 | Ian Welsh, Labour, Ayr Won his seat by 25 votes after two recounts and the register of members' interests shows him as being on unpaid leave of absence as chief executive of Kilmarnock Football Club. Clearly finding the transition to 'humble' back bencher a bit hard. From the Herald's Report Card on MSPs, 15 th December 1999 - 5 days before Mr Welsh resigned. |  |
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| Jim Mather | Rita Miller | ||
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Scottish National Party |  |
Scottish New Labour Party |
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| John Scott | Stuart Ritchie | ||
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Conservative & Unionist Party |  |
Liberal Democrats |
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| James Stewart | Gavin Corbett | ||
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Scottish Socialist Party |  |
Scottish Green Party |
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| Kevin James Dillon | Alistair McConnachie | ||
| Independent, Movement Against the Cloning of Humans |  |
UK Independence Party | |
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| Robert Graham | William Clifton Botcherby | ||
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Pro Life Alliance | Scottish Independent 'The Radio Vet' | |
Following the resignation of Ian Welsh MSP, the first ever by-election for the Scottish Parliament will be held in this the most marginal seat, which Labour won with a majority of only 25 over the Conservatives in May 1999.
Although Ayr has a long standing Conservative tradition, the majorities in the Westminster seat were never enormous and in three out of the four most recent parliamentary contests in Ayr, the majorities have been under 200.
The current Scottish Parliamentary seat is slightly different from the Westminster seat which was held by the Tories from 1950 until 1997. Ayr is a very divided constituency with the northern part of town containing most of the council estates which provided Labour with its core vote while the southern half has the fashionable residential areas and resort where the Tories are strongest. In the north, the Tories can also rely on Prestwick and Troon, however they will sorely miss the southern wards of Forehil, Holmston and especially Alloway, which were transferred to Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley in 1997. This boundary change made little difference to Carrick, but changed Ayr from a knife edge Tory-Labour marginal into a good bet for Labour.
The Conservatives won the Westminster seat of Ayr seat in 1950 and held it until 1997. Before 1950 the tradition in Ayr had also been predominantly Tory, with the Constitiency Association being founded in 1892. In 1963, the Conservative Prime Minister Harold MacMillan resigned and was replaced by an Anglo-Scottish aristocrat, the 14 th Earl of Home. As it was unthinkable by those days for a Prime Minister to lead the country from the House of Lords, the Earl of Home renounced his title and became just plan old Sir Alec Douglas Home. He then packed his carpet bag and went out stalking a Commons seat. With a by-election pending in Kinross & West Perthshire, the Conservative candidate there was politely booted into touch to allow the noble ex-Lord to contest the seat. Sir Alec went on to win Kinross & West Perthshire, although with a vastly reduced majority. Less than a year later he had lost a general election to Harold Wilson, although he remained as MP until February 1974 when he returned to the House of Lords as Baron Home of the Hirsel. Meanwhile, the previous Tory by-election candidate for Kinross & West Perthshire was rewarded with the safe Tory seat of Ayr at the 1964 General election. His name was George Younger.
George Younger represented Ayr for 28 years and eight elections. He rose through the Tory ranks as Minister of State for Defence, Chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party, Secretary of State for Scotland, and became Defence Secretary when Michael Heseltine resigned over the Westland affair.
In 1983 the Ayr seat saw a major boundary change with 20% of its electors being added from Central Ayrshire, however this still gave George Younger a notional majority of 4,300 in 1979 which he increased to 7,987 in 1983.
In the 1987 general election there was an electoral backlash against the Tories and they lost ten of their 21 Scottish seats. Mr Younger almost became the second Secretary of State for Scotland to lose his seat in less than fifteen years (Winnie Ewing had defeated Gordon Campbell in Moray & Nairn in February 74) when his majority was slashed from almost 8,000 to a mere 182 votes over Labour. Younger had done his best to defend Scotland against the worst extremes of Margaret Thatcher, even threatening to resign when the cabinet seemed obsessed with attempting to destroy what remained of Scotland's heavy industry. Ironically, in 1987, George Younger's vote had held up well, and was only down by 283 votes to 20,942. As in so many other seats throughout the whole of Britain, the Tories had held Ayr with a large majority in 1983 because of the split between Labour and the Alliance. It was the subsequent defection of large numbers of Alliance voters which allowed Labour to come within 182 votes of unseating George Younger in 1987.
Sir George saw the writing on the wall and retired in 1992. He became Lord Younger and was appointed Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, causing not a few irate customers to close their accounts in protest.
The Tories chose Phil Gallie to succeed George Younger. Gallie's abrasive style was in direct contrast to Gentleman George's punctilious courtesy - the only time George Younger lost his temper was on Question Time when a lady in the audience asked whether he was English.
Labour was expected to make many gains in the 1992 general election, and Ayr was seen as a lost cause for the Tories, especially with George Younger's retiral from politics. However, the pundits had forgotten just how much Margaret Thatcher had been disliked in Scotland. The removal of her flagship policy, the Poll Tax (although only after violent demonstrations in England), and the replacement of 'That Bloody Woman' by the relatively unknown John Major allowed the Scottish Conservatives to make a small recovery which took almost everyone by surprise. In Ayr, although Labour's Alastair Osborne increased his party's vote from 39.1% to 40.6%, Phil Gallie's vote also increased - from 39.4% to 40.8%. Against all the odds, Mr Gallie was elected with a razor thin majority of 85 - the smallest in Scotland.
Phil Gallie is a working class Tory who has risen from being a pipefitter to become subsequently an electrical engineer, maintenance engineer and finally a power station manager with Scottish Power. A Thatcherite, he expressed populist opinions on such subjects as defence, hanging, flogging and taxation. He also voted against pay increases for MPs in 1993 and 1996 and against VAT on fuel. Gallie became, briefly, a Scottish Office Minister in John Major's beleaguered administration before the Tories were wiped out in Scotland.
The boundary changes in Ayr for the 1997 general election - including the removal of the rock solid Tory wards of Alloway, Holmston and Forehil to Carrick, Cumnock & Doon Valley - were minor but highly significant. The changes made little difference to Labour MP, George Foulkes' massive majority in Carrick but were disastrous for Phil Gallie as they gave Labour a notional majority of 1,895 on the new boundaries. With the collapse of the Conservative vote in the Regional, European and Unitary elections, it was always difficult to see how Phil Gallie could hold on to the seat he inherited from George Younger.
It was expected that Ayr would again be contested by Alistair Osborne who came within 85 votes of defeating Phil Gallie in 1992, however he was unable to stand as Labour had decided to impliment a controversial all-woman list. The nonimation stayed in the Osborne family however as Labour selected Sandra Osborne, Mr Osborne's wife as their candidate. She went on to became Ayr's first non-Conservative MP in almost 50 years with a thumping great majority of 6,543 over Phil Gallie.
None of the Osborne family appeared to be interested in contesting Ayr for the 1999 Scottish election, so Labour chose Ian Welsh who had a high profile in the region as the leader of South Ayrshire Council. As the new Ayr seat would have been Labour even in 1992 and 1987, Welsh was seen to be a dead cert as MSP for Ayr.
The Tory candidate was again Phil Gallie who was narrowly beaten for the leadership of the Scottish Tory party by the much maligned Mr David McLetchie, who has astounded many (including this writer) by his masterful leadership of the Tory group in the Scottish Parliament which has contrasted with the woeful ineptitude of William Hague in Westminster.
Before the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May we wrote 'Although Phil Gallie is unlikely to retake Ayr, he leads the Tory list in South of Scotland and should make it to Holyrood as a regional MP.' We were proved to be correct, but only by the slightest of margins. As in Dundee West where Kate McLean's majority was slashed to just 121 over the SNP, Labour Council leaders did not appear to be appreciated in Ayr. The Labour vote crashed by over 10 % while the Tory vote increased by over 4 % to produce the closest result in Scotland - 14,263 votes for Cllr Welsh and 14,238 for ex-MP Gallie - a majority of 25 for Labour. Only twice have smaller parliamentary majorities been seen in Scotland this century - in October 1974 when the SNP's Mrs Margaret Bain (now Ewing) won Dunbartonshire East from Tory Barrie Henderson by 22 votes and in 1945 when Labour came within just 6 votes of unseating Conservative E. L. Gander Gower in Caithness & Sutherland.
Labour could have severe difficulties in holding Ayr if recent poll trend continue. While Sandra Osborne took the Westminster seat in 1997 with 48.4 % of the vote, in May 1999 Ian Welsh only just scraped in to the Scottish Parliamentary seat when Labour's vote fell by over 10 % to just 38.1 %. By the European elections in June 1999, Labour's vote continued in free fall to just 26.7 % - exactly what they had scored here in the bad old days of 1983 when the Alliance was running wild and the Labour party was tearing itself apart. Labour may well have problems in finding a candidate for this seat their most marginal of seats.
The Tory vote has held remarkably steady in Ayr - in the five elections between October 1974 and 1992, the Conservatives polled somewhere between 39.3 and 43.3 % of the vote. The Tories big problem is that their best candidate for Ayr, Phil Gallie, has decided not to gamble his list seat and will not be standing. Another major problem for the Tories is that Tony Blair is pursuing Thatcherite policies with a fervour that was never seen from John Major. Many might wonder whether there is any need to vote for the Tories when London Labour is around to cut benefits to single parents and the disabled, close hospitals, dismantle the Scottish education system, while awarding massive pay increases and tax cuts to the rich and wasting millions on London's Millenium Dome.
The SNP have carried out some interesting candidate swapping in Ayr. In 1992, their candidate was Barbara Mullin who took 10.9 % of the vote while in the 1997 general election, their candidate was Ian Blackford who obtained 12.6 % - both credible performances in this intense Labour-Tory marginal where the SNP had taken only 4.9 % of the vote in 1983. In the 1997 Paisley South by-election which followed the tragic death of Gordon McMaster, Ian Blackford went on to slash Labour's majority from 12,500 for Mr McMaster to 2,731 for Invisible Man Douglas Alexander.
The SNP's candidate for the Scottish election in May 1999 was Roger Mullin who is a veteran of five previous contests. He contested Ayrshire South in February and October 1974, Kirkcaldy in 1987, and Paisley North in the 1990 by-election (obtaining a 14 % swing against Labour) and the 1992 general election. Following the poor showing of both Labour and the Conservatives nationally, the SNP are seen for the first time as serious contenders in Ayr.
Ayr flirted with the Alliance in 1983 when the Liberals came a good third with 25.6 %, only 598 votes behind Labour. However, those days are long gone and in the 1999 Scottish elections the Liberal Democrats came last with just 4.4 % of the vote, losing their deposit. As in the Hamilton South by-election last year, they may once again find themselves struggling to be taken seriously by the voters.
The parties have had problems with selecting candidates. The Tories' best hope for winning the constituency was South of Scotland list MSP Phil Gallie, the Westminster MP for Ayr between 1992 and 1997, who came within 25 votes of winning this constituency last May. Undoubtedly still popular in Ayr, Mr Gallie has decided to pin his hopes on winning back the Westminster seat at the next general Election. The Tory candidate is John Scott, an Ballantrae farmer who contested Carrick, Cunock & Doon Valley in 1999. man. Mr Scott, who is married with a son and daughter, established the Ayrshire Farmer's Market and is a member of the National Farmers Union of Scotland. He was rural affairs commissioner on the Rifkind Policy Commission and was author of the rural affairs policy group report. John Scott's aim is 'to ensure that Ayr sends a very strong message to Donald Dewar's bumbling Executive in Edinburgh.'
Labour too have had their problems. The name of Donnie Munro, an electoral assett for Labour, was touted originally but he did not put his name forward. Ex Euro MP Alex Smith, whose Old Labour convictions were Labour's best defence against an erosion of their tradition vote, was excluded from their short list, much to his irritation. The short list included Cllr John Baillie the leader of South Ayrshire Council, Cllr Rita Miller, and Claudia Beamish a teacher. Cllr Rita Miller was selected as the candidate. She has represented Prestwick St Nicholas ward on South Ayrshire Council since May 1999 and was Councillor for St Cuthbert's between 1995 and 1999.
For the Scottish National Party, Roger Mullin, who increased their vote considerably in the Scottish Parliamentary elections in May, was reported to be unable to stand due to his professional commitments. The SNP short list of three comprised Jim Mather, a Chartered Accountant, businessman and Executive Director of Business for Scotland; Karen Neary, a Housing Association Director, and Director of the Scottish Self-Government College who was on the short list for the Hamilton South by-election and; Maire Whitehead, a Head Teacher, and Vice President of the Association of Head Teachers in Scotland. On a selection meeting on the 27 th of January, the SNP chose Jim Mather as their candidate. Jim Mather contested Ross, Skye & Inverness West in the Holyrood election, where the Westminster MP is Charles Kennedy, the new leader of the Liberal Democrats. Despite the presence of ex-Runrig singer Donnie Munro and the Labour candidate, the SNP were the only one of the four main parties to increase their vote since the 1997 general election, and also came top in the regional list vote in the constituency.
The Liberal Democrat candidate is Stuart Ritchie a student at the Ayr Campus of Paisley university who lists his interests as football and church. He has an HND in Communications from Telford College and has been a Local Election Agent in 1995 and NUS Student Representative in 1998. In the May 1999 Scottish elections he contested Cunninghame South where he increased the Lib Dem vote by 1.5 % on the Westminster election result to 6.1 %.
The Scottish Socialist party were first to select their candidate for the by-election. He is James Stewart, a 36 year old father of three from the Kincaidston district in Ayr. He works in British Bakeries in Ayr where he is a USDAW shop steward in the bakery as well as a health and safety rep for the 400-500 - strong workforce. He aims to highlight the minimum wage and the Government's decision not to increase it for at least two years.
The Green candidate is Cumnock-born charity worker Gavin Corbett. The Greens point out that in both Scottish and European elections last year they outpolled the Scottish Socialist Party in Ayr and that in the June Euro election the Green vote was less than 300 below the Liberal Democrats. Gavin Corbett said 'The voters of Ayr will quickly get fed up with pundits predicting a two-horse race between New Labour and the Tories. I am confident that they will see how pointless it is to send another party hack in a blue or red rosette to Edinburgh. The footnotes of history will record Ayr as the first ever Scottish Parliament by-election. On 16 March voters have a chance to make real history by recording the best Green vote Scotland has ever seen.'
For the UK Independence Party, Alistair McConnachie is campaigning for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament. Mr McConnachie says 'We think there are enough Tories out there who would vote for the abolition of the Scottish Parliament that we are going to have to beat them away with a stick. The Conservatives cannot make this argument any more. They are signed up supporters of the new dispensation. People from other parties will be sympathetic too.'
Also standing in the by-election is an an independent anti-cloning candidate. Kevin James Dillon, an operations manager from Ayrshire, has been chosen as candidate by the Movement Against the Cloning of Humans (Scotland). Mr Dillon claimed that seven people had died recently in the United States after genetic experimentation and said that human cloning was a threat to human rights.
Photo acknowledgements:
Jim Mather (Scottish National Party) - Ian Douglas and SNP Ayr Office
Rita Miller (Labour) - Stephen Curran and South Ayrshire Council
John Scott (Conservative) - Ayr Constituency Conservative Association
Stuart Ritchie (Liberal Democrat) - Tony Hutson, Senior Researcher with the Scottish Lib Dems
Gavin Corbett (Scottish Green Party) - Gavin Corbett
Kevin James Dillon (Independent, Anti-Cloning) - Kevin James Dillon
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