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Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland who campaigned for the country to leave the United Kingdom and led the nation during an independence referendum, died on Saturday after delivering a speech in North Macedonia. He was 69.
The death of Mr. Salmond, who as first minister led the Scottish government from 2007 to 2014, was reported by the BBC. The cause was not immediately available.
Mr. Salmond had led the Scottish National Party twice, guiding it from a fringe political group into a powerful force that won an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament in 2011. It was a push for Scotland’s political independence that had propelled his own career, and he was the nation’s first pro-independence first minister.
That movement fractured after a failed independence referendum and a multiyear saga in which Mr. Salmond was accused of multiple sexual assaults and eventually acquitted. But he continued to campaign for the cause, and his influence in British politics persisted after he stepped down as first minister.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister of Britain, paid tribute to Mr. Salmond, calling him a “monumental figure of Scottish and U.K. politics” for more than three decades.
“He leaves behind a lasting legacy,” Mr. Starmer said. “As first minister of Scotland, he cared deeply about Scotland’s heritage, history and culture as well as the communities he represented as M.P. and M.S.P. over many years of service.”
Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond was born on Dec. 31, 1954, in Linlithgow, Scotland, and studied economics at the University of St. Andrews.
He served as a member of the British Parliament in Westminster from 1987 to 2010 and again from 2015 to 2017, as well as serving as a member of the Scottish Parliament, or M.S.P.
While Scotland is part of the United Kingdom and governed from Westminster, since 1999 it has had its own own government and parliament, which control issues like housing, economic development and health and social services.
Mr. Salmond led Scotland during the 2014 independence referendum but resigned from his posts of first minister and head of the Scottish National Party after the Scottish public decided that Scotland should remain a part of the U.K. Some 55 percent voted against Scotland’s independence, while 45 percent voted in favor of the move.
As he stepped down from his post in 2014, he told the nation, “For me as leader, my time is nearly over, but for Scotland the campaign continues, and the dream shall never die.”
His deputy and one-time political protégée Nicola Sturgeon succeeded him as party leader and first minister after running uncontested. She herself became a giant of the Scottish independence movement.
The Scottish National Party, which Mr. Salmond led for decades, said in a statement that he “brought the S.N.P. into the mainstream.” The statement called him “a titan of the independence movement.”
Anas Sarwar, the leader of Scotland’s Labour Party, in a statement posted on the social media platform X, said that Mr. Salmond was “a central figure in politics for over three decades” and that “his contribution to the Scottish political landscape can not be overstated.”
But Mr. Salmond’s career was not without controversy. In 2018, he resigned from the Scottish National Party as accusations of sexual misconduct emerged. A court later ruled that the Scottish government’s handling of the complaints against Mr. Salmond had been “unlawful,” and Mr. Salmond’s legal costs were paid.
He was eventually tried on more than a dozen charges of sexual assault, which included accusations from nine different women and one count of attempted rape. He was acquitted in 2020.
The fallout from the assault charges severely damaged his relationship with Ms. Sturgeon and fractured the political movement for an independent Scotland.
It also cast a shadow on Ms. Sturgeon’s career, as questions emerged about what she knew about the accusations. Ms. Sturgeon would later unexpectedly step down from the post of first minister in 2023. She was arrested by police officers investigating the finances of the Scottish National Party, but was released without charges.
But the party infighting has divided the S.N.P. into warring camps that has cost it politically. Ms. Sturgeon’s successor, Humza Yousaf, resigned from the leadership post this year, and the party lost 39 seats and half a million votes in this summer’s general election.
John Swinney, the current first minister of Scotland and head of the party, said in a statement that Mr. Salmond “took the Scottish National Party from the fringes of Scottish politics into government and led Scotland so close to becoming an independent country.”
In 2021, Mr. Salmond founded Scotland’s Alba Party, a nationalist party dedicated to campaigning for Scottish independence. He was leading the party at his death, but it has yet to win any seats at local or general elections.
Still, Mr. Salmond remained active in politics, speaking regularly about Scottish independence. He was in North Macedonia to speak on a panel as part of the Ohrid Cultural Diplomacy Forum, a three-day conference focused on international cooperation.
Survivors include his wife, Moira McGlashan.
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