European and External Relations Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, November 14, 2013

Official Report 451KB pdf

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Helen Eadie MSP

Good morning and welcome to the 19th meeting in 2013 of the European and External Relations Committee. I make the usual request that mobile phones and electronic equipment be switched off. I welcome Patricia Ferguson back to the committee. I also welcome Stuart McMillan, the European Union rapporteur for the Local Government and Regeneration Committee.

Before we move to the agenda, I would like to pay tribute to one of our colleagues who is not with us, Helen Eadie. Given the work that she did on the committee, it is appropriate for us to formally recognise that work and her work elsewhere. I will never hear the word “Bulgaria” without thinking fondly of Helen and the work that she did to promote and raise awareness of that country.

I read the tribute that her son-in-law wrote, in which he explained that in her early life Helen was sacked from her first job in a laundry where the female workforce were not being treated well by the employer. Helen tried to unionise the workforce to support the women working there and she was sacked for that. As I said in the book of remembrance, when I read about Helen’s life it was clear to me that it was a life well lived and a life given to worthwhile crusades and campaigns.

On behalf of the committee, and as convener, I put on the record my tribute to Helen, and offer her family, friends and colleagues my sincerest condolences.

I believe that other members of the committee would also like to say something.

On behalf of the Labour group, I thank you for those kind words, convener. Your comments are absolutely right. Helen was one of those people for whom Europe was not just an abstract concept but something that could help to improve the lives of the people whom she cared about. Her work in Europe was focused entirely on those themes.

Helen was also a woman who espoused a great many campaigning ideas, but she never took a here-today-and-gone-tomorrow approach. She pursued those campaigns for years, doggedly. I know from my own experience that her support for workers at Remploy over a period of probably 30 years was second to none. She will be sorely missed.

The shock of Helen’s death has been traumatic, and our thoughts go out to her family and friends. She epitomised the good side of politics, as far as I am concerned, and the right reasons for people being in politics. Honesty and goodness shone from her face and she had an obvious wish to help other people and a huge desire for a prosperous and peaceful Europe. I personally will miss her very much indeed.

When I joined the committee, I came right into the middle of a ding-dong argument about Scotland’s position in Europe, forcefully put by Helen. I thought to myself, “Jings, this is going to be different from the Public Audit Committee,” and it certainly has been. Helen’s opinions, sincerely held and forcefully put, were extremely welcome, and I personally enjoyed the relationship that I had with her on the committee. We shared many interests, particularly in relation to the Balkans and the digital agenda. It is while discussing such points over a cup of coffee that you can develop lasting relationships with people, and I will forever be thankful for the opportunity to meet Helen Eadie and to work with her on the committee. I will sincerely miss her.

I will remember Helen for her absolute passion for those areas that she was involved in. Patricia Ferguson mentioned Helen’s support for Remploy, but her support for social enterprise and her passion for extending that across Scotland were also evident. She was someone who took her politics to a truly international level, seeking social justice not just in this country but across Europe, and especially in Bulgaria, which she obviously loved. That will be remembered by many people. Something that will always bring a smile to my face is the memory of her being tickled pink when I admired the electric blue nail varnish that I think her grandchildren had some part in encouraging her to wear. She was a lovely lady.

I had the pleasure of meeting Helen for the first time when I joined the Scottish Parliament, and when I joined the committee I told her, “You’ll need to look after me.” After a couple of committee meetings, she said, “I think you need to look after me.” She was a wonderful, wonderful person, who always had a gentle, friendly smile and always made people feel at ease. She always had time for you. I would stop her in the corridor and ask her what she thought about an issue, and she would stand and explain thoroughly what she thought, so she made sure that you understood her point of view. Very few people have time for others these days, but with Helen it did not have to be purely business. You could ask her about anything in life and she would take time to explain and give you her point of view, which was always valued. I will miss her. She was a great lady, and I am sure that her family will miss her.

I endorse the comments that other members of the committee have made. I did not get to know Helen terribly well until I joined the committee, but her enthusiasm for Europe was absolutely paramount. For me, as for others, Bulgaria and Helen Eadie are inextricably linked in my mind. In my discussions with her, I always found her a warm and considerate person, and, as Jamie McGrigor said, she exemplified the better things about politics. When you thought about Helen, you did not think about a partisan political animal; you thought about somebody who cared passionately about things. She will be sadly missed.

I represent West Fife Enterprise. Helen was the founder of our organisation, back in the early 1980s, following the devastating demise of coal mining and the effect on pit villages. She had an absolute passion for and belief in people. She recruited me and inspired me to get involved in doing something that I have enjoyed for nearly 30 years now. It was through her that I first became involved with European structural funds.

It is poignant to note that our organisation was the first in Scotland to get an open European structural funds application passed. That was back in the days when applications were written on blank sheets of paper and sent straight to the European Commission, which reckoned that it could have filled a football field with the number of applications that were made.

Helen got irate about not having heard from the Commission. She got a form letter that said, “We have received your application and it is under consideration,” but that was not good enough for her, so she dug further. Some civil servant revealed to her that what had been said meant that the application had been received but lost. She said, “You’d better find it.” A couple of weeks later, she got a letter that said, “We have received your application and it is under active consideration.” She contacted the same person and asked what that meant. She was told that that was code for, “We’ve lost it, but we’re looking for it.” She refused to accept that and took the application all the way until it was fully reviewed and ended up being passed.

That was typical of Helen—she never let something go. She had total belief in what she wanted to happen for the good of other people and she pursued that with full vigour. She was a wonderful woman.

Thank you. We have a tight agenda but, given that we are talking about structural funds, it was appropriate that we could all say a few words of tribute to Helen.