Obituary: Independence icon and Highland politician Winnie Ewing dies aged 93
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If you were to name the Scottish politicians who made the greatest impact on post-war British and Scottish politics – the list may not be long but Winnie Ewing would certainly be on it.
In fact for many people the list may actually begin with her, continue with Margo MacDonald, John Smith then Gordon Brown and Charles Kennedy followed by Alex Salmond – undoubtedly there are others.
Winifred Margaret Ewing (née Woodburn) was born 10 July 1929 in Glasgow, where she grew up, educated at Battlefield School and Queen’s Park Senior Secondary School before entering the University of Glasgow in 1946.
Ms Ewing was the wife of Stewart Ewing, who died in 2003, and the mother of Fergus, Annabelle and Terry.
She graduated with an MA and LLB qualified and practised as a solicitor and notary public but it was while at Glasgow University that Ms Ewing joined the student nationalists’ association.
Ms Ewing also studied law at The Hague Academy of International Law in 1954 and 1955 and spoke fluent Dutch, and later became secretary of the Glasgow Bar Association between 1961 and 1967.
In her autobiography, Stop the World, she wrote that she first became a Scottish nationalist at the age of nine, when she heard a band play The Road to the Isles on a trip “doon the watter” to Kilchatten Bay in Bute.
‘Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on’
In May 1967, Labour MP for Hamilton, Tom Fraser, resigned from parliament to become chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board and Ms Ewing’s life was to change forever.
No one thought she could but a 37 per cent swing from Labour and the Conservatives saw Ms Ewing to victory and she made her now famous comment: “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.”
The win was a massive breakthrough for the SNP which had always been on the very periphery of mainstream politics, and before then never considered a serious electoral force.
It showed that people were willing to vote for a SNP candidate if they were the right person – it was a prologue to the huge yellow wave as voters in traditional Labour areas swept the SNP to power in 2007 and particularly 2011.
Ms Ewing remained as a member of the Westminster Parliament for Hamilton until 1970 when the seat turned red again for Alex Wilson, who died in 1978, before George Robertson took it and kept it until 1999.
Despite losing the seat, since that election the SNP have been continuously represented in the House of Commons ever since.
In her autobiography, Stop the World Ms Ewing revealed that politics was in the family as her father, George, was a member of the Independent Labour Party but it was only after his death that she discovered that he had joined the SNP in July 1967.
The Highlands
Proving she was not just a flash in the pan, Ms Ewing went on to contest and win what should have been the safe seat of Moray and Nairn which was then held by Gordon Campbell, the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Twice in a row she routed candidates from the two major establishment parties and in her telling maiden speech in the Commons she argued fervently in support of extending the franchise to those 18 and over.
She argued: “There are moral and intellectual reasons why it is good sense to make people responsible at the age of 18 if not sooner – and I mean fully responsible in every sense of the word.”
The SNP was the party of government who slashed the age people in Scotland can vote at from 18 to 16 following up on her view that the franchise should be brought down to 18 “if not sooner.”
She held onto the seat when a second general election was held in October after the February ballot resulted in a hung parliament but she lost in 1974 – but like many great politicians set-backs became opportunities.
At home in the European Parliament
Ms Ewing first became a member of the European Parliament in July 1975 just prior to direct elections. She held the SNP’s European portfolio at Westminster and defeated fellow MP George Reid in a vote among the party’s group of 11 to take up the seat offered by the Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
At an Irish reception in the European Parliament, Ireland’s Prime Minister Jack Lynch said: “There is a young woman here who is striving for her country to get the rights that we in Ireland have so long fought for.”
No wonder then that she said: “I quickly found myself very much at home in the European Parliament, as I had never done at Westminster.”
In the 1979 general election, she lost Moray and Nairn to the Conservatives by 420 seats – one of nine SNP MPs who failed to achieve re-election but again she overcame a loss to win the Highlands and Islands seat in the European Parliament.
She went on to establish an extensive network to advance Scotland’s interests in Europe and that is reflected in the range of parliamentary groups she was a member of during her time in Strasbourg,
They ranged from the European Progressive Democrats (1979-84); European Democratic Alliance (1984-89); Rainbow Group (1989-94); European Radical Alliance (1994-99).
Madame Ecosse
And it delivered Madame Ecosse, as she came to be known, secured for the Highlands and Islands Securing Objective One assistance status for the whole of the region prior to the 1989 European election.
This opened-up major resources for infrastructure and employment projects and was a massive achievement spearheaded by Ms Ewing after the government of Margaret Thatcher failed to press the case but she stuck to her guns, and won.
Madame Ecosse struck again by bringing the Lomé Convention – a trade and aid agreement between Europe and African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, with a Joint Parliamentary Assembly of delegates – to Inverness.
She later joked in her autobiography: “The invitation was enthusiastically welcomed by many, including the Tory Group, but not by Labour. Janey Buchan [MEP] said that there were not enough hotels in Inverness, whilst others argued behind the scenes that there were not enough brothels. I knew that I was quite unable to deal with the second point, but that the first was simply not true.”
Lomé eventually came to Inverness in September 1985 – the only time it ever met in the UK.
Cliodhna Dempsey, a retired Irish official from the European Parliament, who from 1977-82 worked with the European Progressive Democrats (EPD) that Winnie joined in 1979.
In September 1980, Winnie hosted the EPD group in Inverness. During the week they were there – which included a trip to Skye – she made sure the members understood the unique challenges of her constituency in terms of its scale, geography, and peripherality.
Cliodhna said: “Getting the group to Scotland so soon after joining was undoubtedly quite a coup, and certainly put Scotland on the map for all those concerned . . she excelled at ‘showing not telling’.”
She remained in post until 1999 but by this time a new parliament was about to open and she would play no small part.
Making history again
Ms Ewing entered the new Scottish Parliament at its first election in May 1999 as the top-ranked SNP candidate in the Highlands and Islands list. She stepped down from the European Parliament the following month.
As the eldest member, the honour of presiding over its first session fell to her, which she opened with the following words: “I have the opportunity to say a few words, and I want to start with words I’ve always wanted either to say or hear someone say: the Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.”
As an MSP, she championed many of the issues she had pursued as an MEP, including fighting for the fishing industry and development assistance for the Highlands and Islands.
Objective One status was lost in 2000, being downgraded to transitional funding, although it later emerged that the statistics which had resulted in this were wrong: the region was at 73 per cent of EU average GDP not 76 per cent as the UK government claimed.
Fighting to the end, Winnie pointed out that things would have been different had Scotland “been able to present its own case in Europe.”
After two years in the new Scottish Parliament Ms Ewing retired.
'Scotland will mourn'
Her career was bookended by her two most famous phrases spoken more than 30 years apart.
When she entered Westminster in 1967 she said: “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.”
When she opened the Scottish Parliament for the first time in 292 years she said: “The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.”
Two years later she retired, six years after that Alex Salmond became the first SNP leader Scotland had ever had.
The current First Minister Humza Yousaf summed it up: “Without Winnie – without her breakthrough by-election victory in Hamilton in 1967, her dedication to the cause of Scottish independence, and her promotion of Scotland’s interests in Europe over many years – the SNP would never have achieved the success we have, and self-government for Scotland would never have become the priority it did.
“Not just the SNP and independence supporters, but people across Scotland will mourn Winnie’s death. The nation will feel her loss, which will of course be felt most keenly by her family and many friends all around the world.
“From the bottom of my heart, I say thank you, Madame Écosse, for your service to our party, our movement and our country.”
