Tom McCabe

Died: April 19, 2015.

TOM McCabe, who has died aged 60, was, if only by a matter of minutes, the first person to be elected to the fledgling Scottish parliament at Holyrood in 1999.

It happened at 11.16 pm on Thursday May 6, 1999 (76 minutes after the polls closed) when the Labour candidate was declared MSP for Hamilton South, the first constituency to declare its results for the new parliament. The fact that less than 55 per cent of eligible voters turned out did not matter to Mr McCabe. Of those who did turn out, he won a majority.

He remained at Holyrood until May 5, 2011, when he lost to the SNP's Christina McKelvie in the newly-formed constituency of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, part of the SNP landslide of that year.

He and Labour had campaigned largely against the SNP's independence thrust. Only ever privately did he admit to friends that he and his party misread the mood of the nation, at least that year.

In his winning speech in Hamilton South in 1999, he famously repeated the words of the former Labour party leader John Smith, who had died five years earlier without seeing devolution: "This parliament is indeed the settled will of the Scottish people. The parties have an obligation to commit themselves to making this parliament work for Scotland."

Mr McCabe went on to become minister for parliament at Holyrood (1999-2001, though no-one, including himself, was really sure what the post entailed), minister for health and community care (2003-2004, a more-defined role in which he made his mark) and later (2004-2007) minister for finance and public service reform, in which he was never far from the Scottish headlines, good or bad.

Thomas McCabe was born on April 28, 1954, and went to St Martin's Secondary in Hamilton before obtaining a diploma in public sector management from what was then known as the Bell College of Technology on Almada Street, Hamilton. From the age of 20 and for almost 20 years, he worked at the Hoover factory in Cambuslang before turning to social work, starting in the Glasgow headquarters of Strathclyde Regional Council. He later joined the newly-formed North Lanarkshire Council in Motherwell.

Having become the first MSP, he was minister for parliament until 2001, and was out of office after Jack McConnell became First Minister. But he was back in 2003 as deputy minister for health and community care before being promoted to minister for finance and public service reform in 2004.

One of the issues Mr McCabe often raised was violent crime in his Hamilton constituency. He also set up the Adult Entertainment Working Group (AEWG) within the Scottish Executive to look into whether lap-dancing was legal or not. He met his match in an exotic dancer called Veronica Deneuve and her union group IUSW (International Union of Sex Workers, a branch of the GMB union).

In one of his last speeches in Holyrood, on March 17, 2011, debating public safety, Mr McCabe said of his own Hamilton constituency: "the police tell us that violent crime is down, and that crime in general is down, but that is not the feeling on the streets of Hamilton."

In 2012, although by then out of Holyrood, he hit the headlines when Labour-run Glasgow City Council appointed him to the £50,000 post of policy manager. After criticism throughout Glasgow and beyond, the Labour Party said the job was "a bit like being a consultant." The SNP accused Glasgow Labour leader Gordon Matheson of being too close to the appointment of Mr McCabe and Glasgow Tory councillor David Meikle said: "this whole thing stinks and we need answers. There have been 400 redundancies at Glasgow City Council over the past two years, with redundancy packages costing (the taxpayer) up to £12.4 million."

Mr McCabe also made headlines during his career due to his relationship with journalist and sometime Labour spin-doctor Lorraine Davidson, author of a biography of Scotland's former First Minister Jack McConnell, now sitting in the House of Lords as Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale. Ms Davidson is now married to Labour Member of the European Parliament David Martin.

Mr McCabe became a father for the third time six years ago when he and his second wife had a daughter. He also has two grown-up children from his first marriage

PHIL DAVISON