Winnie Ewing – inspiration, friend, and true parliamentarian

It was 1978 and I was living on the island of Benbecula.

Winnie, then MP for Moray and Nairn, was undertaking a tour of the islands along with the local MP Donnie Stewart.   

The SNP Uist branch, of which I was secretary, had arranged to meet them in the Creagorry Hotel and I was sent to the bar to get the drinks.

“A dry sherry for me,” she said, and then added: “A large one.”

READ MORE: Winnie Ewing in pictures: The life of a Scottish independence legend

Those words summed up everything about her that I got to know and revere over the next 45 years. There were no small measures in her life, and particularly not in her generosity, talent for friendship, commitment to her constituents as a parliamentarian in three different parliaments, and above all in her determination to further Scotland’s cause of independence.

Winnie's time at Holyrood

Although I worked with Winnie in various SNP capacities from that time on, I only really got to know her as a close friend during the first term of the Scottish Parliament. She had opened it as the oldest member, declaring on May 12 1999: “The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th day of March in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.”

Winnie was always keen to encourage younger politicians. Nicola Sturgeon has herself paid tribute to advice from Winnie, both on public speaking and on being a woman in politics, namely “stand your ground and believe in yourself”.

As part of that encouragement she made a point at Holyrood of attending the end of day “members business” debates. I would sometimes stay with her and then she would take my arm as we walked down the High Street, nipping into somewhere like “The Jolly Judge” where she would gather an audience of younger politicians as she regaled them with stories of other parliaments and the struggles of a very different SNP, in very different times.

It was one of those sessions that led to her asking me if I thought she would be able to write her memoirs. She knew I had written several books and also had a passion for developing an SNP corpus of literature, given that the movement has been so poor in recording its past.

I advised her to start to note down each story when she remembered it and put it in a file marked with the year she thought it related to. Bit by bit she built up the core of what became her biography, called “Stop the World” after her famous winning slogan at Hamilton: “Stop the World, Scotland wants to get on.” It was eventually published in 2004, and I edited it for her.

The Scottish Parliament was the third chamber to which she had been elected, and she was determined to serve there given how much of her life she had devoted to securing even that measure of self-government. She would often quote Gwynfor Evans, in 1967 the only fellow nationalist in the UK Parliament, on the issue of gradual devolution as opposed to instant  independence, when he advised her that “when people are starving, half a loaf is better than none at all”.

An MP, MEP and MSP

She was returned to the House of Commons twice, first of all as a result of the stunning 1967 Hamilton by-election victory over a complacent Labour Party (a success  which marked the start of continuous Parliamentary representation for the SNP). She returned after the February 1974 General Election for Moray and Nair, a contest in which she unseated the Conservative secretary of state for Scotland.

After losing that seat in the 1979 electoral calamity for the SNP, she bravely decided against all the odds to contest the Highlands and Islands European Seat just six weeks later. It was widely expected to fall to the Liberal Russell Johnson. In a tight three-way contest her dynamism, energy and gift for the theatrical – for Winnie campaigned in style, often dressed in SNP yellow and always (in a trick she taught me) bobbing into shops to buy something so that she could talk to the staff – triumphed. She then held the seat until it was abolished in 1999 when Scotland became a single multi member  European constituency.

READ MORE: The moment Winnie Ewing reconvened the Scottish Parliament

It was a testament to her hard work that her majority, which was just under 4000 in 1974, was nearly 55,000 20 years later. However she was always the first to admit that it was also a tribute to the extraordinary effort of her husband Stewart, who was her eyes and ears in the constituency and always at work promoting her. His tragic death in a house fire in January 2003, only months before she retired from the Scottish Parliament, was a bitter blow to her and her family, two of whom – Fergus and Annabelle – followed in her footsteps into politics whilst Terry pursued other interests.

Thriving in Europe

In the European Parliament – a place less confrontational and more given to consensual progress than either Westminster or, alas, Holyrood ­– she was adept at taking up causes and making progress with them. She was a key mover in the establishment of the Erasmus scheme in which young people could study in other European countries, and as a member of the Lome Convention she took forward constructive trading relations with developing countries and brought the full meeting of the convention to Inverness.

Her greatest achievement for her area was, however, securing what was called “Objective 1” funding, which was designed to help regions in Europe which were lagging behind in development and infrastructure.

Winnie’s determination to deliver such a major boost showed her at her very best – tirelessly lobbying the UK Government, making sure the local authorities were voluble in support and bending the ear of relevant EU officials and other MEPs. It was the same approach that she brought to campaigning and it paid off, with a huge amount of funding flowing into places that had been traditionally neglected by Westminster.

Without Winnie, and without the European Union, it would never have happened.

Winnie Ewing in Veere. She was the first female (honorary) Conservator in Veere, pictured on a special visit with a delegation of Scots

It was the French newspaper “Le Monde” which first christened her Madame Ecosse and the name stuck. Opposing her at the ballot box became a thankless task for the other parties and I well remember going into vote at Colintraive in the 1994 European elections to be greeted by the polling clerk, who handed me the ballot paper with the words: “There is only one name on that that anyone will recognise.”

Driving back from the dedication of Dennis MacLeod’s Clearances Memorial at Helmsdale in July 2007 she admitted to me, glancing at the government papers on the back seat of the car, that she would have liked to have held ministerial office. Given her political acumen and her legal training she would have been as formidable in that as in every other task to which she turned her hand, but it was not to be.

Outside of parliament

Nor was she ever to sit in the House of Lords, and although she willingly accepted the need to refuse nomination whilst there was no elected element in the chamber (more obviously ludicrous and anti democratic  now than ever before), she did slightly regret not serving in a fourth chamber, the only person to date having done so being Ian Paisley.

Nonetheless, she was honoured by a number of institutions – including her alma mater Glasgow University, which gave her an honorary degree in 1995 and her own party made her president in 1987. She held the post for 18 years.

Winnie always maintained she became a Scottish nationalist at the age of nine, on hearing “The Road to the Isles” played on a trip “doon the watter” to Kilchattan Bay on Bute.

But sentiment apart, her political philosophy was a simple pragmatic and easily explained one. It was founded on a favourite quote of hers from Tom Nairn which asserted that “far from being terribly risky, irresponsible and juvenile to move to getting out of the Union bed, it may be dangerous, even childish, to hang around in it”.

READ MORE: Why was Winnie Ewing called Madame Écosse?

By the time of Brexit she was less engaged with the world, but the absolute incontrovertible sense of that position, which she articulated all her life, grows ever stronger.

At a time when around 50% of Scots realise the truth of it, it is sometimes difficult to recall those days when independence was regarded as a wild, ridiculous pipedream.

Winnie was a trailblazer in politics, recognising earlier than most that Scotland had outgrown its current constitutional arrangements. She pursued the implementation of that view relentlessly and with enormous talent for all her 93 years.

In doing so she was a help, guide, inspiration and friend to thousands and a faithful parliamentary servant to many more. Scotland will miss her greatly for there are few still cast in her mould.

But her lifetime cause – our cause – of independence will triumph, and for that she will have been in no small part responsible.