We were sorry to hear the very sad news that Margo has passed away after a long battle with illness. She was a truely outstanding woman.
Our thoughts are with her family and friends.
Margo MacDonald
Politician
1943 - 2014
Margo MacDonald was a teacher, reporter, broadcaster and journalist before pursuing a career as Scottish politician. Margo is a former Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament (MP) and Deputy Leader. She is now an Independent Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Lothian region.
She began to establish herself as a forceful presenter of various radio and television programmes, including the short-lived Colour Supplement for Radio 4 in the mid-1980s. She currently writes regularly for Scottish newspapers including the Edinburgh Evening News.
By the mid-1990s she had returned to the SNP and in 1999, she was elected to the Scottish Parliament, representing the Lothians. She was re-elected as an independent MSP at the 2003 Scottish Parliament election, and again in 2007 and 2011. After her 2007 re-election Margo stood to become Presiding Officer, but lost the ballot to Alex Fergusson.
In 2002 she stated that she had Parkinson's Disease, and had known about the diagnosis for six years.
In July 2008, Margo co-operated with BBC Scotland in the making of a documentary about Assisted Dying. As a Parkinson's sufferer, MacDonald has been a long time campaigner for Assisted Dying. Margo is currently working on her second attempt to establish an assisted suicide (Scotland) bill, a bill to enable a competent adult with a terminal illness or condition to request assistance to end their own life and to decriminalise certain actions taken by others to provide such assistance.
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