Elspeth Attwooll

Elspeth Attwooll
Member of the European Parliament
for Scotland
In office
10 June 1999 – 4 June 2009
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byGeorge Lyon
Personal details
Born (1943-02-01) 1 February 1943 (age 81)
Chislehurst, England
Political partyLiberal Democrat

Elspeth Attwooll (born 1 February 1943) is a Scottish retired Liberal Democrat politician. She is a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Scotland.

She stood for parliament in Glasgow Maryhill in every general election from October 1974 to 1997 as a Liberal before 1988 and a Liberal Democrat after 1988. She was part of the Liberal Democrat delegation to the Scottish Constitutional Convention.

She was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999, the first Liberal Democrat ever to be elected to the European Parliament from Scotland, and retained her seat in 2004.[1] While an MEP, she served on the Fisheries and Regional Development Committees, being elected a vice-chair of the former. She stood down as MEP at the 2009 European Parliamentary elections, and was succeeded by fellow Liberal Democrat George Lyon, a farmer and former MSP for Argyll and Bute.

Her work in the European Parliament was highly respected, and she drafted many influential reports, including one on Community action in relation to whaling which stressed the need for the European Union to use its influence to secure the International Whaling Commission and agreement between the pro- and anti- whaling lobbies within it. She was and is a passionate advocate of radical decentralisation of the Common Fisheries Policy.

Previously, Attwooll taught jurisprudence and legal theory at the School of Law of the University of Glasgow, where she was a senior lecturer.[2]

  1. ^ "Vote 2004 - European Election: Scotland Result". BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation. 14 June 2004. Retrieved 26 January 2010.
  2. ^ Munday, R. J. C. (1978). "Perspectives in Jurisprudence. Edited by Elspeth Attwooll, Lecturer in Jurisprudence, University of Glasgow. [Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press. 1977. xiii and 236 pp. £7·50 net.]". The Cambridge Law Journal. 37 (2): 347–348. doi:10.1017/S0008197300093417. ISSN 1469-2139. S2CID 144048548.