Neil Mackay

Neil Mackay    (journalist, novelist, filmmaker)
Nationality	UK
Scottish journalist allegedly pro-independence, but seems to align very closely with the narrative from the powers-that-be

Neil McKay is a Northern Irish, Glasgow-based journalist, author and film maker. He was editor of the Sunday Herald from 2015 to 2018, the first Scottish newspaper to officially back independence.

Wings over Scotland

The pro-independence site Wings over Scotland stated that McKay "had been systematically undermining and dividing the Yes movement since at least 2015 while claiming to be part of it", among other things using his editor position to frame large and peaceful pro-independence marches as a violent clash between rival mobs. During the process against ALex Salmond, Mackay wrote a major feature on the eve of the trial, in which Salmond was pictured alongside rapists and killers like the Yorkshire Ripper, the Moors Murderers, Charles Manson, Dennis Nilsen and Adolf Eichmann.

Wings over Scotland pointed out that McKay had also taken over the country’s only pro-indy Sunday paper at a time when its sales were rocketing, and then slashed its circulation in half to the point where it was closed down entirely in 2018, and replaced with a Unionist version., and that "McKay and the Herald was heavily engaged for some years in attempting to deflect suspicion by calling everyone else an MI5 plant."

The Wings over Scotland stories were the basis for a 2021 push to marginalize the site and similar activists on social media. Tom Arthur, a SNP MSP, said "Anyone who promotes that blog is, in my view, not fit to be an SNP member" and urged First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to act on social media amplification of the site.

McKay has heavily promoted transgender law changes as an important social issue.

Books

The War on Truth Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Invasion of Iraq but Your Government Wouldn’t Tell You is Mackay's 2006 account of the events that led up to the war in Iraq. It focuses on the disinformation campaign of the British government and questions the existence of democracy in the UK.

All the Little Guns Went Bang Bang is a 2013 social science fiction novel set during The Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. It tells a tale of two youths, born to violent parents, and explores the extent to which violence is learned by children, from their parents and community.

The Wolf Trial is a 2017 historical crime novel about a werewolf trial in 16th-century Germany, which is used as a subtext to question if the god in Christianity is an evil or kind deity.

 

A Document by Neil Mackay

Title	Document type	Publication date	Subject(s)
Document:British double agent who murdered for the IRA	article	11 May 2003	'Stakeknife'

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