George Mackie, who has died of pancreatic cancer aged 70, was a straightforward man, but one of paradox. He was a Kincardineshire Scot who lived in southern England, an Essex farmer who was also a socialist, a formidable Scottish rugby international who was notably soft-spoken. “A gentle giant, never the loudest around the dinner table, but usually the wisest,” said his friend Brian Wilson, the politician.
The son of Jeannie (nee Inglis Milne) and John Mackie, George sprang from a progressive farming dynasty in north-east Scotland. Radicalised by poverty he saw in Glasgow as a young man, his father became a leading Tribune Group leftwinger. MP for Enfield East (1959-74), he was a respected junior agriculture minister, later chairman of the Forestry Commission (1976-79) until Margaret Thatcher sacked him.
Following his father to the North of Scotland Agricultural College in Aberdeen, George immersed himself in rugby and leftwing politics, then much preoccupied with the anti-apartheid struggle. His role in demonstrations and disrupting a Springboks tourist match at the city’s Linksfield stadium in 1969 (he had been due to play) probably circumscribed a promising career. George did not flinch – he rarely did on matters of principle.
A back-row forward, 6ft 5in, he went on to play for the successful Highland side in the 70s, the team’s only player to be capped for Scotland. He played in the 1975 defeat of Australia at Murrayfield, against France and Wales (1976) and France (1978) as well as in Scotland’s 1975 tour of New Zealand. “An extraordinary ball player, George could run all day. On the pitch he could do any task, off the field he was the same,” said his Highland coach, Colin Baillie.
The story goes that another Scottish coach, Jim Telfer, frustrated by George’s lack of on-pitch aggression, pushed him against the dressing room wall before a match and told him not to be so nice. Telfer was surprised to find George pushing him back across the room to the opposite wall.
But his rugby was unpaid, which meant taking what jobs George could find. When he was introduced to his future in-laws he was second janitor at Inverness high school, previously a gravedigger, for he respected manual work. George and Catherine Macleod, a future political editor of the Glasgow Herald and Treasury special adviser to Alistair Darling, married in 1983. They moved to Nazeing, Essex, to take over management of the farm tenancy his father had acquired on first becoming a candidate in Enfield.
It was tough land that George did much to improve, his income augmented by growing Christmas trees and latterly a successful riding stables in cavernous barns. Catherine and George’s round kitchen table was famous for its hospitality, sustained by streams of visitors from Scotland, London and the neighbourhood, by good food and copious drink.
His aunt, Catherine Mackie, married Ian Aitken of the Guardian, his cousin Lindsay Mackie married the former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. Lindsay’s father, also George and briefly a Liberal MP, ended up facing his brother, John, across the dispatch box as their parties’ agriculture spokesmen in the Lords. George junior’s single foray into elective politics in 1987 saw him elected a Labour councillor on Nazeing district council. The ward, Bumbles Green, was true blue territory, but he was warm and well liked.
A keen participant in the Highland games in his youth, George remained devoted to watching sport, a hobby he mixed with a flutter. He once persuaded Wilson and two other pals to buy a leg each of a greyhound. Althea’s Delight ran at Walthamstow, London, but rarely as fast as George in his sporting prime. The dog’s job was to provide laughter and fellowship. George enjoyed the ridiculous. He was a lovely man.
He is survived by Catherine and their two sons, Robert and Hector.