The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Former Scottish Labour MP Norman Godman, aged 80
Norman Godman, the former Labour MP who spent most of his 18 years in the House of Commons fighting industrial decline in Scotland from the Opposition benches, has died aged 80.
The Greenock and Port Glasgow representative made his maiden speech in 1983. He devoted it largely to the case for retaining the shipbuilding industry on the lower Clyde.
Mr Godman went against the traditional orthodoxy of the large Catholic presence in his constituency and local party at the time, with abortion a running issue for much of his tenure.
He made it clear he would support a woman’s right to choose.
When he decided to stand down before the 2001 election his constituency party chose a Catholic priest, David Cairns, to succeed him.
This drew attention to a parliamentary anomaly – that under 200-year-old legislation priests of the Catholic faith were debarred from sitting in the Commons.
Although Mr Godman said his own preference would have been for a woman to succeed him, he played a prominent part in promoting legislation which eventually corrected this anomaly in time for David Cairns to take his seat.
In 1981 he married Trish Leonard, who in 1999 was elected to the Scottish Parliament as Labour MSP for West Renfrewshire and became deputy presiding officer at Holyrood from 2003 until 2011.
As well as supporting Trish in her work, he developed a new role as an enthusiastic allotment holder, walked a great deal, and enjoyed Glasgow’s West End. He is survived by Trish and her three sons from a previous marriage.