Margo MacDonald

Here's the finest tribute I've read about Margo MacDonald who, sadly, died yesterday after a long battle with Parkinson's disease which my mum suffered from as well.

Alan Cochrane had little in common with Margo, politically speaking at least, but The Telegraph's Scottish editor like other Scots warmed to her great personality and many charms which allowed Margo to connect with so many Scots - so much so that they elected her as an independent MSP three times in a row.

The independence debate will miss Margo and I hope her colleagues will consider very carefully what should be Margo's lasting legacy to the Scottish Parliament - her bill on decriminalising assisted dying which the Green MSP, Patrick Harvie, will carry forward on Margo's behalf.

Because Margo's mission to allow people to die with dignity at the end of their lives, if they so choose, was a hugely passionate cause - and one that is shared by the majority of Scottish people.

The question is whether Margo's fellow MSPs at Holyrood will stand up and deliver what the people really want.


Holyrood won't be the same without Margo

We may have stood on different sides of the divide, but the death of the veteran nationalist Margo MacDonald is a real loss to Scottish public life

Margo MacDonald was a doughty fighter for independence and a political gadfly who championed a variety of causes Photo: CHRIS WATT



By Alan Cochrane
Scottish Editor

While the phrase "a nation mourns" is often used when a famous public figure dies it is more often than not a clichéd exaggeration and is rarely accurate.

Today, however, it goes nowhere near capturing the sorrow that most of Scotland, certainly that large part of it who knew her, will feel about the death of Margo MacDonald.

She wasn't just a politician, she was a political movement all on her own. In her later years that's exactly what she became when, believing herself to have been spurned by the Scottish National Party, she proved her immense personal popularity by being returned again and again to the Scottish Parliament as an independent member.

Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that ghastly – to my mind at least – concrete apparition at the foot of the Royal Mile without her.

In spite of rapidly declining health, which often necessitated long stays in hospital, Margo remained a political gad fly, a live-wire legislator and tireless worker for causes as varied as street prostitutes, the right to die, Hibernian FC, PE lessons for schoolchildren and, of course, Scottish independence.

However, as a politician who was first elected to the House of Commons in 1973 she was a stickler for proper parliamentary procedure and, certainly in the view of this observer, she would have made a brilliant presiding officer.

And because as a one-person party she had little formal clout at Holyrood she was often forced to resort to raising points of order – often spurious – when she had something that she felt she just had to say.

As a result of her use of this stratagem, the cry of "point of order" from other politicians will never sound quite the same again. She could be withering about the quality of modern-day politics, occasional producing a bottle of Baby Bio from her handbag to signify that she believed an easy question to a minister had been "planted".

But she was generally benevolent about her younger colleagues – pointing out and praising those, from any party, whom she thought were rising stars.

An inveterate gossip, she held court in the corner seat of the Holyrood parliament's new bar, which was nicknamed "Margo's" in her honour. I think the place should now be formally christened as such.

Restricted in recent years to a disability scooter for getting around Holyrood, Margo made good use of it for corralling those whose ears she wanted to bend.

But when she decided it was time to go home, she would instruct one of the assorted parliamentary reporters to carry her voluminous handbag to her waiting taxi. Nobody ever objected; after all when not legislating Margo was a journalist and proud to be so. Although she was expelled by the SNP in 2003 after announcing that she planned to stand as an independent, she had, superficially at least, made her peace with its senior figures – quite often offering them advice, whether it was requested or not.

And although extremely tolerant of the views, as well as the company, of other politicians her demand for Scottish independence remained unabated.

The last time I saw her she was goading me that Scotland would vote Yes in September, at the same time complaining to a hospital consultant about how the screen around her bed wasn't hanging properly and joshing with a nurse about the football results.

They don't make them like Margo MacDonald any more and it is a genuine tragedy that she won't take part in the debate on the independence referendum.

We would have been on opposite sides but I would have loved to have had a glass with her when it's all over.

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