Was Willie McRae murdered by the British State?

40 years since McRae was found dying - still no answers.

Screenshot from the P&J article

It is 40 years today since Willie McRae, lawyer, Scottish independence and anti-nuclear campaigner, was found dying in his car from a bullet wound near a Highland road. A memorial service was held at the cairn erected to his memory to mark the anniversary. Neil Drysdale reported in a feature in the Press and Journal today the rumour that a popular streaming service - possibly Netflix - may be interested in making a movie about the extraordinary case.

There have always been suspicions about McRae’s death. It was put down to suicide - but there has never been a Fatal Accident Inquiry, and the post-mortem report has never been released to the public. Petitions and representations from senior politicians for an FAI or an inquiry have been rebuffed by Police Scotland.

If you ask Google “When is a Fatal Accident Inquiry held in Scotland?” the answer is that these happen in cases where there is reasonable suspicion. So seems kind of crazy that no FAI has ever been held into literally the most suspicious death in Scotland for a century.

When McRae’s Maroon Volvo saloon was spotted by an eagle-eyed Australian tourist, it was initially thought he had been in an accident, and his car had veered off the road. But when he was taken to hospital, a nurse noticed a bullet wound.

WWll veteran McRae was shot with his own revolver, a small 22 calibre Smith and Wesson. It was found later in a burn and had been fired twice.

Could this have been suicide? Let’s say Willie fell asleep at the wheel, came off the road and, in a moment of despair and anger at himself, reached into the glove compartment and grabbed his gun. After shooting it once to test it was working properly, he decided to kill himself.

He was no novice to the use of a gun. You might have expected him to shoot either through his temple or to put it in his mouth and shoot through the back of his throat, aiming for his brain stem.

McRae was X-rayed after the nurse who was caring for him spotted an entry wound and a bullet was found in his brain. The post-mortem said the entry wound was in his right temple. But in 2018, nurse Katherine McGonigal came forward to contradict the post-mortem. She was adamant that the bullet wound was not in his right temple but a penny-sized hole in the back of his neck.

Is McGonigal right? If so, would it be likely that McRae, a large man awkwardly trapped in a car lodged precariously above a burn would reach his hand around to the back of his head to fire the gun? He also did this without releasing his seatbelt, as an eyewitness said it was still fastened.

Is it possible that he shot himself twice and that the hole in his neck was an exit wound? I can’t find any case of someone doing that with a regular gun. McGonigal also seems clear that there was just one wound. If McRae had shot himself in the temple, would there have been more blood, enough for the ambulance crew to notice the bullet wound?

Who else could have killed McRae? Could this have been an extrajudicial killing by the British state, or agents controlled by them? Is it even that far-fetched to consider this option? The Labour government has recently ordered an inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane, an Irish human rights lawyer shot in front of his family in Belfast in 1989. One of the gunmen may have been an undercover British agent. And last month an inquest found that the British Army lied about the killing of three IRA members in 1992.

Could something like what seems to have happened to Finucane have befallen McRae? He was connected to the Scottish National Liberation Army, who had been involved in letter bomb attacks, and he seems to have helped two SNLA activists escape Scotland for Ireland in 1983.

McRae was also an anti-nuclear campaigner who was credited with preventing a nuclear waste dump from being sited in the Galloway Hills. In 1995, Greenpeace campaigner Peter Roche showed the Herald evidence of radioactive leaks at Dounreay which he thought Willie might have been carrying. In 2007, UKAEA pleaded guilty at Wick Sheriff Court to four charges under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 relating to activities at Doureay between 1963 and 1984, one of disposing of radioactive waste at a landfill site at the plant and three of illegally dumping radioactive waste and releasing nuclear fuel particles into the sea, resulting in a fine of £140,000.

It is a strange coincidence that fellow anti-nuclear campaigner Hilda Murrell was violently killed a year earlier. Hilda’s nephew Robert Green, no hippy dippy conspiracy nut but a former Royal Naval Commander, in 2013 published a book “A Thorn in Their Side” suggesting that the security services were involved in his aunt’s death. (There have also been suggestions that McRae was uncovering a child abuse ring. )

There are several witnesses who say that McRae was being tailed in a manner that amounted to harassment by security forces around the time of his death. There was a fire at McRae’s Glasgow apartment the previous day. In 2021, forklift driver Pat Gallagher came forward to say that he had kicked the door in and rescued McRae from the fire - and on the way up the tenement stairs he saw a man running away with a briefcase in his hands. In an alternative scenario, could this have been the case containing McRae’s own gun?

The last person to speak to McRae was Glasgow police officer Donald Morrison. He exchanged a few words with McRae, who patted his briefcase and indicated he had important information which he was going to ‘get them’. As McRae left Glasgow, he was followed by two men, who Morrison had earlier observed watching him from a doorway. Did they wait until McRae stopped for a break, perhaps smoking a cigar with the window open and accost him? Did they shoot him with his own gun and then shunt his car off the road?

Had McRae been dead when found the next day, his body would have gone straight to the coroner - would the location of the bullet wound ever have been disputed?

It has to be said that McRae’s brother Fergus accepted the verdict of suicide. I don’t know either way. But the refusal to hold an FAI seems inexplicable.

Read more: Here is an in-depth piece I wrote about Willie McRae in 2023