John Farquhar Munro

Who was John Farquhar Munro?

John Farquhar Munro was a Scottish Liberal Democrat politician, and was the MSP for Ross, Skye and Inverness West from 1999 until his retirement in 2011.

Previously a crofter and a local councillor for 33 years, he was first elected to the Scottish Parliament at the 1999 election. Running against him for Labour was Donnie Munro, former member of the band Runrig, but Munro won by 1,539 votes. He was one of three Lib-Dem MSPs to oppose his party's coalition with the Labour Party and has deviated from the Executive on a number of issues.

He was prominent within the parliament in opposing the Skye Bridge tolls, to the extent of threatening to resign from the Lib Dems if they were not removed. The tolls were abolished in December 2004.

As befitted one of the few native Gaelic speakers in the Scottish Parliament he co-sponsored a bill to secure the language's status as being equal to English. He was angry when the Labour-Liberal Scottish Executive refused to back it.