The North East Lanarkshire by-election was a Parliamentary by-election held on 9 March 1911. It returned one

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) to 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. ...

of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

, elected by the

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

voting system.

Electoral history

Candidates

Although there had been no Labour candidate at the last election, there had been a Labour candidate in January 1910, who finished bottom of the poll. For this by-election, John Robertson was selected as the Labour candidate and was sponsored by the Scottish Miners' Federation. This was the first instance in the 1910-18 parliament in which Liberal and Labour candidates had opposed each other. Labour's intervention to contest this Liberal seat gave the Unionists a real hope of winning.

Result

Labour's share of the vote was well down on the share they achieved in this seat in both 1901 and 1904.

Aftermath

A General Election was due to take place by the end of 1915. By the autumn of 1914, the following candidates had been adopted to contest that election. Due to the outbreak of war, the election never took place. Following boundary changes, most of the seat made up Bothwell for the 1918 general election. Millar moved on to contest neighbouring

Motherwell Motherwell ( sco, Mitherwall, gd, Tobar na Màthar) is a town and former burgh in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, south east of Glasgow. It has a population of around 32,120. Historically in the parish of Dalziel and part of Lanarks ...

where he was defeated. Goff went off to contest

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

where he was elected. Robertson remained to contest Bothwell:

References

* Craig, F. W. S. (1974). British parliamentary election results 1885-1918 (1 ed.). London: Macmillan. * Who's Who: www.ukwhoswho.com * Debrett's House of Commons 1916 {{Westminster by-elections in Scotland 1900–1949 North East Lanarkshire by-election 1910s elections in Scotland North East Lanarkshire by-election North East Lanarkshire by-election Lanarkshire Lanarkshire, North East