Winnie

Cathleen and I went across the Clyde this afternoon to visit Winnie Ewing who is living in Bridge of Weir.

I hadn't seen Winnie for a while and she was in sparkling form.   Whilst we were there, conversing about  all the political issues of the day, she was having her nails done by Fiona who is almost more pro-Paisley (where she is from, though she lives in Johnstone now) than Mr Paisley himself, my friend the local MSP George Adam.  

I edited Winnie's biography "Stop The World" over a decade ago but I have known her - as we were recalling today - since the late 1970s when I met her in the bar of the Creagorry Hotel in Benbecula when she was campaigning with Donnie Stewart, then MP for the Western Isles.   She must have been the MP for Moray then and since  that time of course she has been the longest serving MEP for Scotland (known everywhere as "Madame Ecosse") and then for four years an MSP who , as the oldest member, brought the Scottish Parliament back into being after its 292 year recess.

Her work as an MEP was of particular importance to the Highlands and she secured Objective 1 funding status as well as attracting to the area much interest, investment and political activity.   However it is as the victor of the Hamilton by-election in 1967 that history will probably best remember her for that event essentially started the modern story of the SNP and its growth to a party of Government.   Since that wet November night the SNP has had continuous parliamentary representation (before that it only had three months in 1945 when Robert Macintyre  won a war time by-election in Motherwell ) and it was Winnie's charismatic personality and her extraordinary capacity for hard work that allowed the SNP to capitalise on the win.

She was also the best street campaigner I have ever worked with and I will never forget the last Saturday of the 1987 election in Larkhall when , as a young first time candidate, I stumped the main street in the pouring rain  with the woman who had won the constituency twenty years earlier.   Everybody knew her and she knew how to get everybody talking.

I have always regarded myself as fortunate to call Winnie a friend and I came away from the visit invigorated as ever.    In her 87th year she remains the remarkable , outgoing, generous person she has always been.