Hamilton by-election, 1967

Hamilton by-election

2 November 1967

Candidate Winnie Ewing Alexander Wilson Ian Dyer Party SNP Labour Conservative Popular vote 18,397 16,598 4,986 Percentage 46.0% 41.5% 12.5%

MP before election Tom Fraser Labour Subsequent MP Winnie Ewing SNP

The Hamilton by-election in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was held on 2 November 1967. It saw a surprise victory for the Scottish National Party candidate Winnie Ewing. The SNP took 46% of the vote in a constituency which they had not even contested in the 1966 general election, gaining the seat from Labour with a swing of nearly 38%. Ewing did not retain the seat at the following general election, but the SNP have been continuously represented in the House of Commons ever since.

A by-election was called after the former Labour MP, Tom Fraser, resigned in order to take up the position as head of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board.^[1] The constituency had been a safe seat for Labour, who had taken over two-thirds of the vote there in every election from 1945 to 1966, when only the Conservatives had stood against them.

In that time, the SNP had been a peripheral movement in Scottish politics. They had taken only 5% of the vote across Scotland in 1966, having stood candidates in 23 out of 71 seats. In the 1950s they had never stood more than 5 candidates or taken more than 1% of the Scottish vote in general elections. However, Hamilton was not the first Westminster seat to be won by the SNP; the party had won a short-lived victory in the 1945 Motherwell by-election. In the years before Ewing's win, there had been other breakthroughs by nationalist parties in Britain - including Gwynfor Evans' similarly groundbreaking victory for Plaid Cymru at the Carmarthen by-election, 1966, a big advance for the SNP at the Pollok by-election, and SNP gains in local elections, including becoming the largest party in local government in Stirling.^[2]

The SNP's leadership merely told Ewing to "try to come a good second in order to encourage the members".^[3] "As ever," Ewing later wrote, "I overdid it, and as a result my life changed for ever."^[4] After her victory was declared, Ewing famously said to the crowd outside "Stop the World, Scotland wants to get on."^[5]

Historian Tom Devine describes the Hamilton by-election as "the most sensational by-election result in Scotland since 1945"^[6] and Isobel Lindsay called a "watershed" moment in Scottish political history.^[7] Gerry Hassan similarly describes it as being a pivotal moment in Scottish politics.^[8]

Hamilton by-election, 1967[9]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	SNP	Winifred Ewing	18,397	46.0	+46.0
	Labour	Alexander Wilson	16,598	41.5	-29.7
	Conservative	Ian Dyer	4,986	12.5	-16.3
Majority			1,779	4.5
Turnout			39,981
	SNP gain from Labour		Swing	37.9

References

1. Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 10
2. Christopher Harvie and Peter Jones, The road to home rule: images of Scotland's cause, p.84
3. Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 15
4. Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 15
5. Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 11
6. Devine, T. M. (2006). The Scottish nation, 1700-2007 (Reissued with new material. ed.). London: Penguin. p. 574. ISBN 978-0-141-02769-2.
7. Isobel Lindsay, "The SNP and Westminster", pp. 93 - 104, in The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power, edited by Gerry Hassan, Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, p. 94
8. Gerry Hassan, "The Making of the Modern SNP: From Protest to Power", pp. 1 - 18, in The Modern SNP: From Protest to Power, edited by Gerry Hassan, Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, p. 1
9. "1967 By Election Results". Archived from the original on 2012-03-29. Retrieved 2015-08-21.

See also

• Royal Commission on the Constitution (United Kingdom)
• Elections in Scotland
• List of United Kingdom by-elections