It was March 16 1977, and one of the top United States diplomats sat at his typewriter at the London embassy.
He was compiling a secret dossier of reports to be sent to Washington for the eyes of then Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
Appointed by President Richard Nixon, future US ambassador Ronald Spiers had been tasked with charting the rise of the SNP in Scotland.
With a network of informants and a range of confidants at the highest levels of Scottish politics, Spiers was party to some of the SNP’s most closely guarded secrets.
Now leaked secret diplomatic cables shared on Wikileaks offer a unique insight into the opinions he shared with his superiors on Scotland and on Dundee.
The Courier can reveal that as the SNP prepared to host its annual conference in the city, contest local elections and lay the groundwork for the 1979 general election, US officials believed the party was actively taking steps to avoid gaining control of the city.
Dundee alongside Glasgow was deemed “ungovernable” by the party hierarchy and the Secretary of State was told that while the SNP were expected to make “considerable” gains in the year’s local elections, it was considered “not in the party’s best interest” to win the city.
Spiers described the two cities as “problem areas” and potential money pits for any ruling administration at a time of tightening budgets.
Labour was considered too firmly entrenched in the city for easy gains, while the levels of investment that required to be made in Dundee itself were considered too great.
The source for much of Spiers’ information was reported to be SNP party theoretician Stephen Maxwell, who was a leading force in the party throughout the 1970s and ’80s.
In his despatches, Spiers reported: “The first real test of the Scottish political climate after the collapse of the Devolution Bill will come from the local elections in May.
“Although the results of local elections are not usually reflective of national elections, a consensus has the SNP recording significant gains.
“Maxwell candidly pointed out that while the SNP would vigorously contest the local elections and would meet with considerable success, it was not in the party’s best interests to gain control of problem areas like Glasgow and Dundee.
“His comments lend credence to other reports that the SNP is actually limiting the number of candidates it will field to ensure it does not win a major city.”
In the end, the SNP failed to secure a single council seat that year.Gordon Wilson: We were more focused on Westminster voteFormer SNP leader Gordon Wilson, who was the MP for Dundee East at the time the documents were penned, admitted that the party had been much more focused on the 1979 general election than it was on the local authority vote.
He said: “In Dundee and in the party generally, there was a view of first things first, which in Dundee was the successful retention of Dundee East, even though the SNP was still in the ascendant.
“Glasgow was always problematical. The party was maturing but, given difficulties from the ’60s landslides with inexperienced councillors, priorities were being set.
“We were concentrating on the parliamentary seat at that time.”
Further despatches report on the SNP annual conference, which was held in Dundee between May 26 and 28 that same year.
It was described as a “well-orchestrated event” that “reinforced” the SNP’s “major party status” in Scotland.
Ronald Spiers wrote also that the 2,000 delegates who attended the final session included “eight observers from the diplomatic community”.
Mr Wilson’s activities were noted by the US watchers, who reported that he “attacked the Government and Tories the former as a ‘party of the past’ and the later as “the party of blank minds”.