Eileen McCartin has been a Councillor in Paisley, first for the SDP and then the Liberal Democrats for some 27 years. She and former MP for Argyll and Bute Alan Reid were Willie Rennie’s “political parents” as they were key influences on him when he was a student in Paisley. They helped him when he achieved a cracking 26% in a by-election in the Paisley Foxbar ward in 1988. Willie talked to the Scotsman about it here and you get a sense of how that campaign shaped his values:
After school he applied to Paisley College to study ecology and land management. Living in a flat which cost just 14 a month rent and rates – and had no hot water or heating of any kind – made Rennie more keenly aware of the divide between the haves and have-nots. “I had to wash at the old swimming baths in Storey Street.” he recalls.
I’d been interested in some political stuff at school. I used to get agitated about environmental issues and so on. But this was different.” He was elected deputy president of the Student Union, and took a year’s sabbatical from his course. “Don’t be silly, vote for Willie” was the never-to-be-repeated slogan. But when he returned to his studies he found that “cell biology just wasn’t the same.” So he stood for council election in Paisley Foxbar in 1988.
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