The

South West Norfolk South West Norfolk is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Liz Truss, a Conservative, who was prime minister of the United Kingdom from September to October 2022. Constituency profile This is ...

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 ...

of 25 March 1959 was held after

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP)

Sidney Dye Sidney Augustus Dye, JP (4 August 1900''Norfolk, England, Church of England Births and Baptisms, 1813–1915'' – 9 December 1958) was a British Labour Party politician. Born at Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, Sidney Dye was educated at Wells E ...

died on 9 December 1958. The seat was retained by Labour.

Candidates

Labour chose Albert Hilton as their candidate for the by-election. A leading member of the

National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers The National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (NUAW) was a trade union in the United Kingdom which existed between 1906 and 1982. It represented farmworkers. History The union was established as the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labou ...

, Hilton was a longstanding party activist who held the seat until he was defeated in the 1964 general election. He would go on to sit in the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

. Barrister Elaine Kellett ran for the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

in one of a number of unsuccessful candidacies for the party. She went on to serve as MP for Lancaster and MEP for

North West England North West England is one of nine official regions of England and consists of the ceremonial counties of England, administrative counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside. The North West had a population of ...

. The third candidate,

Andrew Fountaine Andrew Fountaine (7 December 1918 – 14 September 1997) was an activist involved in the British far right. After military service in a number of conflicts Fountaine joined the Conservative Party and was selected as a parliamentary candidate un ...

, ran as an Independent Nationalist, adopting a

far right Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...

platform immediately before being appointed President of the National Labour Party.

John Bean John Bean may refer to: * John Bean (cricketer) (1913–2005), English cricketer and British Army officer * John Bean (politician) (1927–2021), long-standing participant in the British far right * John Bean (explorer) ( 1751–1757), Canadian e ...

, ''Many Shades of Black – Inside Britain's Far Right'', London: New Millennium, 1999, pp. 119–121 He would become a leading figure in the National Front as well as briefly leading his own party, the

Constitutional Movement The Constitutional Movement was a right wing political group in the United Kingdom. It was formed in 1979 by Andrew Fountaine as the National Front Constitutional Movement, a splinter group from the National Front. Offering a more moderate altern ...

Results

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Norfolk South West by-election, 1959 1959 elections in the United Kingdom 1959 in England March 1959 events in the United Kingdom 20th century in Norfolk

South West The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...