The 1933 Kilmarnock by-election was a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

held on 2 November 1933 for the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

constituency of Kilmarnock in Ayrshire.

Vacancy

The vacancy had arisen when Scotland's second most senior judge, the

Lord Justice Clerk The Lord Justice Clerk is the second most senior judge in Scotland, after the Lord President of the Court of Session. Originally ''clericus justiciarie'' or Clerk to the Court of Justiciary, the counterpart in the criminal courts of the Lord ...

Lord Alness Robert Munro, 1st Baron Alness, (28 May 1868 – 6 October 1955), was a Scottish lawyer, judge and Liberal politician. He served as Secretary for Scotland between 1916 and 1922 in David Lloyd George's coalition government and as Lord Justice ...

, retired. It was a long-standing convention that when a vacancy arose in this office (or in the most senior judicial office, that of Lord President), the

Lord Advocate His Majesty's Advocate, known as the Lord Advocate ( gd, Morair Tagraidh, sco, Laird Advocat), is the chief legal officer of the Scottish Government and the Crown in Scotland for both civil and criminal matters that fall within the devolved p ...

(head of the Scottish criminal justice system) of the day would be appointed to fill the vacancy. The Lord Advocate in 1933 was Sir Craigie Mason Aitchison, K.C., M.P., and so he was appointed to the bench, automatically resigning his seat. Aitchison had been elected as a member of the Labour Party in a 1929 by-election following the death of

Robert Climie Robert Climie (4 January 1868 – 3 October 1929) was a Scottish trade unionist and Labour Party (UK) politician. Robert was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland on 4 January 1868. He was the son of bonnet weaver Mary McGarvie and underground colliery ...

. In 1931, the Labour Government had split, with a handful of Labour MPs, including Aitchison, following Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald into a coalition National Government with the Conservatives. These MPs were expelled from the Labour Party and called themselves ''National Labour''.

Candidates

The National Labour candidate was 37-year-old

Kenneth Lindsay Kenneth Martin Lindsay (16 September 1897 – 4 March 1991) was a Labour Party politician from the United Kingdom who joined the breakaway National Labour group. He was the final Member of Parliament to be elected by the single transferable vo ...

, who had contested the

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China holds ...

and 1929 elections as a Labour Party candidate in English constituencies. The parties in the National Government did not contest by-elections when vacancies arose in seats held by other parties in the government, so the Unionist Party and the

National Liberal National liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal policies and issues with elements of nationalism. Historically, national liberalism has also been used in the same meaning as conservative liberalism (right-liberalism). A seri ...

s did not field candidates. Prominent Scottish Unionist and cabinet minister Walter Elliot wrote a letter endorsing Lindsay and urging voters to support him. He was also supported by Ishbel MacDonald, daughter of Ramsay MacDonald, who addressed female voters and urged them to back him. The Labour Party candidate in Kilmarnock was Rev James Barr, hoping to regain the seat which Labour had won in 1929. John Pollock stood for the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...

, and Sir A. M. MacEwen represented both the

National Party of Scotland The National Party of Scotland (NPS) was a centre-left political party in Scotland which was one of the predecessors of the current Scottish National Party (SNP). The NPS was the first Scottish nationalist political party, and the first which c ...

and the

Scottish Party The Scottish (Self-Government) Party was a Scottish nationalist political party formed in 1932 by a group of members of the Unionist Party who favoured the establishment of a Dominion Scottish Parliament within the British Empire. The Scottish ...

(the two parties united the following year to form the Scottish National Party). The Duke of Montrose, one of the leaders of the Scottish Party, made a prominent speech in support of MacEwan in Kilmarnock during the campaign. During this speech he addressed the issue of the position of Scottish home rule in relation to the Irish in Scotland While he stated that he had "nothing but friendly feelings for the Irish", he added that when Ireland achieved Home Rule, "Scottish men and women were disenfranchised" and stated "as they did to us we should do to them and others."

Result

With the Labour vote split three ways, the result was a victory for Lindsay, who was elected with less than 35% of the vote, one of the smallest vote shares ever for a by-election winner.

United Kingdom by-election records Parliamentary by-elections in the United Kingdom occur when a Member of Parliament (MP) vacates a House of Commons seat (due to resignation, death, disqualification or expulsion) during the course of a parliament. Scope of these records Altho ...

He held the seat until the

1945 general election The following elections occurred in the year 1945. Africa * 1945 South-West African legislative election Asia * 1945 Indian general election Australia * 1945 Fremantle by-election Europe * 1945 Albanian parliamentary election * 1945 Bulgarian ...

, when he was elected as an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

MP for the Combined English Universities.

Votes

References

* * {{Westminster by-elections in Scotland 1900–1949 By-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in Scottish constituencies Kilmarnock by-election 1930s elections in Scotland Kilmarnock by-election Kilmarnock by-election Politics of Kilmarnock

Vacancy

Candidates

Result

Votes

See also

References