Winnie Ewing, who transformed Scottish politics, dies at 93

Winnie Ewing, who transformed Scottish politics in the late 1960s by taking the issue of independence from Britain to the national mainstream from the electoral fringe, died on June 21 at her home in Bridge of Weir, a town west of Glasgow. She turned 93.

Her death was announced in a statement from her family, several of whom, including her daughter and one of her sons, followed her into Scottish politics.

Ms Ewing was a political neophyte in 1967 when, as a member of the Scottish National Party, she won a stunning upset over a veteran of the Scottish Labor Party, taking a parliamentary seat near Glasgow that had been in the city for some 50 years. hands of that party.

The charismatic Mrs Ewing, then just 38 years old, with three young children and a successful career as a lawyer, made her way through Scotland’s dull, sclerotic politics with her vision for an energetic, independent nation.

“Stop the world, Scotland wants to move on,” she told a reporter shortly after her victory.

She made her inaugural trip to the Palace of Westminster in London, where the British Parliament meets, aboard a special train called the Tartan Express, with 250 well-wishers on board. More people, along with a group of bagpipers playing ‘Scotland the Brave’, greeted her as she disembarked at Euston Station.

She got on well with most of her colleagues, but the rest of the Scottish delegation, all outraged members of the Labor Party, made her years in Parliament unpleasant. They publicly insulted her and refused to sit with her in the Westminster cafeteria. She even later claimed that someone – she declined to say who – had been stalking her for months.

“I didn’t know it would be this dire because no one warned me,” she told The Herald, a Scottish newspaper, in 2004. “It was like facing a crucifixion every day, a little crucifixion.”

She was better received at home, where she inspired a generation of young people and women to pour into Scottish politics after decades of being out of it.

“She was someone who changed the course of Scottish political history,” Nicola Sturgeon, the former First Minister of Scotland, told the BBC in 2018. “Growing up in politics, there weren’t many women I could look up to, who had landed a job, and Winnie was undoubtedly one of the few.

Ms Ewing also reoriented her country’s politics from the traditional left-right arrangement to one centered, at least in part, on the question of independence. During her political career, the Scottish National Party, sitting in the periphery, became the country’s dominant electoral force.

In 2014, she played a leading role in Scotland’s independence referendum, campaigning relentlessly alongside her boyfriend and fellow proud Caledonian Sean Connery. But despite their efforts, the referendum lost 55 to 45 percent.

Winifred Margaret Woodburn was born on July 10, 1929 in Glasgow. Her father, George Woodburn, ran a paper mill and her mother, Christina (Anderson) Woodburn, was a housewife.

She received a law degree from the University of Glasgow, where she joined the Scottish Nationalist Association, a pro-independence group. She later recalled that when she told her father, a committed member of the Labor Party, about her decision, he called her “a traitor.”

She married Stewart Ewing, an accountant, in 1956. He later also served as her assistant and political advisor.

Stewart Ewing died in 2003. Mrs. Ewing is survived by her sons, Terry and Fergus; her daughter, Annabelle Ewing; and four grandchildren.

Fergus and Annabelle Ewing are members of the Scottish Parliament, as is Fergus’ wife, Margaret, who died in 2006.

Mrs Ewing’s first term in Parliament lasted only three years, but she returned in 1974 and served a further five years. In 1975 Prime Minister Harold Wilson chose her as a member of the British delegation to the fledgling European Parliament, a position she held for 20 years.

In Strasbourg, France, where the European Parliament met, she was nicknamed Madame Écosse – Mrs. Scotland in French – for her apparently determined focus. She defended Scottish fishing and oil interests, and made common cause with representatives of other European regions who were restless for their own rule.

Over the years, she used her position in Strasbourg to push Scotland from pervasive skepticism of the European Union to a full-blown embrace under her slogan “Independence in Europe”.

She commuted across the North Sea and won the presidency of the Scottish National Party in 1987. She held that position until she stepped down in 2005.

The Scots voted overwhelmingly in 1997 to re-establish their parliament, which had been dissolved after the country’s unification with England in 1707. Mrs Ewing easily won the election and in its first session, in 1999, brought it back to to live.

“I want to start with the words I’ve always wanted to say or hear someone else say,” she said, sitting on a dais at the head of the room. “The Scottish Parliament, adjourned on the 25th of March, in the year 1707, is hereby reconvened.”

Six years later, when Parliament moved to a new location, Mrs Ewing was given the chair in which she delivered those historic words.