeeper and so had Cardinal Hume! This seemed to suggest it might not be a bad idea to have the Protestant Team represented.

Chapter 1: It’s all in the genes

On 12 May 1905, my father, the Rev Robert Small, was working in his study, in the Abbey Manse, North Berwick, on a lecture he was preparing on John Knox. The nurse put her head round the door and announced: ‘John Knox has arrived.’

Chapter 2: Formative years

There were many interests beginning then and there which were to last. One still with me is Scouting… I had to sever my connection with North Berwick scouts when I went to live in Edinburgh, but I started a troop from scratch in St. John’s, Bathgate, and also acted as District Commissioner for SW West Lothian.

Chapter 4: Red Letter Days

As I was leaving University in 1928 to go to New College I went to play as an amateur for St. Bernard’s. This was a very old Club currently in the upper half of the Second Division. Their ground was The Gymnasium in Fettes Row, and they enjoyed a sizeable and loyal following of about 3,000, mainly in the Stockbridge area. Once, when playing against Raith Rovers at Stark’s Park, Kirkcaldy, there was a mix up in the goalmouth and the ball went past, no one sure whether it was a goal kick or a corner kick. Voice from behind the goal: ‘Hey, referee… ask the goalie. He’s a meemister … he’ll no tell ye a lee.’

On 1 March 1929 I received a postcard from the Secretary of the Scottish Football Association. I had been chosen to play for Scotland v England at Elland Road, Leeds. We got beaten 3-1.

Also on 1 March  I became engaged to be married to Jean MacGregor a fellow member of the choir in Lothian Road Church.

In the summer of 1930, I preached for July and August in St. John’s Church, Bathgate, where the Rev. John Lindsay had been Minister for forty-four years. During the War years he had been padre to the 10th Royal Scots, who were stationed for a time in North Berwick. [1/10 Royal Scots spent World War I on coastal defence duties.] Already a good friend of my father he had come to know me as a schoolboy and student. He wanted me to succeed him, and went about it quite cleverly. He told no one of his intention to retire but went off for two months to Canada in 1930, putting me in his place ‘on approval’ but secretly.

Chapter 5: Bathgate and the Depression

I was ordained in St. John’s Church, Bathgate, on 10 September 1931.

It was a Congregation of the old United Presbyterian Church, strong and active, and the best giving in the Presbytery. It had a membership of 450, including many professional people among whom were no fewer than forty-five school teachers and two headmasters…. the fact that the Rev. John Lindsay had been for many years the Convenor of the Education Committee of the County Council may have been a contributory factor, but one must not get cynical.

Very early on I came up against two problems concerning the membership, one comparatively minor, the other disastrous. Several of the office-bearers had been officers in the 1/10th Royal Scots stationed at North Berwick during the War, and it cannot have been easy for David Sutherland, James Wright, the town clerk, R.A.Brown, the rector of the Academy and sundry others, to ‘Give his proper place’ to a beginner aged twenty-six, whom they had known as a school laddie. It had to be achieved, as indeed it was, with plenty of mutual patience, if one was to exercise any real leadership among the changes that had to be made after a ministry of forty-four years. 

 [The Lindsay High School was  named in honour of the Rev. John Lindsay. Sutherland Crescent was named in honour of R.D. Sutherland, Provost 1914 – 1920. The Knock was gifted to Bathgate by Lt. Col. D.M. Sutherland in 1936 in memory of his parents and brother:  D.T. Sutherland Provost 1881 – 1893; Mrs Isabella Dawson or Sutherland, and R.D. Sutherland.]

The other problem arose from the vulnerable area of the old United Presbyterian constitution with its artificial separation of the sacred from the secular, enshrined in the two boards of the Kirk Session and the Board of Management. There was a dispute over the organist in the Organ Committee, composed of three from each Board. The organist’s wife appealed to one of the senior elders, who undertook to sort the matter out. He called a meeting of the Kirk Session and, when they were assembled in the Hall, came to call me, without previous warning, to take the chair. I was away at an Induction, so they proceeded to hold a meeting without a Moderator and passed a vote of censure on the Managers for exceeding their authority. Because of the ensuing dispute I had eighteen special Session Meetings during my first year as a minister. What was much more serious, it produced a family feud which ran through the Congregation and infected everything. That was why, after only four years, I felt it better to leave and let someone who had not been involved take over.

Much more serious than any squabbles within the Kirk was the current state of affairs in the early 30s in an industrial town like Bathgate. There were the North British Steel Works, Wolfe’s Shovel Works, Livingston’s Hosiery, Riddochhill coal mine, and  several shale mines. I visited them all. Some stark memories stand out – a girl sitting all day and every day feeding into a chute pieces of scrap metal left when the shovel heads had been cut out, punching holes in discs, so making washers for nails to fix corrugated iron; miners working in a ‘wet’ pit, walking home off the night shift  with their clothes frozen on them, then sitting cross-legged in a wooden tub in the middle of the kitchen floor, with the rafters festooned with clothes drying; men working with pneumatic guns, chipping the rough metal off the castings, their hands going on shaking long after they had finished; one of my elders, his hand protected with leather mittens as he fed the great sheets of metal into the rolling mill – the mitten caught and and chewed his hand in, to be pulped before the power could be  shut off.

Having no job led to poverty and loss of worth and dignity. The ‘dole’ was totally inadequate, and how some of these gallant wives and mothers managed at all I could never understand. They would go to the butcher’s and get a bone for soup, shop around for cheap vegetables, and make a great pan of broth…. that was all they had. I still picture those days in terms of the poor wee ‘shilpit’ bairns brought for christening. Their mothers were undernourished before they were born. Folk today talk about deprivation if they can’t get their forty cigarettes a day. Of course that kind of situation produced cadgers and scroungers. The Public Assistance Office was opposite the Church; being flung out of there they would seek out the Manse to tell their false or exaggerated tale of woe, backed by some bedraggled infant, probably not their own. My wife, coming in the Church gate from shopping, met just such a couple coming out, just in time to hear the wife say to the husband: ‘That was a right soft mark, that was.’ She came in blazing for it was true – up to a point you had to be, rather than miss a case of real need. I tried everything; I made an arrangement with the local grocer to honour a line from me for five shillings worth of groceries, in those days quite a lot … then I found they were selling them for four shillings. You can’t win.

Along with another angry young man in the Congregation, Jim Vassie, who went on to be leader writer on economic affairs for The Scotsman, we tried to do something more positive. We managed to get possession of a disused malt barn. [This was the malt barn of John MacNab’s Glenmavis Distillery. The barn was next to Mill Park football ground between Russell Row and Cochrane Street.] We raised enough money to sponsor a big team of the keener unemployed with their own leaders, shop stewards and the like. They cleared the whole place, creating a combined gym and spots hall on the ground floor; provision for games like draughts, dominoes and chess in the middle; up top we got for the taking away all the tip-up seats from a derelict cinema and made a roomy concert hall. Jim and I cleared out and left the Club in the hands of a Committee. In a short time we had the police after us for running a gaming club. Did I say ‘you can’t win’?

From September to New Year in our first year I played football for the Bathgate team. [Bathgate F.C. played at Mill Park.] Came the Saturday before New Year, I dashed out and dived at the opposing centre forward’s feet, and got his boot across my forehead. I went into the pulpit with a suitably liturgical cross on my brow, but made of sticking-plaster. The office-bearers said that it did not look good and suggested that I stop playing football, so I did. I played throughout my tenure for the Bathgate tennis team; more than half the team were St. John’s anyway. I was also deeply involved in Scouting, having founded a Group in St. John’s, and also acted as district Commissioner for West Lothian South. The latter involved some grim trips on winter nights up the moors to bleak spots like Fauldhouse.

Most important of all, during these years our first two children were born in the Manse  and therefore qualify as ‘Bathgate bairns’. Ronald, born on 14 January 1933, is now Head of the Department of Physical education in Napier University; Colin, born on 6 September 1935, following in the steps of that famous Bathgate bairn, James Y. Simpson, one of the greatest benefactors of mankind as pioneer of anaesthesia, is now a Senior Consultant Anaesthetist in St. John’s Hospital, Livingston.

Chapter 6: Kilmarnock pre-war

On 12 December 1935, we moved to the West High Church, Kilmarnock, and the Manse at 25 Glasgow Road. It was snowing so hard the removal van could not be unloaded…

I played for the ministers and doctors v. the police – the only game I ever played in where the entire crowd was on our side. We won 2-1. A few weeks later Jimmy McGrory, ex-Celtic centre forward, then manager of Kilmarnock F.C., asked me to sign as an amateur; he was stuck for a goalie. And as a good RC didn’t mind if he was holy.

Chapter 7: The War Years

For me the outstanding experience was France, 1940. The Church of Scotland Committee on Huts and Canteens, under the dynamic leadership of Lewis L.L. Cameron, was opening up centres all over north-west France. On volunteering and getting three months’ leave of absence, I was appointed to a team of six – one of whom was Bobby Johnston who had succeeded me in Bathgate…

After that it was clear that France was going to collapse, so I drove around collecting staff from Nantes, St. Nazaire and La Baule, all of us getting out from St. Malo. Just as well, for the next ship out was the Lancastria from St Nazaire… she was sunk with very heavy loss of life.

Chapter 9: Special Occasions

On the last day of 1949, when we had been five and a half years in Cramond, I received an unusual and exciting letter. It was from the Session Clerk of Knox Church, Dunedin, New Zealand, explaining that, being faced with a long vacancy, they had asked Principal John Baillie to suggest some young man who might go out for five months as Guest Preacher, and he had suggested myself…

We climbed Signal Hill which looks down on Dunedin as Arthur’s seat looks down on Edinburgh. Let into the top of the hill was a boulder with this inscription:

This boulder from the Castle Rock Of Edinburgh, Scotland, was sent to Dunedin in 1948, to commemorate the longstanding bonds of friendship between the two Cities.

The City is very Scottish. The co-founders were  a lawyer called Cargill, a descendant of Donald Cargill, the Covenanting preacher executed at the Grassmarket, and the Rev. James Burns, who was the nephew of Robert Burns.

In 1952 I had a phone call from Bill Ward, a Presbyterian minister in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

He had been at New College and had frequented Cramond. He wanted to come back for a time so he asked for a four month exchange. I agreed. Bill and his family arrived just before we left so there was a few days’ overlap including a Sunday. Cramond possesses a rare first edition of the Authorised Version, dated 1611, with ancient spelling and letters like a woodcut; we got Bill to read the lessons from it and he was thrilled.

We sailed on the Queen Mary to New York and took the Greyhound bus to South Carolina.

The Church had two negro janitors, Izzy (Isaiah) and Jerry (Jeremiah); they were in the Church every day, lovingly cleaning and polishing, but they were not allowed into the Service on Sunday. I was asked, early on, to preach in the coloured folk’s Church, and at once agreed. I was pressurised by the ministers of the town not to go: ‘It will be interpreted as being the attitude of the Church of Scotland.’ I replied: ‘That is exactly why I am going.’ and I went.

Chapter12: Australia

In 1962 the Rev Gordon Powell, Minister of  St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church, Sydney, invited me to go out for three months as guest preacher to his Church. We travelled in a Comet touching down at Rome, Beirut and Karachi before landing at Calcutta, where we were met by Peter Logan Ayre, who had been one of my successors in Bathgate. Peter took us to the Scots Kirk; it is in the same square as the notorious Black Hole…He also took me to a ‘Centre for the destitute Dying’, run by a nun called Mother Teresa.

We were warmly welcomed in Sydney. The Prime minister, Bob Menzies, came and read the Lesson and welcomed us on behalf of the people of Australia. When Bob came to Edinburgh eighteen months later, to be installed as the first Australian Knight of the Thistle, he kindly sent us tickets for the Service in St. Giles’, and the reception in Holyrood.

There was one mad week when Catherine Marshall, widow of Peter Marshall,

 was there to boost the sales of her new book  To Live Again. [Peter Marshall (1902-1949) from Coatbridge was Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Catherine Marshall wrote his biography A Man called Peter. It was made into a film with Richard Todd playing the part of Peter Marshall.]

After nine years Australia came on the agenda again. Gordon Powell had moved to Scots Church, Melbourne, where there is a famous arrangement known as the Turnbull Trust Preaching Lectureship. The background is that at the turn of the century a farmer’s son from Eyemouth, having lost an arm, was more or less dumped as useless, and went off to Australia. By a combination of hard work and good fortune he became a very wealthy man, and set up the large Turnbull Trust, half the income to be used for the upkeep of the Scots’ Church; the other half to bring out a guest preacher, preferably from Scotland, for three months every third year, when the interest had accrued. This was as a memorial to his sons killed in World War I. Gordon Powell asked me to be the preacher for 1971.

The Scots’ Church was built by a Scot, Willie Mitchell. He had a daughter called Nellie, who sang in Scots’ Choir, and when she developed a professional career she called herself Nellie Melba, from Melbourne.

[0n p.82 there is a photograph of a board giving the names of the Turnbull Trust Preachers. Leonard Small appears three times. Interestingly, Ernest Gordon of Princeton University was the preacher in 1969. He was an officer in the 2nd  Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in Malaya when it was invaded by the Japanese. He got away from Singapore but was captured while sailing towards Ceylon. He worked on the Burma Railway and described his experiences in a book called Through the Valley of the Kwai. This was made into a film called To End All Wars. Unfortunately, the film does not bear a strong resemblance to the book.]

I became friends with the Associate, Ray Russell. He had been a Principal Chaplain in the RAAF. During the War, with 12000 Aussie and American servicemen, he had come to Scotland in the Queen Mary. As they sailed up the Clyde an American major said to him, ‘I wonder when the British will get round to building a ship like this?’

[Leonard Small was a Hearts supporter. The first senior game he saw, the Scottish League v the Irish League, was at Tynecastle. He heaps praise on Patsy Gallacher and Alan Morton. On p. 90 he expresses some opinions on the modern game of football.] I am left bewildered and exasperated by the modern game, passing across, passing back, often from ridiculous distances; thank goodness, no one ever passed back to me from near the centre spot! This slow build up seems to me to be spoiling the game as a spectacle. But most alarming of all is the hideous over-commercialisation of the game. I cannot believe that any player is worth a million pounds or more. Players get delusions of grandeur about their importance in the scheme of things.

Chapter 13: Moderator

Functioning for a year as Moderator of the General Assembly is a thrilling and unforgettable experience. [In this year Leonard Small visited many places at home and abroad and he was involved in many activities.]

In the country, talking to the farmers in the auction mart was testing, in Elgin it was hilarious.

They had forgotten I was coming; I had to speak from the auction ring in the company of three black stirks, mooing and bawling. I told them of the country Minister whose congregation of farmers always went to sleep on him. He decided to put a stop to this, so he worked out a scheme whereby, every three minutes during his sermon, he banged the pulpit and exclaimed: ‘God grant,’ and at the word ‘grant’ all the farmers woke up. Some of my audience even smiled.

I got into trouble for some of the other things I did on my other varied visits… lowering the dignity of the office by playing football with the apprentices at Fairfields of Govan, refereeing a football match at Elgin, or going out, in  my robes, for a spin on the Blue Peter Inshore Rescue Boat, after launching it at North Berwick. In Glasgow the Lord Provost laid on an Ecumenical Lunch, with Neville Davidson of Glasgow Cathedral, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Roman Catholic Archbishop, and even the Chief Rabbi. That afternoon when I came out of Ibrox after being entertained by Rangers FC, I was picketed by Jack Glass and his supporters with placards saying SMALL MUST GO and JOHN KNOX WOULD TURN IN HIS GRAVE.

Jack Glass missed out on my major iniquity. I became the first Moderator to visit a Roman Catholic  Abbey. I went to Nunraw to visit my old friend Abbot Columban Mulchahy.

The unique and unrepeatable item in my programme was the visit I paid for a month to all the Forces in the Far East, Malayasia, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Hong Kong I was taken to the War Cemetery at KaiTak … so many Royal Scots, so many young, all too many with neither name, rank, nor number, just Known Unto God. [The 2nd Battalion Royal Scots was lost when Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in December 1941. The few survivors were put into Sham Shui Po prison camp any many put on the Lisbon Maru  for Japan. The ship was torpedoed and about 900 PoWs were drowned.]

I went to Lisbon for the Centenary of the Scots Kirk…That same Scots Kirk gave shelter soon after to some fifty stranded Celtic supporters who had been watching Celtic winning the European Cup!

Chapter 14: The Parole Board

In the end of 1967, shortly after I had demitted office, Willie Ross, the Secretary of State for Scotland, asked me to become the first Chairman of the newly-formed Parole Board for Scotland…

Drink, beyond all question, in one form or another, and in one way or another, plays a large part in serious crime… There are some crimes that are so bizarre and hideous that you wonder why they do it…Looking back, what shocks me most is not the brutal murders, but the meaningless violence, mostly by youth.

Lord Hunt [Leader of the expedition which first climbed Everest.]  was chairman of the English Parole Board. I knew him from 1963 when we met at a Boys’ Brigade International Camp in the grounds of Trinity College, Glenalmond. Sir John Hunt was the Camp Commandant and I was Chief Chaplain. The staff were sleeping in tents and the first night was bitterly cold. At breakfast we were all moaning about the rigours we had been called on to endure. I said:

 ‘ Sir John, you must think we are all daft, when you remember what you had to endure on Everest.’

‘On the contrary, he replied. ‘I’m going into Crieff this morning to buy a hot-water bottle.’

Chapter 16: The Shadow on the Sun

During Leonard Small’s year as moderator, 1966-67, Jean developed Parkinson’s Disease. She died on 26 October, 1979.

Chapter 17: Iona

Jean and I had our honeymoon on that lovely island. All down the years our holidays in and love for Iona have continued. Our first time back was when Ronald was five months old. [Ronald was born in Bathgate in January, 1933.] Mrs Kirk, a doctor’s widow in our Bathgate congregation, had taken a house in the middle of the village, Mho Dhaiichaid, ‘My Home’, for the month of June, and was not well enough to go, so she kindly offered it to us.

Chapter 18: Retirement

I retired on 30 September 1975, having reached the age of seventy. During my time in St Cuthbert’s I had baptised 884 babies, celebrated 751 weddings, and conducted 1,200 funerals.

Chapter 19: The Bonus Years

Another Chaplaincy, which had lasted longer than any, finally came to an end in 1991. That year the Air Training Corps celebrated the 50th Anniversary of its Founding in February 1941; I had been Chaplain to the Kilmarnock Squadron from the start, and Regional Chaplain from 1953, so decided to call it a day. Including the Special Anniversary Services I had taken part in three Services in St Clement Danes, and three in St. Giles’, and very recently shared in the ceremonial handing over of a Memorial plaque to St. Giles’, commemorating these three occasions. I was very happily succeeded by the Very Rev. John M. K. Paterson, who had served in the RAF during the War. [John Paterson was minister of St. John’s Church, Bathgate 1964-70. He left to become minister of St. Paul’s Church in Milngavie and was Moderator 1984-85. Interestly, Professor John MacIntyre, a former pupil of Bathgate Academy was moderator 1982-83. John McIntyre’s sister was sewing teacher in Bathgate Academy.]

We went on an Ecumenical Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1973. It was truly ecumenical, made up of thirty Scottish Episcopal, with three canons, twenty-two Roman Catholic with Bishop Monaghan, and thirty Church of Scotland. [Bishop James Monaghan was born in Bathgate in 1914. He became a Bishop in 1970 and he died in 1994. Father Andrew Monaghan the well-known radio agony uncle is his nephew. Bishop Vincent Logan is also a Bathgate bairn.] The tour was very well arranged by Canon Ernest Brady.

We spent the second week living in the Church of Scotland Hospice at Tiberias. On our last evening, Ernest Brady explained that we had to leave at 5.00a.m. to go by special bus to Tel Aviv – obviously we could not expect the warden and his wife to give us breakfast at that ungodly hour. I got up and said:

‘On the contrary, I’ve just been speaking to them, and they’ll be delighted to give us breakfast.’

‘What have you got that I haven’t got?’ asked Ernest.

‘Church of Scotland ordination,’ I replied quietly.

Here, we will let Leonard Small have the perfect last word.

Haig Ramsay.

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