 | 'I am surprised he gets involved in the House of Lords. As a Presiding Officer, he is a step apart from showing political opinions of any kind. He should back away from political involvement, even in the House of Lords.' Phil Gallie on Lord Steel of Aikwood, 27 th January 2000. |  |
Even if the electoral result in May 2003 should be identical to that of May 1999, ten seats in the Scottish parliament would change hands due to MSPs retiring, while four other MSPs would not be re-elected because of lower classification in the regional lists.
Five MSPs who were elected on 6 th May 1999 are no longer members of the parliament. These are:
A further ten MSPs (four Scottish National Party, two Conservative and Unionist, two Liberal Democrats, one Labour and one Independent) will not be standing in May 2003. They are:
| MSP | Rt Hon Lord Steel of Aikwood MSP KBE (Sir David Steel) |  |
|---|---|---|
| Party | Liberal Democrat | |
| Constituency | Lothians Region | |
| Positions | Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament | |
| Career in other parliaments | MP for Roxburgh Selkirk & Peebles, May 1965 (by) - 1983 MP for Tweedale, Ettrick & Lauderdale, 1983 - 1997 Member of House of Lords, 1997 - | |
| MSP | Dr Winnie Ewing MSP FRSA |  |
| Party | Scottish National Party | |
| Constituency | Highlands & Islands Region | |
| Positions | Presided inauguaral session Mother of the Scottish Parliament | |
| Career in other parliaments | MP for Hamilton, Nov 1967 (by) - 1970 MP for Moray & Nairn, Feb 1974 - 1979 SNP MEP 1975 - 1979 MEP for Highlands and Islands 1979 - 1999 Mother of the European Parliament | |
| MSP | Rt Hon Henry McLeish MSP |  |
| Party | Labour | |
| Constituency | Fife Central | |
| Positions | Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning, May 1999 - October 2000 First Minister of Scotland, October 2000 - November 2001 | |
| Career in other parliaments | MP for Fife Central 1987 - 2001 | |
| MSP | Colin Campbell MSP |  |
| Party | Scottish National Party | |
| Constituency | West of Scotland Region | |
| Positions | Shadow Defence Minister (reserved matter), May 1999 - April 2003 | |
| Career in other parliaments | ||
| MSP | Dorothy-Grace Elder MSP |  |
| Party | Scottish National Party, May 1999 - May 2002 Independent, May 2002 - April 2003 | |
| Constituency | West of Scotland Region | |
| Positions | ||
| Career in other parliaments | ||
| MSP | Ian Jenkins MSP |  |
| Party | Liberal Democrat | |
| Constituency | Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale | |
| Positions | Lib Dem Spokesman on Education & Sport | |
| Career in other parliaments | ||
| MSP | Duncan Hamilton MSP |  |
| Party | Scottish National Party | |
| Constituency | Highlands & Islands Region | |
| Positions | Shadow Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care, May 1999 - September 2000 Shadow Deputy Minister for Enterprise & Lifelong Learning, September 2000 - April 2003 | |
| Career in other parliaments | ||
| MSP | Kay Ullrich MSP |  |
| Party | Scottish National Party | |
| Constituency | West of Scotland Region | |
| Positions | Shadow Minister for Health & Community Care, May 1999 - September 2000 SNP Chief Whip September 2000 - April 2003 | |
| Career in other parliaments | ||
| MSP | Ben Wallace MSP |  |
| Party | Conservative & Unionist | |
| Constituency | North East Scotland Region | |
| Positions | Tory Deputy spokesperson on Health & Social Work | |
| Career in other parliaments | ||
| MSP | John Young MSP |  |
| Party | Conservative & Unionist | |
| Constituency | West of Scotland Region | |
| Positions | Tory Deputy spokesperson on Transport & Environment | |
| Career in other parliaments and councils | Glasgow City Councillor for 34 years | |
After failing to retake the Westminster seat of Ayr at the 2001 general election, Conservative Phil Gallie annouced his retirement but said he would serve until the end of the parliamentary term in 2003. He appears to have changed his mind since then as he is will be standing again for the Scottish Parliament in 2003.
Lloyd Quinan of the SNP was initially to retire but has been selected to contest Motherwell & Wishaw against Jack McConnell following Jim McGuigan standing down.
We believe that Deputy First Minister Jim Wallace may retire half way through the next parliament.
| MSP | Rt Hon Donald Campbell Dewar MP MSP |  |
|---|---|---|
| Party | Labour | |
| Constituency | Glasgow Anniesland 6 th May 1999 - 11 th October 2000 | |
| Positions | First Minister of Scotland 13 th May 1999 - 11 th October 2000 | |
| Career in other parliaments | MP for Aberdeen South 1966 - 1970 MP for Glasgow Garscadden 13 th April 1978 (by-election) - 1997 MP for Glasgow Anniesland 1997 - 11 th October 2000 Secretary of State for Scotland 2 nd May 1997 - 17 th May 1999 | |
| MSP | Dr Sam Galbraith MP MSP |  |
| Party | Labour | |
| Constituency | Strathkelvin & Bearsden 6 th May 1999 - 7 th July 2001 | |
| Positions | Minister for Children & Education May 1999 - October 2000 Minister for the Environment October 2000 - 20 th March 2001 | |
| Career in other parliaments and councils |
MP for Strathkelvin & Bearsden 1987 - 2001 Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland 2 nd May 1997 - 29 th July 1999 | |
| MSP | Nick Johnston MSP |  |
| Party | Conservative & Unionist | |
| Constituency | Mid Scotland & Fife Region 6 th May 1999 - 10 th August 2001 | |
| Positions | Tory Deputy spokesperson on Economy, Industry & Finance | |
| Career in other parliaments and councils | ||
| MSP | Alex Salmond MP MSP |  |
| Party | Scottish National Party | |
| Constituency | Banff & Buchan 6 th May 1999 - 7 th July 2001 | |
| Positions | Shadow First Minister, May 1999 - July 2001 | |
| Career in other parliaments | MP for Banff & Buchan 1987 - SNP leader September 1990 - September 2000 SNP leader September 2004 - | |
| MSP | Ian Welsh MSP |  |
| Party | Labour | |
| Constituency | Ayr 6 th May 1999 - 21 st December 1999 | |
| Positions | ||
| Career in other parliaments and councils | Leader of South Ayrshire Council 1995 - May 1999 | |
Former first minister Henry McLeish, Presiding Officer Sir David Steel and SNP elder Winnie Ewing are the big-name MSPs not standing at May's Scottish Parliament election.
Lesser known names, Tory MSPs Ben Wallace and John Young, and the Liberal Democrats' education spokesman Ian Jenkins are also stepping down.
As well as Mrs Ewing, three other SNP MSPs will not return to the new parliament - Kay Ullrich, Duncan Hamilton and Colin Campbell.
Former SNP MSP, Dorothy-Grace Elder, who quit the party and became an independent in May last year is not running again.
HENRY McLEISH: The Labour MSP's rise within Scottish politics was no less than dramatic.
The Fife Central representative was elected to the top job in October 2000 following the sudden death of First Minister Donald Dewar.
As an MP, the former footballer was devolution minister at the then Scottish Office and played a key role in delivering Scotland's first parliament in almost 300 years.
Fife-born Mr McLeish was fiercely loyal to Mr Dewar and was perceived as a "safe pair of hands" into which the baton for leading the Scottish Executive and Scottish Labour could be passed.
But as his first anniversary in the job approached everything started to go wrong.
Mr McLeish became embroiled in a row after it emerged that he had sub-let his constituency office to outside organisations when he was MP for Central Fife.
He agreed to pay £9,000 to the Westminster Fees Office and insisted he had not done anything wrong, dubbing the matter a "muddle not a fiddle".
However, the disclosure of further sub-lets led to his resignation in November 2001.
Mr McLeish, 54, was sent to the backbench where he remained quiet and uncontroversial.
In September last year the father-of-four issued a statement which said: "After 30 years experience fighting, and 28 in public office I am today announcing my intention to withdraw from elected politics."
Mr McLeish has said he hoped to continue a political role in Scotland and be involved in teaching and lecturing.
SIR DAVID STEEL: The former leader of the Liberal Party came out of early retirement to stand for the Scottish Parliament as a list MSP for the Lothians region.
At the opening ceremony in the summer of 1999, the 64-year-old said: "We must cherish the Scottish Parliament. This is the start of a new sang."
He has relished the non-party role of presiding officer, overseeing debates on key legislation such as the repeal of Section 28 and the ban on hunting with dogs.
Sir David was elected to Westminster in 1965 and served there until 1997. From 1976 to 1988 he was leader of the Liberals.
Kirkcaldy-born Sir David moved to the House of Lords as a life peer in 1997, when he took his seat as Lord Steel of Aikwood.
But he made his intentions known early that he would step down at the 2003 Holyrood election.
In June 2001, Sir David revealed that he was suffering from prostate cancer. He later underwent surgery which proved successful.
The father-of three has written several books including his autobiography titled Against Goliath.
IAN JENKINS: The 61-year-old has worked closely with Sir David Steel since joining the Liberals in the 1970s.
The Rothesay-born politician has been the Liberal Democrats' spokesman for education in the Scottish Parliament.
Mr Jenkins taught in Clydebank High School from 1964 until 1970, then he became principal teacher of English at Peebles High School. He is retiring as an MSP for Ettrick and Lauderdale.
BEN WALLACE: The 32-year-old former army officer has been deputy health spokesman for the Conservatives.
Farnborough-born Mr Wallace attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and was an army officer in the Scots Guards from 1991-98.
He served in Northern Ireland and Central America and was injured in Northern Ireland.
Mr Wallace is stepping down as a list MSP for North East Scotland region to pursue his ambition of becoming elected to the House of Commons.
JOHN YOUNG: The Tories' deputy transport and environment spokesman had a solid grounding in local politics before entering the Scottish Parliament as a list member for West of Scotland region.
He was elected a Glasgow councillor in 1961, rising to the post of council leader between 1977 and 1979.
The 72-year-old stood unsuccessfully for election to Westminster for Rutherglen in 1966 and Cathcart in 1992.
Glasgow-born Mr Young, who wrote a history of Cathcart Conservative Association between 1918 and 1993, is retiring as an MSP.
WINNIE EWING: The 73-year-old SNP MSP presided over the opening of the Scottish Parliament.
The Highlands and Islands representative says that was the highlight of her four years in the chamber.
Dr Ewing, who joined the SNP in 1946, is head of a well-known political dynasty.
Her son Fergus and daughter-in-law Margaret are MSPs in Edinburgh and daughter Annabelle is a Westminster MP.
In 1967, Dr Ewing was elected to the Westminster Parliament after sensationally winning the Hamilton by-election for the Scottish National Party in 1967.
n Europe, Dr Ewing was known as "Madame Ecosse" and given the title "Mother of the European Parliament" when she served from 1975 to 1999 as an MEP.
The widowed former solicitor said she hoped to spend more time with her two grandchildren Ciara, three, and one-year-old Jamie once she leaves elected politics.
DUNCAN HAMILTON: The 28-year-old SNP MSP was the parliament's youngest member when he was elected from the Highlands and Islands list at the 1999 election.
He is quitting the parliament to pursue a career in law.
In February last year, he wrote an open letter to his Argyll and Bute constituency party in which he said he believed it was best for elected representatives to have "real life experience" outside politics.
The Ayrshire born MSP, who received an LLB from the University of Edinburgh and was a Kennedy scholar at Harvard, Massachusetts, indicated he might seek a return to parliamentary life in the future.
He is currently the SNP's deputy spokesperson on enterprise and lifelong learning.
COLIN CAMPBELL: The MSP is currently defence spokesman for the SNP.
The 64-year-old former head teacher is a list member for the west of Scotland region and is retiring at the end of this parliament.
Mr Campbell, who joined the SNP in 1976, has an interest in military history and is co-authoring a book on a WWI poet.
The father-of-three also enjoys gardening and is a former chairman of both Kilbarchan Community Council and Kilbarchan Civic Society.
DOROTHY-GRACE ELDER: The former journalist was elected an MSP for the Scottish National Party at the 1999 Holyrood election.
But she quit in May last year because of what she said was "stupid, arrogant and bullying behaviour".
Ms Elder, a list member for Glasgow, stayed on as an independent despite SNP leader John Swinney calling for her to resign from the pparliament.
Although one of the SNP's most colourful politicians she was unpopular with the party leadership. She had previously fallen out with them over claims she did not contribute enough cash towards the cost of party research.
The final row was prompted by what Ms Elder said were her own party's attempts to remove her against her will from the parliament's health and community care committee.
She has written columns for the Scottish Daily Express and the Daily Express in London and the Sunday Mail. Ms Elder was also an investigative writer for The Herald and a member of the Scottish Daily News Workers' Co-operative.
KAY ULLRICH: The MSP is a West of Scotland list member for the SNP and used to be the party's spokesperson for health.
In June 2000 she made much of an embarrassing wrangle within the Cabinet over health spending.
The 59-year-old led criticism of the executive after the then health minister Susan Deacon announced an extra £8m to the NHS on the same day First Minister Jack McConnell revealed that £34m in health spending would have to be clawed back.
The former swimming teacher had a number of failed attempts at parliamentary elections before success at the 1999 poll.
She stood as candidate for Cunninghame South in 1983 and 1987 and Motherwell South in 1992 in general elections. She also stood as a candidate in the Monklands East by-election in 1994.
Before entering politics full-time she did social work in schools, hospitals and courts.
Mrs Ullrich, who has two children, is currently the SNP's parliamentary group chief whip.
WHEN Winnie Ewing was given the honour of asking the final question of the Scottish Parliament's first term, our politicians showed, fleetingly, a measure of cross-party goodwill. Mrs Ewing, recently widowed and retiring at 73 after a lifetime in the public eye, was applauded with genuine warmth, to which she responded graciously.
Such moments are rare in Scottish politics and her colleagues' good wishes marked their personal respect, no matter how much they might dispute her politics, and were a recognition of her place in Scottish history.
Very few Scottish politicians - Sir David Steel is an obvious example - are perpetual winners while forced to spend a lifetime in opposition. Mrs Ewing managed the trick and no-one really knows why, except that she has the priceless knack of persuading people to vote for her, the person, rather than for her, the partisan party politician.
Once, when I was working in Brussels, Mrs Ewing remarked with a rueful smile that she had been almost forgotten at home. She had been exiled in the European Parliament for many years and politicians don't like going unnoticed. "I can walk down Princes Street and no-one recognises me nowadays," she said. "The kids today don't know who I am."
When she returned to Scotland to become an MSP after more than 20 years in the European Parliament, she changed that almost overnight. Her famous remark from the chair in the chamber on the Mound that the Scottish Parliament, adjourned in 1707, was "hereby reconvened" after 300 years echoed around the world and, in an instant, Mrs Ewing was back in the limelight.
Until she stepped down as an MSP a fortnight go she was still a show-stopper with the crowds on the High Street in Edinburgh. The SNP has had many shooting stars - Jim Sillars and Margo MacDonald among them - but none has been a force over decades quite like Winnie Ewing, the SNP president.
Politicians hate taking on rivals who are proven winners. That is why Labour grew to abominate Jim Sillars. The depth of Labour's distaste for Mr Sillars when he was at the height of his powers was truly depressing, driven by fear of a sparkling performer - a sad commentary on Scotland at that time, when political jealousy crushed talent and potential.
Winnie Ewing never suffered in quite the same way, perhaps because she was a more convivial person socially than the driven Sillars, or maybe she just knew how to disarm critics with her peculiar form of romantic nationalism mixed with Celtic passion.
In my experience trying to argue with Mrs Ewing is completely pointless, a bit like trying to lunch a story out of Malcolm Rifkind. Anyone rash enough to disagree with Mrs Ewing's politics knows the response: a horrified look, not of hostility but of mystification mixed with sympathy for a wretch who does not comprehend sense.
Truth explained
Winnie Ewing seems to be genuinely unable to fathom why the Scots are not all nationalists yearning for independence. Like an evangelist she finds the only explanation must be that the unfortunates have not yet had the truth explained to them.
For example, in 1967 the Glasgow Herald employed an anonymous political reporter in the House of Commons who wrote under the by-line of Our Political Correspondent. He had to write a piece on an impending and uninteresting by-election in Hamilton, a safe Labour seat, and observed the day before polling: "At Westminster only a belief in the incredible allows a win for Mrs Ewing ..."
What he did not know then, but learned quickly the next day, was that Labour's vote in Hamilton was rotten to the core, the constituency party had disintegrated, the Liberals were not standing, and the Tory campaign was a joke that led to a lost deposit. Winnie Ewing won and Scotland has never been the same since. The Scottish Parliament in which she played her role as mother of the house on opening day and closing day is, indirectly, a result of that amazing day in Hamilton.
Of course, she lost her seat when Labour woke up again, but she was soon back on the winning trail when she took a tilt at no less a luminary than the secretary of state for Scotland himself, Gordon Campbell, in deeply Conservative Moray and Nairn. And she won.
"This is the millennium," cried Mrs Ewing, a touch prematurely (it was 1974) as she emerged from the declaration and headed back to Westminster. I confess I never quite understood that remark, but I think I know what she meant.
When she was in the Commons she was asked by Harold Wilson to go to the European Parliament as an appointed member. Mrs Ewing liked Mr Wilson, who treated her with a kindness not matched by some of her Scottish Labour colleagues.
Off she went to Brussels and there she remained ... until 1999. Le Monde described her as Madame Ecosse - to the great resentment of some of her colleagues from other parties. Her nickname stuck because she earned herself a reputation in Brussels and Strasbourg as a sort of unofficial Scottish ambassador.
Mrs Ewing became the longest-serving MEP in Europe, but her journey home to Holyrood was inevitable. Over the past four years her family has expanded its political influence - she had a son (Fergus) and daughter-in-law (Margaret) alongside her in Holyrood, and a daughter, Annabelle, in the Commons.
Life in the Scottish Parliament will be less fun without its "mother" and heaven knows what the SNP will do when she gives up completely. She may have retired from parliament and be showing signs of physical frailty, but she is already back on the stump for the party which treasures her presence on the doorsteps.
Just as I was finishing that sentence the phone rang. It was herself, having been told I was writing about her. I asked if she had a farewell message for the voters. "Say that the SNP was once regarded as the slightly daft party, then we had to show we were serious, and then we had to show we had talent. We are now at the stage where we are almost the establishment - and I am optimistic about the election."
Winnie Ewing - the establishment? Never.
April 8th 2003
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