Allan Macartney

Dr William John Allan Macartney (17 February 1941 – 25 August 1998) was a Scottish politician who served as a Scottish National Party MEP for the North East Scotland constituency between the 1994 European Parliament election and his sudden death from a heart attack in 1998.

Early life

Born in Africa, the son of a Church of Scotland minister, his family soon returned to Scotland and he was schooled in Elgin, Moray. He studied at the universities of Tübingen and Marburg in Germany, and then at the universities of Edinburgh (graduating in Economic Science in 1962) and Glasgow.

Upon completing his studies he returned to Africa as a voluntary secondary schoolteacher in eastern Nigeria (1963−1964). He then worked as a lecturer in government and administration at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland from 1966 to 1974. He completed a PhD on the politics of Botswana, supervised by John Mackintosh.^[1]

Upon returning to Scotland, he continued his academic career, serving as Staff Tutor in Politics at the Open University from 1975 to 1994. He founded the Unit for the Study of Government in Scotland at the University of Edinburgh, and was elected Rector of the University of Aberdeen.

Political career

While at the University of Glasgow, he was a founder of the Federation of Student Nationalists in 1961.^[1] He was also the founder and Provost of the Scottish Self-Government College.

In 1989 he stood as the SNP candidate for North East Scotland in the 1989 European Parliament election where, despite a large increase in the share of the vote, he lost to Labour's Henry McCubbin.^[2] In 1994 Macartney was elected as the MEP for North East Scotland.

He became the SNP depute leader in 1992.

At the North East Scotland by-election, 1998, caused by Allan Macartney's death, Ian Hudghton held the seat for the SNP with a substantially increased majority.

In 2000, the University of Aberdeen introduced a new scholarship in his honour.^[3] In 2006, an internship was launched by the SNP named after Dr. Macartney. Its aims are to encourage young people to take an interest in European and Scottish Politics. Applicants do not have to be members of the SNP. (Source)

References

External links

• Obituaries