The 1924 Glasgow Kelvingrove by-election was held on Friday, 23 May 1924. The by-election was held due to the death of the incumbent Conservative MP, William Hutchison. It was won by the Conservative candidate Walter Elliot.

Background

Glasgow Kelvingrove had been held by the Unionist Party (as the Conservatives stood at elections in Scotland under that name) since

1918 This year is noted for the end of the First World War, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, as well as for the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 50–100 million people worldwide. Events Below, the events ...

. However at the 1923 general election, the Unionist majority had been cut to just over 1,000 votes, by far the closest result in the seat up to that point. The Unionists selected Walter Elliot, who had lost his seat at the 1923 general election, and had previously been Under Secretary of Health for Scotland in the last Conservative Government. The Labour candidate was

Aitken Ferguson Aitken Ferguson (1891 – 1975)Ian MacDougall, ''Voices from the hunger marches: personal recollections by Scottish hunger marchers of the 1920s and 1930s'', p.212 was a Scottish communist activist. Born in Glasgow, Ferguson was named after his ...

who had stood as Labour candidate at the previous election. However, Ferguson, who was a member of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

and was their official candidate; was not official endorsed by the Labour Party in that contest. He was endorsed by the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party as its candidate for the by-election. However, according to F. W. S. Craig the Labour Party's annual Conference Report for 1924 recorded that owing to "developments during the campaign it had been found impossible to render further support."

Result

References

1924 in Scotland 1920s elections in Scotland 1924 elections in the United Kingdom Kelvingrove, 1924 1920s in Glasgow {{Glasgow-stub