Campaigner Janey Buchan dies aged 85
Former MEP, civil rights campaigner and patron of the arts Janey Buchan has died aged 85.
Mrs Buchan was a Scottish Labour MEP for Glasgow from 1979 to 1994, when she retired from the post aged 67.
She died in a nursing home in Brighton on Saturday.
Her son Alasdair said: “We were all intensely proud of her. All in all, it wasn’t bad for a woman who left school at 14.”
Her work in the European Parliament introduced her to high-profile figures such as former West German chancellor Willy Brandt, former French prime minister Lionel Jospin and Otto Von Habsburg, last heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire.
She was born in 1926 and grew up in a cramped, one-bedroom tenement with her parents, two siblings and her grandmother.
In her 20s, she helped to found The People’s Festival, a precursor to the Edinburgh Fringe.
In 1956, she organised a fundraising concert for 156 South African ANC activists, including Nelson Mandela, who were arrested for treason. She was a lifelong supporter of South African causes, while her support for gay rights led her to be named life president of the Scottish Minorities Group, now part of gay rights organisation Stonewall.
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