1967 Hamilton by-election

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 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.

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

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 general 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 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]

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] 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.[6]

Historian Tom Devine describes the 1967 Hamilton by-election as "the most sensational by-election result in Scotland since 1945"[7] and Isobel Lindsay called a "watershed" moment in Scottish political history.[8] Gerry Hassan similarly describes it as being a pivotal moment in Scottish politics.[9]