Donald Dewar

Statue of Donald Dewar on Buchanan Street in Glasgow

Donald Campbell Dewar (born August 21, 1937 in Glasgow , † October 11, 2000 in Edinburgh ) was a Scottish Labor Party politician and from 1999 until his death the first First Minister of Scotland after the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament .

Donald Dewar was first elected to the House of Commons in 1966 . After the Labor Party victory in 1997, he was named Secretary of State for Scotland under the government of Tony Blair . In this position he oversaw the implementation of the Scotland Act of 1998 , which among other things led to the formation of an independent Scottish Parliament. In the first elections of the newly created parliament he led the Scottish Labor Party and after the election victory became the first minister in a coalition government with the Scottish Liberal Democrats .

Death and burial

In April 2000, Donald Dewar was admitted to hospital for a heart exam after a previous examination noticed minor irregularities. He later had an operation to correct a malfunction of a heart valve that forced him to sit on a three-month hiatus, while Deputy First Secretary Jim Wallace took office. In August 2000, Donald Dewar was able to take over government again.

He fell around noon on October 10, 2000. At first he appeared to be healthy, but he suffered a severe stroke the same day , possibly facilitated by treatment with blood thinners following the heart surgery. He died the next day at 12:18 p.m. local time at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh at the age of 63.

The funeral was held in Glasgow Cathedral with unprecedented sympathy for a Scottish politician. Donald Dewar was cremated and his ashes scattered in Burgh Lochgilphead .

legacy

Services to the Scottish Parliament earned Donald Dewar the reputation of the "Father of the Nation" in some quarters, even if the Scottish Parliament had some problems in its early years.

In May 2002 Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled a statue of Donald Dewar on Buchanan Street in Glasgow. As an allusion to the never quite perfect appearance for which Donald Dewar was known, the statue wears a slightly crumpled jacket. In October 2005 the statue was dismantled for cleaning and then placed on a 2 meter high pedestal to prevent the ongoing vandalism. The first words of the Scotland Act were engraved on the base of the statue: "There Shall Be A Scottish Parliament", a sentence to which Donald Dewar once made the famous comment "I Like That!" submitted.