Watch: Alex Salmond speaks at North Macedonia conference hours before his death

Alex Salmond speaks at North Macedonia conference hours before his deathSource: Its Academy of Cultural Diplomacy

Transcript

00:00I'm always reluctant to teach lessons to other people in other countries.

00:05And can I just say to the president here that if I say anything wrong,

00:10then I will not be buying lunch for lots of people.

00:14I'm Scottish after all, we don't do these sort of things.

00:17President Ivanov, Your Excellencies.

00:20There were many successful things about the process of trying to reclaim Scottish independence.

00:29There was no violence.

00:31I mean, Scotland is not unique in the world, but it's unusual

00:35in that the process of self-determination in the modern era in Scotland,

00:41in the democratic era, has been achieved without a single person losing their life.

00:48In fact, nobody's had so much as a nosebleed.

00:51I think the worst success in the entire referendum campaign of ten years ago

00:56was that somebody got an egg thrown at them, which is hardly in the great excesses of politics.

01:02So that was an extraordinary success.

01:06I need to thank the School of Young Leaders and the initiative for...

01:10Respect for legitimate democratic aspirations leads to good outcomes.

01:18Disrespecting it in one way or another, and often surprisingly,

01:23can lead to bad outcomes for everyone.