Lieutenant-Colonel B.A. Innes
7th Battalion, Black Watch

The proposed Assembly will have 150 more Politicians and well over 1000 extra bureaucrats who will all have to be paid for out of the annal block grant. This can only mean less for essential services as above … The S.N.P. (or tartan socialists) like the other variety want to get at other men’s wealth.

(The Strathearn Herald, 24 Feb 1979, 6)

Born on 22 July 1904 in Dagshai, India, Berowald Alfred Innes was a commissioned officer with the Black Watch since completing Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1924. He was promoted to captain in 1937 and made acting major one month after the outbreak of the Second World War. He was wounded in the Battle of France. His brother Flying Officer Herome Alexander Innes was killed in a training accident in 1940.

Innes served with the 4th Battalion, Black Watch, which he commanded on garrison duty in Gibraltar until 1944 and then took charge of the 10th Battalion in Scotland. He accepted a reduction in rank to join the 1st Battalion, Black Watch fighting in Germany in early 1945. Bernard Fergusson wrote in The Black Watch and the King’s Enemies (1950), “ Innes had for nearly three years commanded the 4th, and was several years senior to John Hopwood; but he was determined to see active service, such as was being denied the 4th Battalion; he had argued his way out and arrived on the eve of the Reichswald.” He served as second-in-command until April, when he succeeded Lieutenant-Colonel C.F. Cathcart of the 7th Battalion, Black Watch. Innes’ son would marry Cathcart’s daughter in 1961.

Innes commanded the 1st Battalion after the war before retiring from the army to take up farming in 1948. In retirement he was active and politically outspoken on many issues including defending Rhodesia, condemning communism criticizing Socialism, and opposing the Scottish National Party.

Before the 1 March 1979 referendum on Scottish devolution, Innes wrote in a letter to the editor of the Strathearn Herald: “We have more than enough government already. the cry for the past few years has been ‘get the government off the backs of industry.’ Yet here we have some crazy idea of imposing another layer. Vote NO – NO – NO.” Only a narrow majority votes yes but due to low turnout the referendum did not meet the requirements for the Scotland Act 1978 to go into effect.

Innes died in January 1981.