Ewing to cut 75th anniversary cake

The 79-year-old former MP, MEP and MSP was set to be joined by parliamentary business minister Bruce Crawford when she cuts a special cake for the party.

It comes 75 years to the day after the SNP was formed following the merger of the National Party of Scotland and the Scottish Party.

First Minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond has sent an e-mail to the party's 15,000 members to mark the occasion.

In it, he told them the past 75 years had seen "Scotland and the SNP journey together".

The SNP's first MP was Dr Robert McIntyre, who was elected to the Commons in April 1945 after winning the Motherwell by-election. However, he lost his seat to Labour some three months later in the 1945 general election.

The party secured a famous by-election victory when Winnie Ewing won the Hamilton seat in November 1967.

Mrs Ewing later became an MEP and MSP, and as the oldest member of the new Scottish Parliament she chaired proceedings when the newly-elected MSPs met for the first time in May 1999.

The SNP was the largest opposition party in Holyrood for the first eight years of devolution.

But in May 2007 the party secured one more seat than Labour in the Scottish Parliament elections, and went on to form a minority administration.

In his e-mail to party members Mr Salmond said:

"When the party was founded few could have imagined the distance we have travelled in the years since, with an SNP government now in place and an independence referendum planned for next year."

He continued: "Now it is time for the SNP and the people of Scotland to move into a new era, to look to the future, and to build the smarter, wealthier, and healthier Scotland."