VOTERS in Dunblane go to the polls tomorrow to chose between a Labour candidate who lost her daughter in the primary school massacre and a Conservative who was provost at the time of the shootings in 1996.
Mrs Isabel MacBeath, 38 - whose husband, Murray, died of a stroke only months before their daughter Mhairi, five, and 15 of her classmates were killed - is defending for Labour the Dunblane West seat on Stirling Council vacated by Councillor Arthur Ironside, who is retiring due to ill health.
Mr Ironside had a 143 majority at the 1995 council elections over former Stirling Provost Pat Greenhill, who had previously represented the ward for 11 years and is now trying to reclaim it.
When her husband died, Mrs MacBeath was pregnant with her second daughter, Catherine, now two.
Catherine was just two months old when Mhairi was shot and killed.
Mrs MacBeath said yesterday that the ''bereaved parent issue'' had not been raised on the doorsteps.
She said she was ''heartened'' that the 1996 massacre and its aftermath had not figured in what had been an intense campaign.
She said local issues - housing, planning and the ''dying High Street'' - had dominated the agenda.
She said: ''People are really anxious about Dunblane growing top-heavy with housing, and becoming a bit of a suburb, a very much car-orientated society.
''It's vital that we do all we can to keep our local shops, those that we can walk to, and retain Dunblane as a self-contained community independently from Stirling.''
Mrs MacBeath claimed nobody on the doorsteps had raised the controversial closure at the end of the month of the nearby Kinbuck Primary School, axed by the Labour administration on Stirling Council despite overwhelming opposition from local parents.
For the Conservatives, Mrs Greenhill said the Kinbuck School closure had highlighted the poor service Dunblane had been getting from Labour.
She said: ''A number of parents made the choice of sending their children to Kinbuck. It is an excellent rural school which is well attended and well supported, and people are angered that it should have been so easily dismissed to save a very small sum of money.''
She added: ''I can't pretend this by-election will change the colour of Stirling Council, because that's for next May, but it could be a step in that direction.''
Three other candidates are standing.
SNP candidate Michael Dewar is seen as a strong third contender. The Scottish LibDems are fielding Sharon Paterson, a local mother and self-employed marketing consultant. A former Stirling Council employee, Paul Lavin, is standing on a ''No Compulsory Redundancies in Stirling Council'' ticket.
Labour has 13 seats on the council against the Conservatives' seven and the SNP's two.
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