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The Hamilton by-election in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, Scotland, was held on 2 November 1967. It 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 general election from 1945 to 1966, when only the Conservatives had stood against them.
The election 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 at the 1966 general election held the previous year, and gained the seat from the Labour Party 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.
Background
Prior to this by-election, 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 five 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 at the 1945 Motherwell by-election. In the years before Ewing's victory, there had been other breakthroughs by nationalist parties in Britain – including Gwynfor Evans' similarly groundbreaking victory for Plaid Cymru at the 1966 Carmarthen by-election, a big advance for the SNP at the 1967 Glasgow Pollok by-election, and SNP gains in local elections, including becoming the largest party in local government in Stirling.[2]
On the day of the election it was reported that Labour were strong favourites to win the seat with bookmakers, who made them 10 to 1 on to win the seat, and that Labour candidate Alex Wilson had indicated the previous day that he was more confident than ever of victory.[3]
Result
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SNP | Winnie Ewing | 18,397 | 46.01 | New | |
| Labour | Alexander Wilson | 16,598 | 41.51 | -29.66 | |
| Conservative | Ian Dyer | 4,986 | 12.47 | -16.36 | |
| Majority | 1,799 | 4.50 | N/A | ||
| Turnout | 39,981 | ||||
| SNP gain from Labour | Swing | +37.9 | |||
Aftermath and legacy
The SNP's leadership merely told Ewing to: "try to come a good second in order to encourage the members".[5] "As ever," Ewing later wrote, "I overdid it, and as a result my life changed for ever."[6] After her victory was declared, Ewing famously said to the crowd outside "Stop the World, Scotland wants to get on."[7]
Historian Tom Devine describes the 1967 Hamilton by-election as "the most sensational by-election result in Scotland since 1945"[8] and Isobel Lindsay called it a "watershed" moment in Scottish political history.[9] Gerry Hassan similarly describes it as being a pivotal moment in Scottish politics.[10]
In 2007, on the 40th anniversary of Ewing's victory, the then SNP leader Alex Salmond said: "That by-election was undoubtedly a catalyst for reform, without which the movement for a Scottish Parliament would have been delayed still further. It forced the pace of change and demanded attention for the cause of Scottish independence from Westminster."[11]
References
- ↑ Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 10
- ↑ Christopher Harvie and Peter Jones, The road to home rule: images of Scotland's cause, p.84
- ↑ Staff reporter (2 November 1967). "Betting firmly on Labour for a Hamilton Victory". The Glasgow Herald. p. 16. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
- ↑ "1967 By Election Results". Archived from the original on 29 March 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2015.
- ↑ Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 15
- ↑ Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 15
- ↑ Winnie Ewing, Stop the World, edited by Michael Russell, Birlinn: Edinburgh, 2004, p. 11
- ↑ Devine, T. M. (2006). The Scottish nation, 1700–2007 (Reissued with new material. ed.). London: Penguin. p. 574. ISBN 978-0-141-02769-2.
- ↑ 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
- ↑ 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
- ↑ Mitchell, Robert (2 November 2017). "Fiftieth anniversary of Winnie Ewing's historic Hamilton by-election victory". Daily Record. Retrieved 25 February 2023.