Candidates and Constituency Assessment

'If you know anything about Lords, how they came by their titles, you wouldn't touch the bloody things with a barge pole. This title doesn't ennoble but demeans recipients. To this day the title can be bought by large donations to party funds. Party hacks are rewarded for services to the party, not the people. People are bought off with seats in the House of Lords. There is one current lord who might have caused trouble for his party in the run-up to the General Election and was subsequently elevated to the Lords.' Jimmy Reid in the Herald, 9 th December 1998.

Glasgow Cathcart (Glasgow Region)

Corrspondence between Scottish and Westminster Constituencies

99.5 % of the voters of Glasgow Cathcart are in the new Westminster constituency of Glasgow South, where they make up 69.2 % of the new seat. The rest of the Westminster seat of Glasgow South is comprised of voters from Glasgow Govan (24.8 %), Glasgow Rutherglen (4.5 %), Glasgow Shettleston (1.3 %) and Glasgow Pollok (0.1 %) .

Local Government wards in the constituency

Westminster parliment

Following major boundary changes in 1983, the seat of Cathcart was one of the least changed of Glasgow's constituencies in the review for the 1997 Westminster election.

Many will be surprised to learn that the SNP can trace its ancestry to Glasgow Cathcart. The Cathcart Tories did not always toe the Unionist line and the Scottish Party was formed in 1932 by a breakaway from the Cathcart Unionist Association. It merged with the National Party of Scotland in 1934 to form the Scottish National Party.

Glasgow Cathcart was held by the Conservatives from 1923 until 1979 when the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Teddy Taylor lost his seat. Mr Taylor's humiliation was increased by the fact that he was the only Conservative MP to lose his seat to Labour in the whole of the UK in 1979.

However, there were mitigating circumstances: Glasgow Cathcart was originally a solid Conservative area containing a high percentage of owner-occupied houses which had produced a majority of 15,700 in 1955. Following the building of the Castlemilk housing estate the Conservative majority gradually dwindled and by the time Teddy Taylor inherited the seat in 1964, the Tory majority was down to 3,000. Mr Taylor held Cathcart against the odds over the years only due to his strong personal following. But why was Teddy Taylor defeated in 1979 against a trend of Conservative gains?

By October 1974, Teddy Taylor's majority had been reduced to just 1,757 over Labour. The Tories had taken 42.7 % of the vote compared to 38.1 % for Labour while the SNP took 16.5 % of the vote. Teddy Taylor had been one of the most vocal opponents of devolution and had risen to his position of Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland only following the resignations from the front bench of the pro-devolution Alec Buchannan Smith and Malcolm Rifkind. In 1979 Teddy Taylor appeared to be the only victim of tactical voting which was to claim so many of his colleagues over the years. In 1974 the SNP vote crashed from 16.5 % to 7.0 %, and no less than 83 % of this went to Labour. While Teddy Taylor took 15,950 votes in 1979 compared to 16,301 in October 1974 (a fall of 0.9 %) the Labour vote increased by 7.9 %, from 14,544 in October 1974 to 17,550 in 1979 allowing them to take Glasgow Cathcart with a majority of 1,600 and chalk up their only gain in the whole of the United Kingdom.

Mr Taylor's career was not curtailed for long. In 1980 he was parachuted into a by-election in Southend East in 1980. He is currently the Conservative MP for Rochford & Southend East and has now been an MP for an English constituency (21 years) longer than his tenure in Cathcart (15 years.).

Despite representing Cathcart since 1979, the Labour victor never quite became a household name, being more famous for his famous relative and who he defeated than for his own exploits. The winner in 1979 was John Maxton, the Oxford-born nephew of the famous Scottish politician and Red Clydesider Jimmy Maxton, who was Independent Labour MP for Glasgow Bridgeton between 1922 and 1946.

In 1983, the boundary changes in Cathcart were unfavourable for Labour and had the 1979 election been fought on the new boundaries, Teddy Taylor would have been elected with a majority of 1,737, compared to 1,757 on the old boundary in October 1974 and a Labour majority of 1,600 in 1979. John Maxton effectively won Glasgow Cathcart from the Tories for a second time in 1983 when he increased his majority from a notional 1,737 deficit to 4,230. Although the SDP advanced in Cathcart to 22.5 %, this was at the expense of the Conservatives whose vote dropped to 30.5 %, while Labour slipped by less than 1 % to 41.4%. It was confirmed that the only thing which had prevented Cathcart falling to Labour in the past was the personal vote for Teddy Taylor.

The gap between Labour and the Conservatives continued to grow in 1987 as John Maxton increased his majority to 11,203. Labour's percentage o the vote increased by 10.7 % to 52.1 %, while the Tories fell back to 22.4 %. The SDP vote fell by 7.3 % to 15.2 % while the SNP vote increased by 4.7 % to 10.3 %.

In 1992, following the dumping of Margaret Thatcher, there was a Conservative revival in Scotland and there was a 3.0 % swing to the Tories in Glasgow Cathcart with John Maxton's majority was reduced to 8,001. The Tory candidate was Cllr John Young, who stood for Eastwood 1999 and was elected as a Glasgow list MSP. William Steven, who was also the SNP candidate in 1987, increased the vote by 7.8 % to 18.1 %, while the Lib Dems fell to 7.8 %.

Unlike the 1983 boundary changes, those of 1997 were to Labour's advantage and Mr Maxton's majority was increased from 8,001 in 1992 to a notional 10,552. In the 1997 election, the Tories fell to third place and John Maxton was elected with a 12,245 majority over the SNP's Marie Whitehead. Labour took 56.2 % of the vote compared to 20.3 % for the SNP. The fact that the Conservatives ended up in third place with only 12.5 % of the vote in a seat which they held between 1923 and 1979 is merely the latest chapter in a long history of Tory decline in Cathcart which started in 1955 and shows little sign of abating.

After 22 years as the near-anonymous member of parliament for Glasgow Cathcart, John Maxton decided to retire in 2001. Unlike his famous uncle, Jimmy Maxton he is unlikely to be remembered by history except in a footnote as the man who defeated Teddy Taylor. His replacement was Tom Harris, aged 36, who was a Press officer with Strathclyde Passenger Transport and had been a member of Cathcart Labour Party for 16 years. At the selection meeting he was one of six candidates and was selected with 61% of the votes. He went on to win Cathcart with a 10,816 majority over the SNP's Josephine Docherty.

Scottish parliment