 | 'Crime and fear of crime are a major problem for Scots today. Overall, since New Labour came to power in 1997, crime has increased. Serious assault has risen by 16%, other violent crime has risen by 37%, crimes involving offensive weapons have risen by 30%, and robbery, car theft, shoplifting and fraud have all increased.' Roseanna Cunningham MSP, 6 th February 2001. |  |
 |
Roseanna Cunningham MSP |  |
Robert Ball |
 | Alexander Stewart |  |
Gordon Campbell |
 | Philip Stott |  | Kenneth Buchanan |
| Ind | Thomas Burns |
The seat of Perth & Kinross was created in 1983 with 67% of its voters coming from Perth & East Perthshire, 30% from Kinross & West Perthshire and 2% from Angus South. In the 1997 boundary changes the seat become simply Perth due to the transfer of 7,500 voters in Kinross area to the new Ochil seat. Additional minor changes involved the transfer of a few voters to Angus.
Perth includes the towns of Perth, Bridge of Earn, Auchterarder, Crieff and Comrie. It is the kind of huge and beautiful largely rural constituency which should be a bastion of Toryism. This was once the case, but for over 20 years the area has seen the Conservatives under siege from the Scottish National Party.
Most of the Perth seat came from Perth & East Perthshire. It was a typical Tory constituency which they had held since 1935, where the sitting MP, Ian MacArthur enjoyed majorities of well over 10,000. All this changed in October 1974 when Perth & East Perthshire was won by the Scottish National Party's Douglas Crawford. The conversion of a majority of almost 9,000 for Ian MacArthur in February to one of 793 for Douglas Crawford in October was probably the biggest surprise of the General Election.
In 1979, the Conservatives were represented by Mr Bill Walker. Although Douglas Crawford's polled only 287 less votes than in October 1974, Mr Walker managed to increase the Tory vote by 3,609 to take Perth & East Perthshire with a majority of 3,103.
The rest of the Perth constituency comes from Kinross & West Perthshire, which has been represented by some of the most blue-bloodied of Scotland's Tories. In 1923 the Duchess of Atholl won the seat from the Liberals, while 40 years later the Earl of Home retained the seat for the Conservatives in the 1963 by-election. This Earl of Home was none other than the Conservative Prime Minister who had succeeded to Harold MacMillan as leader of the Conservative Party on the 18 th of October. As it was unthinkable for the House of Commons to be led by a man, albeit an Earl of ancient lineage, without a Westminster seat, the Earl of Home went looking for a constituency to represent. There was a convenient by-election in Kinross & West Perthshire and Sir Alec Douglas-Hume renounced his Earldom in order to contest it. The Conservative candidate who stepped down for Sir Alec was none other than George, later Viscount, Younger, who represented Ayr from 1964 to 1992.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home won the by-election on the 8 th of November with 57% of the vote, down 11% from the previous election. Sir Alex was only Prime Minister for a year less two days, but represented Kinross & West Perthshire until 1974 when he retired.
The new Conservative candidate, Nicholas Fairbairn QC, was given a shock if he though he was to inherit a safe seat. The SNP vote, which had been 4,670 in 1970 and 6,274 in February 1974, rocketed to 10,981 in October leaving Mr Fairbairn with a majority of only 53, the second smallest in the country.
In 1979, the SNP threat receded and Mr Fairbairn was elected with a much healthier majority of 6,478.
Nicholas Fairbairn was selected for the new seat of Perth & Kinross in 1983 and found himself fighting against an old friend, Mr Douglas Crawford, who had been SNP MP for Perth & East Perthshire between October 1974 and 1979. The success of the newly formed SDP-Liberal Alliance split the opposition in 1983 and Mr Fairbairn was re-elected with a healthy majority of 6,733 over Douglas Crawford with Liberal Ben Coutts only 158 votes behind the SNP.
In 1987 it was the turn of Jim Fairlie to carry the SNP banner. However, Labour's Jack McConnell, number one fan of this site and presently Scottish Education, was the main beneficiary of the collapse of the Alliance vote, taking Labour to within 479 votes of the Liberals. There was a swing of 2.6 % from Tory to SNP and Mr Fairbairn was elected with a reduced majority of 5,676 over Jim Fairlie.
In 1992, the newly knighted Sir Nicholas faced a serious challenge from the SNP's Roseanna Cunningham, a self employed advocate. She increased the SNP vote by 8.4%, up by 5,061 on 1987, but Sir Nicholas's vote increased by 0.6 % giving him a much reduced majority of 2,094. His seat was most probably saved by the replacement of the rampantly anti-Scottish Margaret Thatcher, who had cost the Scottish Tories over half their seats in 1987, by the relatively unknown John Major.
Sir Nicholas died in 1995, and with the Tory government at its most unpopular, the by-election result was almost a foregone conclusion. One of Roseanna Cunningham's most difficult tasks was to be re-selected as SNP candidate. The contest was more gentile than the stair-heid brawling of Monklands East, although Roseanna Cunningham was described as variously a 'Bolshevik', a 'screaming banshee', and 'Republican Rose' an analogy with Tokyo Rose, who of course did for the Japanese what Lord Haw-Haw did for the Germans. Roseanna Cunningham won the by-election with a majority of 7,311 over Labour. The Conservative John Godfrey, who had been described as an 'unelectable clone' who 'knew nothing about Scotland or Perthshire', by Sir Nicholas, was relegated to third place.
Labour's Douglas Alexander, a young Edinburgh Lawyer, increased his party's vote by 10.5%. However, buoyed by success in England, Labour had insisted that they were going to win Perth & Kinross. Their failure to do so somewhat marred the effect of their otherwise extremely impressive by-election result - the only one in which they had increased their vote since 1978. In the Scotsman Ian MacWhirter commented 'Offered the choice of Tony Blair's Tory lite, it appears that Perth & Kinross preferred the altogether stronger brew of SNP Heavy'.
The SNP won the seats of Motherwell (1945), Hamilton (1967) and Glasgow Govan (1973 and 1988) in by-elections, only to lose them at the following elections. However, Perth is likely to be somewhat different. Perth is the only seat in Scotland which the SNP have contested in every election since the Second World War and it is the first time that they have won a seat in which they were previously serious contenders. Perth is a seat which would very likely have fallen to the SNP in 1997 in any case. The SNP advanced to second place in the 1992 Perth & Kinross District Council elections. They took control of Tayside Regional Council in 1994 and of Perth & Kinross Unitary Council in 1995 with 41% of the vote.
Perth's MP has a degree in Politics from Perth University, in Western Australia, where her family emigrated to when she was 8. On her return to Scotland in the late 1970s, she joined the staff of the SNP and graduated as a lawyer. Roseanna Cunningham has been an member of the SNP National Executive since 1991, and was Vice Chairman for Local Government from 1990-1992. Well know as a republican, a feminist, and a Star Trek Fan, she had two years to prove her qualities as an energetic and hardworking MP.
The 1997 Westminster election was a rerun of the by-election with Roseanna Cunningham again facing Conservative John Godfrey and Labour's Douglas Alexander. Roseanna Cunningham became the first ever SNP by-election victor to hold their seat at the following election despite the boundary changes which favoured the Tories. She held Perth with 36.4 % of the vote and a 3,141 majority. The real competition here was, as during the by-election, between Labour and the Conservatives for second place. In 1999, John Godfrey won back second position from Labour's Douglas Alexander. The two candidates fates were somewhat similar. While Mr Godfrey has disappeared from the face of Scottish politics, Douglas Alexander contested the Paisley South by-election for Labour and was dubbed the 'Invisible Man' of Scottish politics when he attempted to avoid the press. Since then Mr Alexander has been spotted from time to time, giving a highly amusing performance at the Hamilton South by-election which Labour almost lost to the SNP. Douglas Alexander occasionally writes for Labour, either anonymously or using his pen name of Gordon Brown.
Roseanna Cunningham stepped down to concentrate on the Scottish Parliament in 2001 and was replaced by Annabelle Ewing, daughter of Winnie Ewing ,the victor of the 1967 Hamilton by-election. In the 1999 Scottish election Annabelle Ewing contested Stirling, which had been the seat of Scottish Secretary Lord Forsyth of Drumlean between 1983 and 1997. Annabelle Ewing increased the SNP vote there by no less than 13.3 %, pushing Tory Brian Monteith into third place and reducing the majority of Labour's Sylvia Jackson to 3,981, from being 14,630 votes behind Labour at the 1997 Westminster election.
Wee Doddie Robertson was booted out of the cabinet in 1999 and given a peerage as Lord Robertson of Port Ellen as a prelude to being shuffled off into the sunset as Secretary General of NATO. This caused a by-election in his Hamilton South seat where Robertson had a 15,878 majority, making it the fifth safest seat in Scotland. Nevertheless, Labour remembered Hamilton in 1967 and were taking no chances - in an unprecedented move they decided to hold a snap by-election in the middle of the SNP annual conference. Also remembering Hamilton in 1967 the SNP selected Annabelle Ewing, the daughter of Winnie as their contestant. The result was seen as a forgone conclusion and Labour were expected to hold Hamilton South with a comfortable majority. In the event, when the BBC announced that a recount was to be held, Labour spokesman Douglas Alexander went white and almost fell off his seat. There was a 22.6 % swing from Labour to the SNP and Labour's Bill Tynan scraped in as MP for Hamilton South with a majority of just 556 (2.7 %) over Annabelle Ewing. Labour's decision to hold the by-election in the middle of the SNP conference was vindicated as otherwise they might easily have lost the seat. Having already lost Govan twice to the SNP, losing Hamilton twice would have caused a political sensation.
In the 2001 general election the result in Perth was closer even than the October 1974 result in Kinross & West Perthshire when Nicholas Fairbairn was elected with a majority of 53 over the SNP. Annabelle Ewing took 29.6 % of the vote and 11,237 votes while Tory Elizabeth Smith took 11,189 votes and 29.6 %, allowing Annabelle Ewing become the fourth member of the Ewing clan to be elected to parliament following her mother Winnie in 1967, her sister-in-law Margaret in 1974 and her brother Fergus in 1999 with a majority of 48 votes.
Labour's Marion Dingwell came third with 25.5 % with Vicki Harris of the Lib Dems taking 12.8 %, and Frank Byrne of the SSP winning 2.4 %.
In 1999, like all six of the Scottish National Party's Westminster MPs, Roseanna Cunningham contested her Perth seat in the Holyrood elections. There was very little change in the percentages won by each candidate since the 1997 Westminster election. Roseanna Cunningham took 36.3 % of the vote (down 0.1 %), 5.4 % and 2,027 votes ahead of Conservative Ian Stevenson who took 30.9 % (up 1.5 %). Labour's Jillian Richards too 23.3 % (down 1.4 %) and Lib Dem Charles Brodie took 9.5 % (up 1.5 %).
Ms Cunninghame is an advocate by career and the SNP MP for Perth spent her formative years in Perth, Australia after her family emigrated. She obtained a politics degree in Australia before returning to Scotland in 1970s when she joined the SNP staff. She studied Law in Scotland and worked as a solicitor in Local Government before being called for the bar. She has held numerous offices in the SNP including membership of the National Executive Committee and Vice Convenor for Local Government. Roseanna Cunningham is a popular constituency MP and was probably the first Scottish MP to set up her own web site. Roseanna Cunningham was Convenor of the Justice & Home Affairs Committee from 1999 until September 2000 when she succeeded John Swinney as Deputy Leader of the SNP following Alex Salmond's retiral after 10 years as National Convenor. Roseanna Cunninghame obtained 391 votes (48.2 %) compared to 312 votes (38.5 %) for Kenny MacAskill, and 108 votes (13.3 %) for Peter Kearney in the first ballot After Peter Kearney's votes had been redistributed, Roseanna Cunningham took 457 votes (58.6 %) compared to 323 votes (41.4 %) for Kenny MacAskill.
The Tory candidate is Alexander Stewart while Labour have selected Robert Ball. The Lib Dem candidate is Gordon Campbell, Philip Stott is contesting the seat for the SSP, while Kenneth Buchanan is the Scottish People's Alliance candidate.
Assessment:
Rank on Conservative hit list: 3
Swing required for Conservative gain: 2.71 % from Scottish National Party to Conservative
Rank on Labour hit list: 5
Swing required for Labour gain: 6.48 % from Scottish National Party to Labour
| Logo | Party | Candidate | Votes | % | % change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Scottish National Party | Roseanna Cunningham MP | 13,570 | 36.29 % | - 0.09 % |
|
Conservative | Ian Stevenson | 11,543 | 30.87 % | + 1.54 % |
|
Labour | Jillian Richards | 8,725 | 23.33 % | - 1.44 % |
|
Liberal Democrat | Charles Brodie | 3,558 | 9.51 % | + 1.47 % |
| SNP win | SNP majority | 2,027 | 5.42 % | - 1.63 % |
| Logo | Party | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Scottish National Party | 11,069 | 29.58 % |
|
Conservative & Unionist Party | 10,632 | 28.41 % |
|
Labour | 9,236 | 24.68 % |
|
Liberal Democrats | 4,167 | 11.14 % |
 |
Scottish Green Party | 1,531 | 4.09 % |
 |
Socialist Labour Party | 389 | 1.04 % |
|
Scottish Socialist Party | 263 | 0.70 % |
 |
Pro Life Alliance | 82 | 0.22 % |
 |
Natural Law Party | 53 | 0.14 % |
|
SNP maj | 437 | 1.17 % |
| Logo | Party | Candidate | Votes | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Scottish National Party | Roseanna Cunningham | 16,209 | 36.38% |
|
Conservative | John Godfrey | 13,068 | 29.33% |
|
Labour | Douglas Alexander | 11,036 | 24.77% |
|
Liberal Democrat | Charles Brodie | 3,583 | 8.04% |
 |
Referendum | Robert MacAuley | 366 | 0.82% |
 |
UK Independence | Matthew Henderson | 289 | 0.65% |
|
SNP hold (notional SNP gain from Con) | SNP majority | 3,141 | 7.05% |
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