Icon. Legend. Pioneer. None of the descriptions we have heard since the news of her passing are fitting for Winnie Ewing. She was an iconic figure in Scottish nationalism, to be sure – her victory in the 1967 Hamilton by-election heralding a new political consciousness north of the border. She did take on a legendary quality, not least after she was dubbed ‘Madame Ecosse’ and became a symbol for an outward-looking Scottish Europeanism. She was a pioneer, the first female SNP MP at a time when both her party and parliament were the domain of men.
Yet Ewing’s foremost contributions were not symbolic but tangible and practical. In five decades of frontline political activism, she proved it was possible to challenge Labour’s iron grip on Scotland, to turn street-stall idealism into a viable political platform, and to embrace the cause of Europeanism without diluting that of nationalism.
Her public service spanned three legislatures, as MP for Hamilton (1967-70) and Moray and Nairn (1974-79), MEP (1979-99) and MSP for Highlands and Islands (1999-2003). She also had an 18-year stint as president of the SNP. Two of her children, Fergus and Annabelle, followed her into politics and both have held ministerial office at Holyrood, while Fergus’s late wife Margaret was a long-serving MP and MSP. The family was dubbed ‘the Ewing dynasty’, though for dramatic flair and intrigue they could not rival the warring petro-clan of Dallas.
Ewing, who was born in 1929 to a family supportive of Keir Hardie’s Independent Labour Party, studied law at Glasgow, where she joined GUSNA, the Glasgow University Scottish Nationalist Association. She worked as a solicitor before being approached to put her name forward as an SNP candidate in Hamilton. When veteran Labour MP and Wilson-era transport minister Tom Fraser quit parliament to head up the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board, Ewing threw herself into a by-election that would change the fortunes of Scottish nationalism forever.
Robert McIntyre, the party’s first MP, had won Motherwell in a by-election at the tail end of world war two but lost it 84 days later in Clement Attlee’s landslide. Ewing’s victory in Hamilton made her the party’s second ever MP and the public face of the party and the cause. But it also made her a target. The only SNP MP at Westminster, she was barracked and belittled constantly by Scottish Labour, who could not forgive her for winning a seat that belonged to them. The dehumanising and tormenting of political opponents is seen as a virtue today — they are evil, after all — but the treatment of Ewing was astonishingly malevolent even for the febrile world of Scottish politics, then and now. For six months, a male Labour MP stalked her, following her as she walked alone through the Palace of Westminster after late-night divisions.
Those of a certain vintage will recall photographs of her arrival at Westminster, complete with a slightly regal wave of her right hand. Many more will be able to quote her most famous line: ‘Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on.’ Yet the monument to Ewing’s political career stands not in optics or oratory but in the way in which she transformed her party. She was instrumental in the SNP’s evolution from suspicion of the European project to resolving on ‘independence in Europe’ as its platform. Historian Owen Dudley Edwards told the journalist Robbie Dinwoodie:
‘Winnie Europeanised the party. She made us look at Europe as the place where the party was a success. Westminster by that stage had become the graveyard of the SNP vote and Winnie offered a new destiny in the European Parliament. And this was down to her chutzpah and, in fairness, to her charm.’
Before Ewing, there was a paradoxical Britishness to elements of the party’s political culture. Several of its earlier leaders and figures of consequence had come from the Labour tradition. In the initial years, some factions believed a self-governing Scotland could remain part of the British Empire. Generations of prominent Nationalists saw the Commons not only as a means to recapturing Scotland’s sovereignty but as a venerable institution. Ewing coaxed the party along a different path and today’s Scottish political culture, which prioritises securing Scotland’s future in Europe over reconciling devolution with the Union, is a testament to her success. As well as a committed European, Ewing showed more sympathy for the Irish than some in the SNP were comfortable with, including one occasion where she defied party headquarters to present a petition to the European Parliament on behalf of the wives of prisoners held in the Maze. Despite this, she enjoyed as warm a relationship with the Reverend Ian Paisley as she did with John Hume.
She was also an admirer of Israel and, perhaps surprisingly, Menachem Begin, who would become the country’s first right-wing prime minister in 1977. In her autobiography, Stop the World, Ewing recalls reading The Revolt, Begin’s account of how the Irgun, the Zionist paramilitary organisation he led, drove the British out of the Land of Israel. She was impressed by Begin’s statement that, ‘When the enemy think there is no retaliation they grow bolder’, a line that inspired her to fight back against her Labour tormentors in the Commons.
The term has fallen out of favour of late but Ewing was plainly a philosemite, a gentile who felt profound affinity with Jews. She had ‘long been interested in Israel and the Jewish religion’ and grew up with many Jewish neighbours on a street with a synagogue nearby. As a child, she acted as a shabbos goy (a non-Jew who works for Jews on the sabbath) to the Grossmans, the Ewings’ Orthodox neighbours, and earned a shilling lighting their fires and performing other duties. As an MP and later MEP, she worked with Glasgow solicitor Leslie Wolfson for the release of Jewish refuseniks from prison in the Soviet Union. In the case of Wolf Zalmanson, condemned to a labour camp for teaching Hebrew, Ewing orchestrated a mass letter-writing campaign by Elgin schoolchildren to the imprisoned engineer. She would later meet him as a free man in Tel Aviv.
In September 1969, Ewing and husband Stewart booked a two-week package holiday to Israel, hoping to squeeze in a relaxing break before the 1970 election. The Israeli government had other ideas. No sooner had they landed at Lod airport than they were summoned to the reception and informed they were special guests of the state. Soon they were being chauffeured around the Holy Land in Golda Meir’s personal limousine. Future prime minister Menachem Begin treated Winnie to lunch while former premier David Ben-Gurion served her coffee during a stop at a kibbutz.
An IDF colonel took the Ewings to tour Bethlehem, recently liberated in the Six Day War, and other historic sites. She swam in the Sea of Galilee, bathed in the Dead Sea, and saw Masada, where Jewish warriors committed mass suicide in the first century rather than surrender to the Romans. The tale of a small but stout-hearted band of true believers refusing to bend to a mighty empire was almost tailor-made for Ewing’s political worldview. She was Madame Ecosse but she was also G’veret Skotland.
Ewing had her own last stand 30 years later at the first sitting of Holyrood. As Mother of the House, it fell to her to preside over the oath-taking and she declared: ‘The Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on 25 March 1707, is hereby reconvened.’ It was a cheeky, if romantic, flourish.
Winnie Ewing, who died on Wednesday aged 93, was the living conscience of the SNP, an ethic of hope, patriotism and democratic impatience that blew through the corridors of Westminster, Brussels and Holyrood. Those places carry her imprint and so do the people who knew her. Winnie Ewing lived a life of her own but she also lived the life of a nation.
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