THE warm tributes that have been paid to former Edinburgh Lord Provost Norman Irons, who died on Sunday, showed the great respect in which he was held in the capital.
Born in wartime Glasgow to Dugald and Anne, his standing joke was that his parents had the good sense to move to Edinburgh when he was just three months old. They would have one other child, Norman’s brother Alan. Educated at George Heriot’s School, Irons remained a proud Herioter all his life, serving on the board of governors and an active member of the Heriot community.
It was at Heriot’s that he gained his lifelong love of rugby union, but the school more importantly equipped him with an education that allowed him to move on to studies in London and Edinburgh that saw him qualify as a chartered engineer.
He began his working life in the large and busy office of the international engineering consultancy Steensen Varming Mulcahy Partnership, which had famously worked on the Sydney Opera House.
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Having married his wife Anne on July 16, 1966, Irons later set up in business himself and also began to take an interest in local politics, joining the Scottish National Party as an expression of his oft-stated belief that Scotland was well capable of governing itself.
Though he was already a respected figure in the party and in his home area on the west side of the city, it was nevertheless a surprise when he captured the Drum Brae/Northeast Corstorphine seat in a by-election in 1976. A tireless worker for his constituents, he would represent the area until he retired from the city council in 1996 and gained a justified reputation for his personal kindness and willingness to assist people at any time.
In 1987 he had his single attempt at standing for Parliament in that year’s General Election, coming fourth in the Edinburgh West seat held by the Conservative James Douglas-Hamilton. Irons’s agent was a certain John Swinney (below).
In May 1992, Irons was elected for his ward again, while Labour, which had controlled the City of Edinburgh District Council, as it then was, since 1984, lost three seats and fell two short of the 32 councillors needed to control the council.
At this point Irons approached the Labour Group, which was trying to form an administration with only 30 councillors, with an extraordinary offer. He and his fellow SNP councillor Derek Williams would support the Labour Group in all policy votes in return for Irons being made Lord Provost and Williams being given a convenership. The Labour Group split over the request but eventually sent out for Irons and agreed to the deal.
As a press officer with the council at the time, I was assigned to deal with the new Lord Provost’s public relations and I can honestly say I never met a more hard-working man in public office. He was known to his staff as a hard taskmaster, but drove himself harder than anyone and his concern was always that Edinburgh should not be let down.
He brought back the Lord Provost’s ceremonial robes, proved himself to be a formidable chair of the council meetings, and stuck rigidly to the agreement that he would always support Labour on policy issues. He was also an ex officio member of numerous boards such as the Edinburgh Festival and then Royal Military Tattoo while this man of deep Christian faith particularly savoured his work for the St Giles Cathedral Renewal Appeal Trust.
A perfect and usually kilted host at innumerable civic receptions, he never wasted an opportunity to talk up the city, and did so at events such as the European Council meeting, known as the Edinburgh Summit, in December, 1992, and the State Visit of King Harald V of Norway in July, 1994.
As Lord Lieutenant of the city he spent a great deal of time preparing for royal visits and was rewarded with a CBE in 1975 – some SNP people said he should have declined the honour, but he felt it was an award for the city. Other awards were an honorary degree from the newly-minted Napier University in 1992, an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University, an honorary fellowship from the Royal College of Surgeons and the Paul Harris Fellowship from Rotary International.
After he stepped aside from council work he became honorary consul for Denmark and later Hungary, at one time being elected Dean of the Consular Corps and was awarded high honours by Norway, Denmark and Hungary.
He literally walked with kings and queens, but Norman was never happier than when he was indulging his love of rugby with both Heriot’s FP and Lismore RFC, the south Edinburgh club for which he played before giving years of service as a committee member and club president.
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His latter years were blighted by the onset of Parkinson’s disease and he suffered badly from the isolation inflicted during the Covid pandemic.
In a typically generous gesture, and final selfless act, he recently consented for his brain to be donated to Parkinson’s research in the hope that others might not suffer from this cruel disease.
His was truly a life well lived.
Norman is survived by Anne and their children Kenneth and Elizabeth, and his two grandchildren Lucy and Eilidh. The funeral will be a private family ceremony but a memorial service is planned for St Giles Cathedral at a later date.
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