Robert McTaggart (2 November 1945 – 23 March 1989) was a Scottish politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Glasgow Central, representing the Labour Party. McTaggart was on the left of his party, and took up issues of unemployment and poor housing which affected his constituency. He also took a particular interest in international affairs, being a supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization and visiting Libya, North Korea and the Soviet Union. McTaggart died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 43. Early life McTaggart was born in Glasgow, his father also being called Robert. He attended St Constantine and St Bartholomew primary schools, followed by Holyrood Secondary School. At the age of 16 he left school and was apprenticed to be marine plumber at Govan Shipbuilders, and worked for five years in this job. From 1968 to 1972 he was a trigonometrical calculator for the shipbuilders, then becoming a Pipework planner. McTaggart joined the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union and was the EETPU shop steward at Govan from 1971 to 1977. Politics After joining the Labour Party in 1969, McTaggart held a series of posts within the local Labour Party organisation where he lived. He was successively chairman of the Partick East Labour Party branch, Secretary of Townhead Labour Party branch, and a member of Glasgow Kelvingrove Constituency Labour Party Executive Committee. In 1974 he was elected to Glasgow Corporation, serving for only one year before local government was reformed. He was elected to Glasgow District Council as a councillor for the Anderston ward in the 1977 local elections. As a member of the licensing committee in December 1979, he resisted suggestions that the committee watch Monty Python's Life of Brian to consider whether to ban it from city cinemas. Glasgow Central In preparation for the 1979 general election, McTaggart became agent for Glasgow Central Constituency Labour Party. The campaign he organised won the seat, but McTaggart's friend Thomas McMillan, MP died from head injuries sustained when he fell from a bus in Parliament Square in April 1980. McTaggart was selected as his successor on 3 June. He fought the by-election resulting from McMillan's death by concentrating on national issues and especially attacked unemployment. The constituency was the smallest in Britain and had some of the worst economic problems, and when McTaggart won with a majority of 2,780 over the Scottish National Party