MARGO MacDonald burst on to the Scottish political scene when she won a stunning victory at the 1973 Govan by-election.

The SNP win - in a hitherto staunchly Labour seat - was a massive boost to the Nationalist cause.

Margo, then a 30-year-old trainee PE teacher, was dubbed the 'Blonde Bombshell' of Scottish politics.

The victory propelled her from unknown candidate to a rising political superstar and made headline news across Britain.

She was pictured being carried shoulder high by jubilant supporters.

Her stint in Westminster was short-lived.

She lost the seat at the General Election four months later but her impact was immense.

The 1974 Election saw 11 SNP MPs returned to Westminster.

Although she was not one of them she was voted in as Deputy Leader of the Party, a post she held for five years.

Her politics were always left of centre and she was a forceful campaigner for Scottish independence.

She married former Labour MP Jim Sillars, who switched to the SNP before retaking the Govan seat for the Nationalists in 1988 - 15 years after his wife's victory.

Margo's exile from Westminster saw her become a newspaper columnist and television and radio presenter,

In 1982 she resigned from the SNP in protest at the banning of the Socialist 79 Group, of which she had been a member.

But she returned to the fold in the 1990s and was elected as an SNP MSP in 1999, representing the Lothians.

Her support for Alex Neil in the 2000 leadership contest saw her marginalised and her decision to stand as an Independent saw her expelled from the Party in 2003.

After that she stood successfully as an Independent at three elections and in 2007 lost out to Alex Fergusson in a bid to become Holyrood's Presiding Officer.

But the last 18 years of her life have been dominated by her battle against Parkinson's Disease and her bid to introduce a right-to-die Bill at Holyrood.

She said of her campaign: "I feel strongly that, in the event of losing my dignity or being faced with the prospect of a painful or protracted death, I should have the right to choose to curtail my own, and my family's, suffering."

Her Bill was twice defeated at Holyrood.

Throughout her political life she courted controversy but kept true to her beliefs.

As with her politics she divided public opinion on the subject of assisted dying.

While others flinched from the subject, she said: "As someone with a degenerative condition - Parkinson's -this debate is not a theory with me."

Margo was born in 1943 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, and attended Hamilton Academy before leaving to train as a PE teacher at Dunfermline College.

When she was 22 she married her first husband, Peter MacDonald, and the two ran a pub in Blantyre for a few years.

She leaves behind her husband, Jim, and four children. Her daughter Petra is married to Craig Reid of the Proclaimers.

She was due to celebrate her 71st birthday on Saturday, April 19.

gordon.thomson@ eveningtimes.co.uk