The Scottish Prohibition Party was a minor Scottish

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

which advocated

alcohol prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic be ...

. The party was founded in 1901. In its early years, Bob Stewart acted as the party's full-time organiser.Bob Stewart
Communist Biographies In 1908, Stewart and Edwin Scrymgeour were elected to Dundee Town Council. From the 1908 by-election onwards, Scrymgeour stood for the party in the Dundee constituency. Stewart acted as his

election agent An election agent in elections in the United Kingdom, as well as some other similar political systems such as elections in India, is the person legally responsible for the conduct of a candidate's political campaign and to whom election material is ...

in 1910, but fell out with him over his religiosity. He led a Marxist split, the Socialist Prohibition and Reform Party, which merged with the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920. Scrymgeour was finally elected as an MP for

Dundee in the 1922 general election Winston Churchill lost his seat of Dundee in the 1922 general election as a National Liberal follower of David Lloyd George. The election was the only time a challenger standing as a prohibitionist was elected as an MP in the UK. Background Dun ...

, when he and the Labour candidate

E. D. Morel Edmund Dene Morel (born Georges Edmond Pierre Achille Morel Deville; 10 July 1873 – 12 November 1924) was a French-born British journalist, author, pacifist and politician. As a young official at the shipping company Elder Dempster, Morel ob ...

defeated 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 ...

candidates, one of which was future

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...

. In Parliament, on issues other than prohibition, he generally supported the Labour Party. Scrymgeour lost his seat at the 1931 general election. The party was disbanded in 1935, against the wishes of Scrymgeour.

See also

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