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| Evelyn Gillan obituary | Evelyn Gillan obituary |
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| Evelyn Gillan, who has died of gastric cancer aged 55, was an outstanding champion of women’s rights and played a vital role in bringing about a minimum alcohol pricing law in Scotland. As the first director of Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (Shaap), set up in 2006 by the Scottish medical royal colleges, Gillan translated the evidence on alcohol pricing into a few challenging phrases that resonated in the media and with politicians, helping to convince the new SNP government to take on the country’s destructive relationship with alcohol. | |
| The 2007 Shaap report – Alcohol: Price, Policy and Public Health – has since been cited by international scientists and helped to advance the public health case for policy action on price in Scotland. | |
| In 2010, Gillan moved on to become chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland, from which position her expertise and encouragement were key in persuading the Scottish parliament to implement minimum pricing legislation, despite fierce opposition from the drinks industry and the establishment. The Alcohol (Minimum Pricing) (Scotland) Act 2012 was passed in June of that year, but a legal challenge by the Scotch Whisky Association, now being heard at the European court of justice, has stalled its application. | |
| Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who was health secretary at the time of the campaign, believed that it was Gillan’s passion and perseverance, coupled with her ability to inspire others, that eventually won majority support for the policy in parliament and among the public. | |
| “The road towards the Scottish parliament eventually passing the alcohol minimum pricing legislation was a long, windy and often arduous one,” Sturgeon recalled. “At the outset, it was a policy that enjoyed only minority support in both parliament and the wider public. It also had – and still has – some very powerful opponents. | “The road towards the Scottish parliament eventually passing the alcohol minimum pricing legislation was a long, windy and often arduous one,” Sturgeon recalled. “At the outset, it was a policy that enjoyed only minority support in both parliament and the wider public. It also had – and still has – some very powerful opponents. |
| “Evelyn was a powerful advocate for the policy and, at the media events we did together to promote it, I was always struck (usually enviously) by her ability to articulate the arguments for it more simply, powerfully and persuasively than I was able to manage. On more than one occasion she reminded me that nothing worth doing is ever easy.” | “Evelyn was a powerful advocate for the policy and, at the media events we did together to promote it, I was always struck (usually enviously) by her ability to articulate the arguments for it more simply, powerfully and persuasively than I was able to manage. On more than one occasion she reminded me that nothing worth doing is ever easy.” |
| Gillan had a flair for capturing the public and political i imaginations through her campaigning. After becoming head of public affairs for the Royal College of Nursing Scotland in 2001, she launched the campaign Value Nurses by persuading 50 MSPs to shadow one at work in their own constituencies for a day. This led to the first debate in the Scottish parliament on the contribution nurses make to patient care. | |
| She also campaigned on violence against women, and women’s rights in general. In 1985, she started working for the newly created women’s committee of Edinburgh district council and there developed the campaign that would come to mean most to her. Co-created with Franki Raffles and Susan Hart, the groundbreaking Zero Tolerance was launched in 1992, with arresting posters that paired beautifully styled images of women and children together with shocking statistics about levels of physical and sexual violence. | |
| Other notable campaigns directed by Gillan during her time at Edinburgh council included Safer Streets, improving women’s safety using local taxi companies, and Change the Change, which resulted in Edinburgh’s first menopause clinic and annual celebrations for International Women’s Day. | Other notable campaigns directed by Gillan during her time at Edinburgh council included Safer Streets, improving women’s safety using local taxi companies, and Change the Change, which resulted in Edinburgh’s first menopause clinic and annual celebrations for International Women’s Day. |
| Zero Tolerance raised the bar for the public discussion of domestic abuse, with versions of it repeated by councils across the UK as well as internationally, and its success let Gillan to establish the Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, which she co-directed for six years and which continues her work today. | |
| Born into a tight-knit mining community in Tranent, East Lothian, the daughter of Joe, a postal worker, and Bridget, a civil service administrator, Evelyn was the second of three sisters. Academically successful since primary school from her days at primary school, she was expected to go straight to university but, at 17, she opted to train as a hairdresser and got a job at the Charlie Miller salon in Edinburgh. She then spent a couple of years travelling around Europe, cutting hair and taking up seasonal work. | |
| She returned to Edinburgh when she was 21 and gained a place at Moray House, Edinburgh, to study social work. It was there that she had her first encounter with politics when she was elected president of the student council in 1983. On leaving, she was awarded the Gordon memorial award for the student with the greatest all-round ability. It was also at Moray House that she met her partner, Tom Proudfoot, a library worker. She completed a PhD in social policy at Edinburgh University in 2008. | |
| Two months before Gillan’s death, a full-page advert appeared in the National, the first daily newspaper in Scotland to support independence, describing Gillan as “fearless and peerless”, “the best kind of troublemaker”, and signed by friends and organisations she had worked with. “It was one way her friends could let Evelyn know how much we all loved her,” the writer and broadcaster Lesley Riddoch explained. | |
| Shortly before her death, Gillan was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in recognition of her work in promoting Scotland’s health. | Shortly before her death, Gillan was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, in recognition of her work in promoting Scotland’s health. |
| She is survived by Tom, their two sons, Max and Jack, and her sisters, Jacky and Val. | She is survived by Tom, their two sons, Max and Jack, and her sisters, Jacky and Val. |
| • Evelyn Gillan, campaigner, born 4 August 1959; died 14 July 2015 | • Evelyn Gillan, campaigner, born 4 August 1959; died 14 July 2015 |