Donald Dewar

The Right Honourable  Donald Dewar
1st First Minister of Scotland
In office 7 May 1999 – 11 October 2000
Monarch	Elizabeth
Deputy	Jim Wallace
Preceded by	Office Created
Succeeded by	Henry McLeish
Secretary of State for Scotland
In office 3 May 1997 – 17 May 1999
Prime Minister	Tony Blair
Preceded by	Michael Forsyth
Succeeded by	John Reid
Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Anniesland
In office 6 May 1999 – 11 October 2000
Preceded by	new constituency
Succeeded by	Bill Butler
Born	21 August 1937 Glasgow, Scotland
Died	11 October 2000 (aged 63) Edinburgh, Scotland
Political party	Scottish Labour

Donald Campbell Dewar (21 August 1937 – 11 October 2000) was the original First Minister of Scotland, following the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, from 1999 until his death in 2000.

Early life

Born at 194 Renfrew Street, Glasgow on 21 August 1937 to mature parents, Dewar was an only child. His father Alisdair was a distinguished consultant dermatologist but suffered from tuberculosis. His mother Mary (née Bennett) suffered a brain tumour when Donald was very young.

He attended the Glasgow Academy before studying at the University of Glasgow, where he gained both LLB and MA degrees as well as editing the Glasgow University Guardian. Here, he met his close friend John Smith—who would later become leader of the Labour Party, Sir Menzies Campbell—who would later become leader of the Liberal Democrats and Lord Irvine of Lairg through the debating society. In his time at university he also served as President of the Glasgow University Union and was a member of the Glasgow University Labour Club.

Member of Parliament

A member of the Labour Party, Dewar worked as a solicitor in Glasgow before being elected at the age of 28 in the 1966 general election to the Parliament of the United Kingdom at Westminster to represent the marginal constituency of Aberdeen South. In his maiden speech in the Commons Dewar railed against proposed increase on potato tax. This was his first notable success - the tax was repealed in 1967. That year he was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Education Secretary Anthony Crosland, who Dewar later confessed to never really establishing a rapport with. He held that position until 1969. In April 1968 he was proposed for a Minister of State position by Roy Jenkins but nothing came of it.

Shadow Cabinet

After a political hiatus during the 1970s, Donald Dewar was returned to Westminster as the Member of Parliament for Glasgow Garscadden at a by-election in 1978 following the death of Labour MP William Small. He rose quickly through the ranks, becoming a member of the Shadow Cabinet in 1984. On 21 December 1988, Dewar was in Lockerbie after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, [1] as the member of the Shadow Cabinet in charge of Scottish affairs. In 1992 John Smith made him Shadow Social Security Secretary. In 1995, Dewar was made a Chief Whip for the Labour Party by Tony Blair, and when the Labour Party was declared the majority party in the 1997 election, he was given the post of Secretary of State for Scotland.

In government

After the 1997 General Election, Dewar was in a position which the late John Smith would never have thought possible. He was able to start the devolution process, and worked endlessly on creating the Scotland Act, popularly known as Smith's "unfinished business". When ratified, this was to give Scotland its first Parliament for nearly 300 years.

First Minister of Scotland

The first elections to the Scottish Parliament were held on 6 May 1999, with Dewar leading the Scottish Labour Party against their main opponents, the SNP under Alex Salmond. He was elected as the MSP for Glasgow Anniesland. Although Scottish Labour won the most seats, they did not have a majority in Parliament to allow them to form an Executive without the help of a smaller party. A deal was agreed with the Scottish Liberal Democrats to form a coalition, with Dewar agreeing to their demand for the abolition of up-front tuition fees for university students.^[1]

On 13 May, Dewar was nominated as First Minister, and was officially appointed by the Queen on 17 May at a ceremony in the Palace of Holyroodhouse. He later travelled to the Court of Session to be sworn in by the Lord President and receive the Great Seal of Scotland.^[2]

On 16 June, Dewar set out the legislative programme for the Executive which included: an Education bill to improve standards in Scottish schools; land reform to give right of access to the countryside, a bill to abolish the feudal system of land tenure; and a bill to establish National Parks in Scotland.^[3]

Death and funeral

In April 2000, Dewar was admitted to hospital for tests on his heart, following a previous test where a minor irregularity was discovered.^[4]. In May 2000, he later had surgery to repair a leaking heart valve, and was forced to take a three month break from Parliament, with Deputy First Minister, Jim Wallace taking over as Acting First Minister.^[5]. He returned to work on 14 August 2000^[6].

Dewar dealt with the exams results fiasco and the lorry drivers strike, and attended the Labour party conference in Brighton in September, but at the end of September told the historian Tom Devine in Dublin that if there was no surge of the energy of old, he would have to reappraise the situation within a few months time^[7].

On 10 October 2000 around lunchtime, Dewar sustained a fall. He seemed fine at first but later that day suffered a massive brain hemorrhage which was possibly triggered by the anticoagulant medication he was taking after the heart surgery. Donald Dewar died one day later, at 12.18pm, in Edinburgh's Western General Hospital. He was 63 years old.

Dewar's funeral service was held at Glasgow Cathedral, amid scenes of mourning unknown for a politician in Scotland's largest city. He was cremated on 18 October 2000, and his ashes were scattered at Lochgilphead.

Although he has become something of a political legend, Donald would have abhorred any attempt to turn him into some kind of secular saint. He would have been horrified at a Diana-style out-pouring of synthetic grief at his untimely death. -- Iain MacWhirter, Sunday Herald, 15 October 2000.

Personal life

Despite his early political success, his personal life was less happy. He married Alison Mary McNair on 20 July 1964. They had two children together - a daughter, Marion, and a son, Ian. But in 1970 she left him for the Scottish lawyer Derry Irvine.^[8] The two men remained unreconciled, even though they later served in the same Cabinet from May 1997 until 1999, when Dewar left Westminster to become First Minister. 1970 was a black year for Dewar. As well as his wife leaving him, he lost his parliamentary seat in the 1970 general election and was laid up with back trouble. He and his wife divorced in 1973 and Dewar never remarried.

Controversies

One of the first scandals to hit the new Parliament occurred when allegations that the lobbying arm of public relations company Beattie Media had privileged access to ministers were published, prompting Dewar to ask the standards committee to investigate the reports.^[9] The Minister for Finance, Jack McConnell, was called to appear before the standards committee during the investigation although he was later cleared of any wrongdoing and the committee declared there was no evidence he had been influenced from lobbying by Beattie Media.^[10]

Dewar also threatened to sack any Minister or aide who briefed the media against another member of the Executive, following public rows between Jack McConnell and the Minister of Health and Community Care, Susan Deacon over the budget allocated to health .^[11]

Legacy

Dewar's work for the Scottish Parliament has led him to be called by some the "Father of the Nation" despite some of the difficulties that the Scottish Parliament has suffered in its early years.

In May 2002, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair unveiled a statue of Dewar at the top of Glasgow's Buchanan Street — and in keeping with his famous unkempt appearance, it showed Dewar wearing a slightly crushed jacket. The statue was taken down in October 2005 to be cleaned and was re-erected on 6-foot (1.8 m) high plinth in December of the same year in an effort to protect it. On the base of the statue were inscribed the opening words of the Scotland Act: "There Shall Be A Scottish Parliament", a phrase to which Dewar himself famously said, "I Like That!" .

Dewar notoriously called the Royal High School on Calton Hill in Edinburgh a "nationalist shibboleth", mainly because it had been the proposed site of the Scottish Assembly if the 1979 referendum had passed. Dewar's opposition to the Calton Hill site partly contributed to the selection of the Holyrood site, which proved massively expensive.

References

Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)

First Ministers of Scotland Donald Dewar · Henry McLeish · Jack McConnell · Alex Salmond