Former Labour MEP and anti-apartheid campaigner Janey Buchan has died aged 85.

Mrs Buchan, who also helped found the forerunner of the Edinburgh Fringe and was a renowned patron of the arts, spent her last days in a nursing home in Brighton.

She was an MEP for Glasgow from 1979 until she retired in 1994, aged 67.

Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont said: "She saw the Labour Party as a mission to improve people's lives. She also had a huge commitment to the arts, and believed that no culture was beyond people, but that also there was a culture of the people.

"She taught me so much. Janey stands out in my mind as someone whose politics was about the vision of the world and not herself. Her political legacy is how she shaped the thinking of a generation."

First Minister Alex Salmond said: "Janey Buchan was a very considerable figure in Scottish politics, and with her late husband Norman they made a formidable team. My condolences go to her friends and family."

Born Janey Kent on April 30, 1926, she grew up in a one-bedroom tenement in Glasgow with her parents, two siblings and her grandmother, and left school at 14.

Her father Joseph, a shipyard worker and tram driver, and her mother Chrissie, who worked in domestic service, were both members of the Communist Party.

Mrs Buchan became a member of the Young Communist League, where she met her future husband Norman in 1940, and in her 20s helped to found The People's Festival, which paved the way for the Edinburgh Fringe, as well as the first Glasgow Folk Club.

She left the British Communist Party in 1956 when its leadership refused to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and eventually joined the Labour Party.

In December of that year she fused art and politics with a fundraising concert for the defence of 156 South African ANC activists, including Nelson Mandela, who had been arrested for treason.

She remained a lifelong supporter of South African causes, while her support for gay rights led her to be named life president of the Scottish Minorities Group, now part of gay rights organisation Stonewall.

Mrs Buchan's son Alasdair said: "The quality most remember her by is her huge generosity.

"Once the years of raising funds were replaced by years of having generous salaries and allowances, the giving increased.

"When she decided to break up her library and take the paintings off the walls of her Glasgow home, every university and many museums were the recipients of her generous gifts or loans."

He added: "We were all intensely proud of her. Her interests went right across politics and the arts.

"She was a great anecdote-teller. You could easily think that the anecdotes she told were name-dropping, but in fact she knew all of the people that she would tell you about.

"All in all it wasn't bad for a woman who left school at 14."

Mrs Buchan is survived by her son Alasdair, her brother Enoch, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild.