McCartney Times

Lord John McCluskey was a respected figure and considered a giant in the law and political scene north of the border.

He died just eight days after his 88th birthday last July following a battle with a lung condition.

He was Solicitor General for Scotland in the 1970s before his elevation in 1976 to a crossbencher in the House of Lords, where he sat until stepping down in March last year.

But it’s his rare appearance in the sheriff courts, at Campbeltown, Argyll, in 1973 when McCartney was accused of growing cannabis, that he is best remembered.

Lord McCluskey got all but one charge dropped on technical grounds and the star admitted growing cannabis.

And to the amusement of the court, the QC argued his client had a genuine interest in horticulture and a £30 fine was imposed, with Lord McCluskey asking if his client could be given time to pay the penalty.

The peer also helped to shape the Scotland Act, which paved the way for the establishment of the Scottish parliament.

His recently published will revealed he had an estate valued at £1,728,738 at the time of his death.

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Lord McCluskey’s wealth included property in Edinburgh, household possessions and a stocks and shares portfolio.

In his will, he instructed that his estate should be shared equally among his three children.

His wife, Ruth, died in 2014.

Lord McCluskey was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1955 and worked as a defence lawyer then as a prosecutor.

In 1974, he became Solicitor General for Scotland in Harold Wilson’s Labour Government, became a High Court judge in 1984 and retired in 2004, as Scotland’s longest-serving judge.

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He was also the judge in the 1992 trial of Paul Ferris at the High Court in Glasgow, at the time Scotland’s longest murder trial, lasting 54 days. Ferris was acquitted of the gangland murder of Arthur Thompson Jnr.

He worked on the original Scotland Bill with his tennis partner and friend, the late Labour leader, John Smith.

Following his retirement, Lord McCluskey called for the legalisation of heroin, condemning Government drugs policy as a “massive failure”.

Following his death, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said he was “one of the outstanding lawyers of his generation”, while Gordon Jackson, QC, dean of the Faculty of Advocates, said he had been a “giant of Scots Law”.

Relatives and friends – including former chancellor Alistair Darling – were among mourners at his funeral at Warriston Crematorium, Edinburgh, on July 29 last year.

Source: Top Scottish judge – who represented Paul McCartney in cannabis case – leaves £1.7m behind in his will