Dorothy-Grace Elder

Dorothy-Grace Elder (born 11 August 1942) is a journalist and a former Member of the Scottish Parliament.

She first came to the public eye in the 1970s as a television journalist, on BBC Scotland's news programme Reporting Scotland. She also worked on the ill-fated Scottish Daily News.^[1] She is a previous winner of British Reporter of the year.

Elder worked at Scottish Television for a time, working on the documentary series, Paramedics.^[2]

Noted for her campaigning abilities, she was elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 as a Scottish National Party (SNP) representative for Glasgow. A left-winger, she supported Alex Neil in the SNP leadership election of 2000. She became dissatisfied with the way in which the SNP was being run and in 2002 she quit the SNP and sat as an independent MSP.^[3] She did not stand for re-election at the 2003 election, returning to journalism instead.

Since 2002 Dorothy has campaigned on behalf of individuals suffering from chronic pain. When in the parliament Dorothy held a member's debate and initiated a cross party group on the issue. Dorothy continues to campaign on this issue.

She is also a former Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association candidate for the post of rector of the University of Glasgow, losing to Richard Wilson in 1996. Dorothy holds an honorary professorship from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen and lectures in investigative journalism to honours year students of the University.

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