1 Janey Buchan was a fierce cultural and political activist. The Labour MEP, was born in 1926 and died, aged 85, in 2012. She was a passionate anti-apartheid campaigner, backed the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and was an early supporter of gay rights. Janey Buchan 2 Growing up in a one-bedroom Glasgow tenement with her parents, two siblings and grandmother, Janey left school at 14 to help the family income. Her father was a shipyard worker and tram driver, her mother Chrissie was a maid for a tobacco baron. Both were members of the Communist Party. 3 As a member of the Young Communist League in 1940 Janey met Norman Buchan, and they married in 1946. She was a huge supporter of the arts, championing the revival of traditional Scottish music and inspiring the People’s festival, which would become the Edinburgh Fringe.