Catherine Mary "Maria" Fyfe (née O'Neill; 25 November 1938 – 3 December 2020), known as Maria Fyfe, was a Scottish politician and educator who served as Member of Parliament for Glasgow Maryhill from 1987 to 2001.
She was Deputy Shadow Minister for Women from 1988 to 1991, Convener of the Scottish Group of Labour MPs from 1991 to 1992 and front bench spokesperson for Scotland from 1992 to 1995. Fyfe campaigned for 50-50 representation of women in the Scottish Parliament.
Background
Catherine Maria O'Neill was born on 25 November 1938 in Glasgow, where she grew up in Gorbals, the daughter of James O'Neill, a clerk, tram driver and shopworker, and Margaret Lacey, a former shop assistant. She briefly spent time in Ireland during the Second World War before returning to Glasgow, and was educated at Notre Dame High School in the city. left Labour to join Jim Sillars' breakaway pro-devolution Scottish Labour Party (SLP) in 1976, but the internal strife that plagued the new venture led to her expulsion and return to her former party within a year. In 1980 she was a Labour candidate in that year's Glasgow District Council election, where she took the Blairdardie ward from the Scottish National Party with a majority of 763 votes. On the council, she served firstly as Vice-Convener of the Finance Committee (1980–84) and then as Convener of the Personnel Committee until 1987, when she was elected to Parliament.
She was quoted as saying: "I am proudest of having been involved in the 50-50 campaign to ensure that the Scottish Parliament started life with an almost equal representation of women, up there with the Scandinavian countries". She was also involved in opposing the poll tax in both England and Scotland, and launched a campaign against employee blacklisting in 1988.
Later life
Fyfe was interviewed in 2012 as part of The History of Parliament's oral history project. She wrote two autobiographies, the first entitled A Problem Like Maria describing her work as an MP, and a second book Singing in the Streets, about her life growing up in the Gorbals in the aftermath of the Second World War, as well as her earlier political career.