Donald Dewar

The Rt Hon. Donald Campbell Dewar
Statue of Donald Dewar in Glasgow's Buchanan Street
1st First Minister of Scotland
In office May 7, 1999 – October 11, 2000
Deputy	Jim Wallace
Preceded by	New Office
Succeeded by	Henry McLeish
Constituency	Glasgow Anniesland
Personal details
Born	August 21, 1937 Glasgow, Scotland
Died	October 11, 2000
Political party	Labour

Donald Campbell Dewar (August 21, 1937 – October 11, 2000) was a Scottish politician and the first First Minister of Scotland after devolution in 1999.

Biography

Born at 194 Renfrew Street Glasgow on 21 August 1937 to quite elderly parents, Dewar was an only child. His father Alisdair was a distinguished consultant dermatologist. His mother had a brain tumour when Donald was very young.

He attended Glasgow Academy before studying at the University of Glasgow, where he gained both LL.B and MA degrees. Here, he met his close friend John Smith—who would later become leader of the British Labour Party—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.

A member of the Labour Party at both Scottish and UK levels, Donald 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 1967 he was made Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Education Secretary Anthony Crosland, who Dewar confessed later to never really establishing a rapport with. He held that position until 1969 but was proposed in April 1968 for a Minister of State position by Roy Jenkins. Nothing came of this though.

Despite his early political success, his personal life was less happy. He married Alison Mary McNair who was six years his junior on 20 July 1964. Dewar had two children with her, but in 1970 she left him for the Scottish lawyer Derry Irvine. The two men remained unreconciled even though they were later to serve in the same Cabinet from May 1997 onwards. 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.

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. 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.

By this stage, 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.

When the first elections for the new Scottish parliament were held in 1999, Dewar was returned as the Member for Glasgow Anniesland, and subsequently elected First Minister for the governing Scottish Labour Party/Liberal Democrat coalition.

A man with endless enthusiasm, the strain of establishing the new Parliament would begin to take its toll, and Dewar underwent major open heart surgery in May 2000. He returned to his post as First Minister three months later. On 10 October that year, he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage which was triggered by the anticoagulant medication he was taking after the surgery. He died one day later, in Edinburgh's Western General Hospital, at the age of 63. His funeral service was held at Glasgow Cathedral, amid scenes of mourning unknown for a politician in Scotland's largest city. He was cremated and his ashes 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, October 15 2000.

Donald Dewar's work for the Scottish Parliament has led him to be called the "Father of the Nation".

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 high plinth in December of the same year in an effort to deter the relentless vandalism to which the statue was being subjected. On the base of the statue was 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! . However, Dewar notoriously called the Royal High School in Edinburgh, a "nationalist shibboleth", despite being the favoured venue for the new parliament. This led to the selection of the Holyrood site, and according to some, the spiralling costs of the Scottish parliament.