He worked as a computer salesman, before leaving Glasgow in 1965 to become a teacher at Oban High School.
[2] MacCormick belonged to a family steeped in nationalist politics: his father John MacCormick was one of the founders of the SNP, while his brother Neil was, from 1999 to 2004, one of Scotland's Members of the European Parliament, again for the Nationalists.
He was then elected to the Argyll and Bute District Council, after standing in a by-election in September 1979.
[3] MacCormick was one of the original members of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), founded in 1981.
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