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Linklater's
Scotland:
The new executive chairman of
the National Trust for Scotland
Poisoned chalice or holy grail?
Magnus Linklater
Columnist, Scotland on Sunday
Filed 27 Mar 06
©Magnus Linklater
This article,
which was originally published in the Spectrum Magazine of
Scotland on Sunday
on 26th March 2006, is reproduced on Land-Care
with the kind permission of the author and the newspaper
RUNNING the National Trust for Scotland is
the most privileged job in the country, one of its former chairmen
once told me. "You drop in on grand castles, wander through
the loveliest gardens in Scotland, take a trip out to a Hebridean
island, climb to the top of a Highland peak - and they are all your
property."
That privilege and that ownership have now fallen
to a miner's daughter from Ayrshire. Shonaig Macpherson has not
only taken on the chairmanship of the trust, she is, for the time
being, executive chairman as well; six months after taking over,
her chief executive, Robin Pellew, left suddenly, confessing that
he had failed to get on top of the huge financial problems facing
the trust. Briskly, Macpherson, a lawyer by training, but clearly
a leader by instinct, took over responsibility for the management
of a body that has 293,000 members, employs 500 people, owns 76,000
hectares of land, and runs 128 properties, which are visited by
three million people every year.
The NTS faces one of the most serious crises of
its 75-year life. When Pellew announced he was quitting, he warned
that the organisation faced a worsening financial situation. It
was well over budget, had struggled to attract new members, was
overextended in its properties and had made a series of loss-making
blunders. The trust, he said, faced "some very tough decisions".
Among them is the responsibility for two of Scotland's most iconic
buildings : Robert Burns's Cottage and Abbotsford, the former home
of Sir Walter Scott. Between them, they require a capital investment
of close to £20 million.
Serving tea and scones in her office at the NTS
headquarters in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, 47-year-old Macpherson
shows little sign of being daunted by the task. She sets out her
plans for the future with the calm efficiency of the well-trained
solicitor that she is. Born in Dalmellington, she was brought up
in Leicestershire, where the family moved when she was five, after
her father, a mining engineer, was offered promotion. Educated at
Sheffield University, she became a lawyer specialising in intellectual
property, and came back to Scotland because she thought it was "an
exciting place to be".
A former senior partner at McGrigor Donald, she
takes a close interest in emerging technologies, is non-executive
director of the management group run by John Elvidge, permanent
secretary at the Scottish Executive, and is a board member of the
investment group Braveheart Ventures and of ITI, which funds energy
research.
A lifelong member of the NTS, she says she has
always wanted to get involved in arts heritage. Approached by a
head-hunter, she was amazed when she got the job. "I never
thought they would appoint a female under 50, but I was delighted
when they chose me. People have told me it's either a wonderful
job or a poisoned chalice. Well, I think it's wonderful - how can
you not enjoy all these wonderful places, and the sense that you
are managing them for future generations?"
She accepts, however, that all is not well with
the trust. "We weren't focusing on our core purpose,"
she says. "We were trying to diversify our income, and looking
at new ways of doing things, but we didn't think through what it
would mean for our core business."
She cites as mistakes activities such as running
rock concerts at New Hailes, the NTS house near Musselburgh, spending
too much money on advertising, and failing to explain to people
what the trust actually does. "We have to look at how we do
absolutely everything," she says. "People's lifestyles
have changed radically. We compete with galleries and garden centres
- and not just at weekends; we close our properties in winter, for
instance, but these days people go on holiday in winter; we have
failed to get under the skin of the people we are dealing with.
Constancy is a fine thing, but we need to move with the times."
She believes that it is not enough for the NTS
simply to act as landlord of castles or areas of rugged beauty.
She prefers to emphasise the educational work it does with 90,000
schoolchildren a year, the investment it makes in training, the
encouragement of traditional skills such as stonemasonry, and the
outreach work it has undertaken with asylum-seekers in Glasgow and
other communities.
She even thinks it has a responsibility to teach
the country about its own history. "We have a role to play
in building national confidence," she says. "I believe
that the confidence of individuals comes from being reconciled with
their past, and I believe that in Scotland we have a great deal
to be proud of in our history that we do not celebrate. It's time
we started to look at the good things we do."
She aims to tackle the issue of the trust's membership
by going all out to rebuild it. Although the NTS has an endowment
of £140 million that covers maintenance of its properties,
it must recruit more members if it is to thrive. "By the time
I've finished my five years [as chairman], I would like us to be
at 500,000 - that's just over 10% of the population of Scotland,"
she declares.
That will be done by "aggressive" recruiting,
not just of the middle-class Barbour-clad women who are the core
of its membership, but of younger people who go climbing or mountain-biking.
"We did that last summer - we had mobile recruiters in car
parks, signing people up. We're going to do the same this spring
with our gardens. We'll have new ways of promoting the benefits
of the trust, encouraging more families to join, and we'll be more
aggressive about doing it as well."
The greatest immediate challenge is to raise funds
for the Burns Cottage museum, and for Walter Scott's home. "We
must get it right," she says. "We want a world-class interpretation
of Burns's life, we want a museum that displays the archive in an
appropriate way, and a performance space for contemporary poets
and writers. It will be revolutionary in the way it will present
the story. At Abbotsford, we should not only celebrate Walter Scott's
contribution to literature, but we should be encouraging young writers
as well.
"It's important that these places are not
Disneyfied," she adds. "They have to have intellectual
rigour, and they've got to be internationally credible. Standards
must be maintained. I simply don't believe in dumbing down - it
makes me angry. With the brains and flair we have in this organisation,
we should be able to achieve our aims without endangering our core
purpose, which is conserving these wonderful houses and properties
for the future."
So how does she view the task ahead of her? "Lots
of people have said to me that the trust is in dire straits,"
she replies. "It is not. It has had a bad year, and for the
year coming up we must be prudent, and we have to raise a significant
amount of money. What I want to do is ensure there are reserves
beyond the endowment. We must become much more efficient in how
we are run, less bureaucratic, and we need to communicate better.
When we say we intend to do something, we should stick to that.
I think it will take probably until 2008-2009 before we get things
right, but we will get there."
Listening to Shonaig Macpherson's quiet confidence,
I have no doubt she will do just that.
©Magnus Linklater
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