Dr Robert McIntyre

He had a burning and tenacious love of Scotland and this drove him on even in times of ill-health and particularly later in life when his frail figure, leaning heavily on a stick, was seen at local and national meetings.

Friends recall him at a public local authority meeting in Stirling laying into a quango member who kept saying ''we'' and was challenged by ''The Doc'', as many affectionately knew him, as to his claim to represent the people. Robert McIntyre was a democrat in every sense.

In later life he was often the supporting speaker to some promising young candidate at a launch meeting and such occasions seemed to rekindle an old spark in him and his oratory would crackle in a way which was not always automatic.

Political opponents respected him and his work as a consultant chest physician in Stirling was carried out with care and dedic-ation. He held a remarkable number of political ''firsts'' and leading positions.

He became the Scottish National Party's first Member of Parliament, capturing the Motherwell seat from Labour at a by-election in 1945, and caused a furore by refusing to take part

in the parliamentary tradition of being sponsored by two other MPs, an act which he regarded as non-constitutional and part of the English club atmosphere.

He lost the seat again at the General Election later that year, but went on to contest unsuccessfully a series of elections in Motherwell, Perth, and East Perthshire, West Stirlingshire, and Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth. He pushed the SNP vote up sharply on all occasions and left a legacy for future local

and national candidates to draw on successfully.

Dr McIntyre was the first SNP member to be elected to the old Stirling Burgh Council and the first SNP provost. He was town treasurer, planning con-vener, a senior baillie, a member of the hospitals management board, and the sponsoring committee for Stirling University. He played

a key role in bringing

the university to Stirling, in

the renovation of the historic Top o' the Town, and in the provision of houses and the shopping centre and the swimming pool. He was given the freedom of Stirling and an honorary doctorate from the university.

As a national politician, he stuck to his chosen course when the SNP was rent by policy and strategy strains in the seventies. He was adamant that mainstream, democratic campaigning for parliamentary seats was the only way forward, that political stunts, or petitions like the National Covenant, or an over-doctrinaire adherence to left or right, or any kind of non-

democratic activity, were wrong.

He once remarked that the SNP never had the credit it was due for its very existence, ensuring that frustrated Scots turned to the party and democratic activity instead of violence.

One of four children and a

son of the manse, he was born

in Motherwell, on December 15, 1913. He was educated at Hamilton Academy and Daniel Stewart's College, Edinburgh, and graduated in medicine and chemistry at Edinburgh University, taking his DPH at Glasgow University. He was on Glasgow public health staff for a time as a port medical officer.

In 1936 when he was a medical student at Edinburgh University he joined the Labour Party, but became disillusioned when the students sent a res-

olution to the Scottish Council

of the Labour Party and were told the council did not deal

with policy. In 1940 he joined the SNP and became secretary and organiser.

Party unity was a major part of his life and he once angrily referred to part of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath which said ''so long as one hundred of us remain alive we will not submit to English domination'' and then quipped (with passion) that some party activists operated as if the quotation was ''so long as one hundred of us remain alive, we will form two groups''. A united party owed much to him.

He served as party chairman from 1948 to 1958 and presi-dent from 1958 to 1980 and latterly was regarded as the party's elder statesman.

The normality of the SNP's presence in Scottish and British political life and its democratic image was greatly shaped by

his attitudes.

His wife, Lila, staunchly supported him in his political work.

Speaking at a political rally, a candidate quoted from the Declaration of Arbroath's reference to King Robert the Bruce as ''the good Robert'' and applied it to Robert McIntyre. That is how many will remember a man whose influence on the nationalist movement in Scotland was truly profound.

Last month the SNP made him honorary president of the party's parliamentary group to mark the start of the passage of the Scotland Bill through Westminster.