Shamed MP Eric Joyce would have been spared frequent brushes with the law if he had been belted at school, his former teacher has claimed.
Perth-born Mr Joyce (51) was convicted of assaulting a Tory MP in a House of Commons bar last month in the latest of a string of high-profile controversies to dog his political career.
The Labour MP for Falkirk admitted assaulting several people in the bar and former Perth Academy assistant rector George McMillan says such actions are typical of his former charge since his teens.
Mr McMillan told The Courier: ”The anti-corporal punishment lobby always used as their main argument that violence begets violence. In Eric’s case… the opposite is the case.”
Mr Joyce, who left the Academy under a cloud when he was 15, told The Courier he had been beaten with a tawse ”almost daily” at the school and dismissed his former teacher’s criticism.
But disgusted by the self-confessed teenage tearaway’s recent actions, former French teacher Mr McMillan (80) said the ”disgraced” MP who will step down at the next election seems to revel in his indiscretions.
He said: ”There is an element of the boasting hard man in what Eric Joyce (has) said, yet he left Perth Academy because he refused and his mother refused to allow him to accept corporal punishment from the then rector, Mr Neil McCorkindale.”
He said Mr Joyce had ”struggled violently” with the school’s head boy and assistant rector in the altercation which eventually saw him leave the Academy.
”It seems he can hand out punishment, but he cannot take it,” said Mr McMillan. He added that corporal punishment could be an effective tool in the teacher’s armoury ”provided the punishment is fair and warranted.”
”It might have helped Eric if he had accepted his punishment and knuckled down to discipline.”
Mr Joyce, who went on to enlist with The Black Watch before attending university and then re-joining as a commissioned officer, disagreed with that version of events.
Admitting he had been a ”badly behaved schoolboy”, he said: ”He (Mr McMillan) describes a fracas 36 years ago. It’s a long time ago and his memory is understandably a little hazy.
”The physical incident which led to my expulsion, and which he may have heard in the corridor but had returned to his classroom by this point, was with a male teacher.
“As was normally the case in those days, teachers would routinely physically grab and shake cheeky schoolboys and I replied in kind.”
He said an attempt to expel him failed because he was too young and he then accepted a transfer to Perth High School.
He said: ”He is quite correct to say that pupils were routinely beaten with a tawse, as I was, almost daily.
”His attitude, indeed, is redolent of the very kind of physical bullying which was prevalent amongst some teachers at the school then.
”When my mother was summoned by Neil McCorkindale, she asked him, in my presence, if I could have another chance.
”He turned to his secretary and said, with the door into the corridor open, ‘please remove this begging woman from my office’. Nice bunch.”
Quizzed about Mr Joyce’s response, Mr McMillan, who left Perth Academy in 1990, said: ”He certainly wasn’t belted by me and I can’t remember anyone being belted daily.
”The belt was used very seldom because most pupils didn’t need it it was only in very exceptional cases like that one.
”If someone was belted by Mr McCorkindale, who was the best head that school ever had, they didn’t tend to go back again.”
Mr McCorkindale was rector at Perth Academy from 1970 to 1986. He died in June 2010.
Photo by Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire