Donald Trump preys on American voters’ fears over
immigration and the perceived threat of terrorism. Fear was also a factor when
Trump came to Scotland in 2007 – he preyed on politicians’ fears that North Sea
oil was running out. Business leaders in Aberdeen responded to his promise of
6,000 jobs through the building of a luxury Trump golf resort, as “the second
coming of oil”. And one of the first in line to talk up the development was
Alex Salmond.
Last week, the former Scotland first minister, Alex Salmond,
branded Donald Trump “three times a
loser” after the UK supreme court rejected the billionaire’s attempt to block
the construction of a wind farm near his golf course. Back in 2007, when Trump
first detailed plans for his $1.5bn luxury resort on the rare sand dunes that
form part of the Menie estate, Salmond was busy courting Trump. The development
was in his Gordon constituency, after all.
Every credible environmental group in the land was objecting
to the Trump development, warning that it would destroy a protected site of
special scientific interest (SSSI), but Salmond was wining and dining with
Trump in New York. The scientists said the unique, moving dunes on which Trump
wanted to build were “the crown jewels” of our natural heritage. Yet Salmond
appeared on TV news programmes defending the development, saying environmental
concerns were outweighed by the economic benefits and the thousands of jobs
that would flow from it. Aberdeenshire council threw out Trump’s plans in
November 2007 but Salmond subsequently met Trump representatives at an Aberdeen
hotel. Shortly afterwards, his government “called in” the Trump proposal,
claiming it was “in the national interest” of Scotland for the development to
receive consideration through a government-backed inquiry. A year later, the
golf development was given the green light by Salmond’s cabinet secretary for
finance, John Swinney.
In 2009, bulldozers swiftly moved on to an environmentally
sensitive site and began ripping up trees and burying them in crater-like
holes. Trump was giving press conferences where he accused a local farmer,
Michael Forbes, of living like “a pig”, and called his home “a slum”,
threatening to pull the plug on a planned luxury hotel for the resort if Forbes
“didn’t clean up his property”. Another local resident, Susan Munro, explained
to me on camera how she had been forced to spreadeagle over the bonnet of her
car by Trump security guards, while attempting to reach her home. At the crack
of dawn, an army of diggers lurched into action to build a massive wall of
earth around the home of resident David Milne, whose house Trump said he wanted
to get rid of. In the summer of 2010, Trump’s workers had accidentally cut off
the water to the homes of Michael Forbes and his wife Sheila, and of Michael’s
mother Molly, which is served by a private well. Yet Molly, who is now 91 years
old, was forced to retrieve her water from a nearby stream with a bucket and
push it to her home in a wheelbarrow. Despite claims from the Trump
Organisation that it would restore the Forbes’ water, this appalling situation
continues to this day. What has Salmond done to help her? Nothing. The Trump
Organisation claims it is not their problem. So does the Scottish government. While
all this was going on, Salmond was nowhere to be seen, despite driving by the
development every week en route to the Holyrood parliament in Edinburgh from
his constituency. When Michael Forbes won the Top Scot award in 2012 Tens of
thousands of people voted for him over the Wimbledon tennis champion, Andy
Murray, and the comedian Billy Connolly. Yet when the Trump Organisation issued
a statement branding the Menie estate residents “a national embarrassment to
Scotland”, there was no rebuke from Salmond’s office at the time – just a
deafening silence.
Trump’s development, in Aberdeenshire, employs fewer than
100 people. Salmond’s
willingness to cosy up to Trump over a development that contained wildly
optimistic economic projections has resulted in the destruction of a unique
stretch of coastline for generations to come.
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