Margaret Ewing,
1 st September 1945 - 21 st March 2006

'She was credited with the best parliamentary rejoinder of her time on the Mound. It came when Henry McLeish, the gaffe-prone former first minister, was attacking the SNP and building up to a denunciation of Bruce Crawford, the SNP MSP, whom he accused of hypocrisy. McLeish told MSPs sonorously that he had a word for Mr Crawford's allegedly disgraceful behaviour, a word which would be considered unparliamentary at Westminster. "It begins with H and ends with Y," he informed the chamber, to which Mrs Ewing immediately shouted: "Aye Ð Henry."' Murray Ritchie in the Herald, 22 nd March 2006.

Margaret Ewing

By Murray Ritchie in the Herald 22 nd March 2006

Margaret Anne Ewing, Scottish Nationalist politician; born September 1, 1945, died March 21, 2006

MARGARET Ewing, the Scottish Nationalist MSP, who has died aged 60, was a self-proclaimed "tough nut" who spent more than 30 years battling political rivals and surviving bouts of ill health to become established as one of the SNP's most popular figures.

The daughter of a Biggar farm worker, she rose to fame in the 1970s as a passionate supporter of Scottish independence and was one of the SNP's famous team of 11 Westminster MPs of that period. She went on to convene the SNP in Westminster and in Holyrood, and was a former deputy leader of the party.

Maggie Ewing, as she was affectionately known, was unashamedly an old-fashioned Nationalist who had scant regard for fashionable campaigning methods or spin doctors or presentational fads. Instead, she relied on a forceful personality and individualism, a style that allowed her to build a solid base for the SNP in Moray where she was a tireless constituency worker and champion of rural Scotland, especially the fishing communities of the north-east.

Mrs Ewing was born Margaret Anne McAdam and attended the high school in Biggar and then Jordanhill College of Education where she qualified in teaching children with special needs. In the late 1960s, she taught in secondary schools and by 1973 had become principal teacher of remedial education at St Modan's High School in Stirling, graduating in economic history at Strathclyde University in the same year.

That period coincided with an upsurge in nationalism in Scotland as the SNP headed for a significant advance in the two general elections of 1974. By now she had married, and as Margaret Bain she won Dunbartonshire East for the SNP, largely thanks to the inclusion of Cumbernauld in the constituency at a time when Nationalism was popular in Scotland's new towns. She went to Westminster in a blaze of publicity and her blonde good looks made her a popular media performer.

But in 1979 the Nationalists were unable to resist the swing against them as the Tories under Margaret Thatcher swept into power after the collapse of the Labour government of James Callaghan and the winter of discontent. She lost the seat and for three years turned to making a living from newspapers and television, contributing to, among others, the short-lived Now magazine and the Sunday Standard. Later, she recalled her first journalistic commission. It was from Iain Lindsay-Smith, former editor of The Glasgow Herald, then with The Times, who asked her to write about an MP signing on the dole.

When an internal row over dogma split the SNP, she surprised some by taking the party establishment's side and supporting the expulsion of the left-wing '79 group. It was a sign that her tough and radical views were being tempered. She did not join the group, as some might have expected, and instead condemned them publicly, accusing them of employing "rent-a-mob" tactics in promoting civil disobedience.

For the rest of her career she was held in some suspicion by the SNP left, especially after her second marriage in 1983 to Fergus Ewing, now MSP for Inverness East, Nairn and Lochaber, who is firmly on the party right.

Mrs Ewing unsuccessfully contested Strathkelvin and Bearsden in 1983 but her return to parliamentary politics came in 1987 when she won Moray from the disappearing Scottish Tories. She held Moray in all subsequent elections and stepped down from Westminster in 2001, switching to the Scottish Parliament for the same constituency.

In 1990, when her profile was again prominent at Westminster, she stood against Alex Salmond for the party leadership. Many saw her as favourite in a civil but personally chilly contest. It was said the two tholed each other, but no more. "Alex has fans Ð I have friends,"' she remarked. Mrs Ewing was defeated surprisingly easily by 486 votes to 146.

For more than a decade she led the SNP group in the House of Commons. After 1999 in Holyrood, she fulfilled the same role amid increasing speculation about her deteriorating health.

Her time in Westminster will be remembered partly for her controversial decision to negotiate with the Tories under John Major over Scotland's representation in the European Union's new committee of the regions. In return for another Scottish seat, she persuaded the SNP's MPs to back the government in a crucial vote on the Maastricht Treaty at a time when the Tories were down to a tiny majority and daily facing defeat in the Commons.

For the first time in 14 years, the SNP entered the division lobby with the Tories, provoking an outcry in Labour circles and also with the Nationalists' own left. But she reasoned she had done the right thing by Scotland and remained defiant. "Basically, the criticism seems to be that we should not talk to the Tories and I feel that is a bit daft since it says on my membership card that I should seek to further the interests of Scotland," she said.

With characteristic forthrightness, she announced via the local newspaper in her constituency that after a routine scan in Aberdeen she had been diagnosed as having breast cancer. She underwent an operation, in Edinburgh so that she could be closer to her family, and appeared to make a full recovery.

She ruffled some party feathers by supporting local campaigns for the retention of RAF Lossiemouth and Kinloss in her constituency. Otherwise she was in tune with mainstream SNP thinking, avow-edly against nuclear dumping, prominent in the campaign against the poll tax and an enemy of deals with the Labour Party which, she argued, only reluctantly allowed Scotland a measure of home rule as an appeasement of nationalism.

In Holyrood, she was a quieter performer than some expected but was heard with respect by her colleagues across the parties, especially on north-east issues. She was a member of a many cross-party groups and served as joint convener of one on epilepsy and was vice-convener of the tourism group.

She was credited with the best parliamentary rejoinder of her time on the Mound. It came when Henry McLeish, the gaffe-prone former first minister, was attacking the SNP and building up to a denunciation of Bruce Crawford, the SNP MSP, whom he accused of hypocrisy. McLeish told MSPs sonorously that he had a word for Mr Crawford's allegedly disgraceful behaviour, a word which would be considered unparliamentary at Westminster. "It begins with H and ends with Y," he informed the chamber, to which Mrs Ewing immediately shouted: "Aye Ð Henry."

Privately, Maggie Ewing was good company, warm-hearted and mischievously humorous. As a supporter of the arts with a particular interest in Scottish folk music, she was known occasionally to contribute a song or two if she considered the company sufficiently convivial.