1961 East Fife by-election

The 1961 East Fife by-election was a by-election held for the UK House of Commons constituency of East Fife in Scotland on 9 November 1961. It was won by the Unionist candidate Sir John Gilmour with a majority of 7,066 votes.

Vacancy

The seat had become vacant when the sitting National Liberal Member of Parliament (MP), Sir James Henderson-Stewart had died aged 63 on 3 September 1961. He had held the seat since a by-election in 1933. The result at the previous election was as follows;

General election 1959: East Fife
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
National Liberal James Henderson-Stewart 26,585 69.95 −0.65
Labour J. Nicol 11,421 30.05 +0.65
Majority 15,164 39.90 −1.30
Turnout 38,006 75.20 +2.01
National Liberal hold Swing −0.65

Candidates

The Unionist candidate was 49-year-old Sir John Gilmour, an Eton and Cambridge-educated baronet who was a local farmer and landowner, and a decorated war hero.[1] His father, also named John, had been an MP for thirty years, serving as a Cabinet minister during the 1920s and 1930s; including a period as Home Secretary. Gilmour was a reluctant by-election candidate; he had stood unsuccessfully at the 1945 general election in Clackmannan and Eastern Stirlingshire, but preferred local politics and had been a member of Fife County Council since 1955. However, he was pressured to stand by the constituency association which feared the imposition of an unpopular Conservative candidate.[2]

The Labour Party candidate was John Smith, a 23-year-old law student at the University of Glasgow, who would later become Shadow Chancellor in 1987 and more importantly, Leader of the Labour Party in 1992.

The Liberal Party candidate was 30-year-old Donald Leach. He contested Edinburgh West at the 1959 general election. He was the Head of Department of Mathematics at Napier College of Science and Technology, and was educated at John Ruskin Grammar School and Croydon Polytechnic.

Result

Gilmour was elected with a reduced but still large majority, with nearly 50% of the votes.

East Fife by-election, 1961[3]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Unionist John Gilmour 15,948 47.5 −22.4
Labour John Smith 8,882 26.4 −3.6
Liberal Donald Leach 8,786 26.1 N/A
Majority 7,066 21.1 −18.8
Turnout 33,616
Unionist hold Swing −9.3

Gilmour was re-elected at the 1964 general election, with an increased majority over Smith,[4] and held the seat until he stepped down at the 1979 general election. Smith would eventually be elected as Leader of the Labour Party 31 years later, following the resignation of Neil Kinnock.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Obituary of Sir John Gilmour Archived 1 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine, in The Independent
  2. ^ Obituary of Sir John E. Gimour, in The Times
  3. ^ "1961 By Election Results". Archived from the original on 25 March 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  4. ^ * 1964 general election results at Richard Kimber's political science resources

References