 | 'My list of previous convictions includes voting for dangerous revolutionary measures such as benefits for the children of single parents and grants for students from low-income families. If that disqualifies me from being a Labour candidate for the Scottish Parliament, then I honestly wonder where the Labour Party is going.' Falkirk West Labour MP, Dennis Canavan, 18 th June 1998. |  |
Falkirk has a tradition of being a battlefield. In 1298, the army led by Edward I, who styled himself 'Lord Parmount of Scotland', crushed the schiltroms of Sir William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland, while in 1746, General Hawley's dragoons were routed by the retreating Royalist army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. A less well known conflict occurred in Falkirk in 1820 when government troops crushed an uprising including a band of radicals supposedly on their way to seize the munitions at the Carron ironworks which produced the famous Carronade naval guns.
Falkirk has also witnessed some of the biggest betrayals in Scottish history. In 1298, when the Scottish nobility deserted the Guardian of the Realm, Sir William Wallace, his army was overwhelmed by the archers and heavy cavalry of Edward I, Hammer of the Scots. Exactly seven hundred years later, there was another betrayal in Falkirk. Local Labour MP Dennis Canavan was endorsed overwhelmingly by his own constituency party but rejected as a Labour candidate for the Scottish parliament by ultra-Blairite Rosemary McKenna's Network cabal under orders from the latest Hammer of the Scots, Tony Blair. Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar claimed that Canavan was 'simply not good enough.' The electorate of Falkirk West showed what they thought of New Labour's gerrymandering by electing Dennis Canavan as their MSP. Not only was Dennis Canavan elected, but he also obtained the largest majority of any MSP in the parliament. The official Labour candidate, Cllr Ross Martin, hid in the car park during a count which saw the Labour vote here fall by no less than 40.6 %. For once in Scottish electoral history, the settled will of the people triumphed over cynical manipulators.
Following the resignation of Dennis Canavan as a Westminster MP, the troops are lining up for a new Battle of Falkirk. In the present however, the conflict is between the Scottish National Party and Labour, between those whose model of sovereignty is the Scottish people, and those whose loyalty lies with the Crown and Westminster.
Prior to 1983 the Falkirk area was said to contain the messiest constituencies in Scotland. The town of Falkirk itself was based on an old burgh constituency which comprised the towns of Stirling, Falkirk & Grangemouth. This seat was cut in two by the constituency of West Stirlingshire. To add to the complications, the eastern suburbs of Falkirk were twinned with Clackmannan on the north of the Forth. The electoral map was described as looking like 'the board for some game of warlords trying to conquer the world but getting only isolated corners that did not quite fit together.'
The new Falkirk West seat was created for the 1983 election with 45% of its voters coming from Stirling, Falkirk & Grangemouth, 36 % from West Stirlingshire and 19 % from Clackmannan & East Stirlingshire. It was a compact seat including half of Falkirk and the towns of Dunipace, Denny, Larbert, Dennyloanhead and Bonnybridge. Since 1997, the constituency includes the whole of the town of Falkirk, which is the smallest town in Scotland to boast two football teams - Falkirk and East Stirlingshire.
This area of Scotland has been Labour territory since 1935, although the Scottish National Party made breakthroughs in the council and the East Stirlingshire constituency in 1970s. For over 20 years, Falkirk council has been controlled by Labour, but that control has been shaky at times. In the 1977 District Council elections, the SNP built on their advances at Westminster to win a crushing victory over Labour in Falkirk. Two years later, however, Labour made a come back in the regional elections, and in 1980, the socialists regained control of the district council. They have held the majority of the seats since then, but currently form a minority administration having lost seven wards in the 1999 local elections, with a further by-election due in Kinneil & Whitecross.
The SNP have a long standing tradition in Falkirk, having first contested the Stirling & Falkirk Burghs by-election in 1948 when they come third with 8.2% of the vote. They have contested Falkirk in every parliamentary election since 1948, with the exception of the 1951 general election when they only put up candidates in the Western Isles and Perth & East Perthshire.
There was a second by-election in Falkirk in 1971 in the Stirling, Falkirk & Grangemouth constituency. This was won by Labour's Harry, now Lord, Ewing, one of the ministers responsible for the ill-fated devolution bill of the 1970s. In second place was Dr Robert MacIntyre, onetime SNP MP for Motherwell, who increased the SNP vote from 14.5 % in the 1970 general election to 34.6% in the by-election. In the February 1974 general election Harry Ewing and Robert MacIntyre again contested the seat, with the SNP vote only falling by 0.1 % from the by-election high. In the second election of that year in October the SNP vote rose to 39.8 % and Dr MacIntyre reduced Harry Ewing's majority to 1,766, just one of many SNP close misses in that election. In 1979, J.A. Donachy contested the seat for the SNP vote but their vote collapsed and they fell to third place. Harry Ewing obtained a 15,618 majority, more than the 13,881 votes his nearest rivals, the Conservatives had polled. There were major boundary changes for the 1983 election and Harry Ewing was adopted as the candidate for Falkirk East, which has remained a safe Labour seat.
A second seat from which the new Falkirk West constituency was drawn was Clackmannan & East Stirlingshire which was held by Labour until February 1974. Three weeks before that election, the SNP adopted broadcaster and TV journalist George Reid, now deputy Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, as their candidate. After a rousing campaign Mr Reid shocked a moribund Labour organisation when he came from third place to win by 3,500 votes obtaining the biggest swing of any seat in the whole of the UK. In October 1974, George Reid increased his majority to 7,341, the highest of any of the eleven SNP MPs. The Labour MP that George Reid deposed was Dick Douglas, who had represented the seat since 1970. Mr Douglas became Labour MP for Dunfermline from 1979 until 1983 and for Dunfermline West from 1983 until he resigned the Labour whip over their lack of opposition to the poll-tax and joined the SNP. In 1979, the Labour candidate in Clackmannan was a young teacher, Martin O'Neil. Although the SNP's Scottish vote crashed from 30.4 % in October 1974 to 17.3 % in 1979, in the SNP-held seats their vote held up well - but not quite well enough. After a hard-fought campaign, Mr O'Neil beat Mr Reid by 984 votes. Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire was one of five seats which the SNP lost by under 1,000 votes in the 1979 election.
The constituency of Stirlingshire West, also a Labour seat since 1935, was also contested by the SNP's first MP, Robert MacIntyre. In 1966, Dr MacIntyre came second to Labour with 26.0 % of the vote, the SNP's second best result out of the 23 seats which it contested that year. In 1970 Dr MacIntyre's vote fell to 21.4 % and he came third behind the Tories. In February 1974, the new SNP candidate, Mrs Janette Jones increased the Nationalist vote to 29.7%. In October, polling 38.2%, she came within 367 votes of unseating Labour's new candidate, Dennis Canavan. Indeed, many believe that Mrs Jones would almost certainly have been elected MP for West Stirlingshire, were it not for the intervention of the Liberals who contested the seat for the first time since 1923.
Since October 1974 when he came within just 367 of losing Stirlingshire West, Dennis Canavan has never been threatened - at least not by members of other political parties - and has enjoyed majorities of between 21.9 % and 35.9 %. In 1979, the SNP vote collapsed and Mrs Jones was pushed into third place. Dennis Canavan held Stirlingshire West with a massive 10,356 majority over Conservative Mrs Anna McCurley, who was to represent Renfrew West & Inverclyde between 1983 and 1987. In the 1999 Scottish general election she contested Eastwood for the Liberal Democrats after having being rejected as Conservative candidate there in for the 1997 Westminster election.
In the major boundary changes of 1983, Mr Canavan was selected for the new seat of Falkirk West and won it with a majority of 8,978 votes. Conservative Iain Mitchell came second with 7,690 votes, just 213 votes ahead of Marshall Harris for the newly emergent Liberal/Alliance, while the SNP's Brian Cochrane dropped into fourth place with 4,739 votes.
The 1987 election was a watershed for Labour and Dennis Canavan to 52.6 % of the vote giving him an enormous 13,522 majority over the Conservatives David Thomas. The SNP's Ian Goldie fought back to within 8 votes of the Tories, pushing the Lib Dems Marshall Harris back into fourth place.
In the 1992 election the SNP's Bill Houston regained second place with 24.3 %, but even then Mr Canavan's 9,812 majority was 462 votes more than the 9,350 which were cast for the SNP. Despite increasing their vote by 2.2 %, Tory Michael McDonald was pushed into thrid place, while the Lib Dem's Martin Reilley took 6.2 % of the vote, 14.2 % down on their 1983 high.
The inclusion of the whole of Falkirk itself in this constituency at the 1997 general election should have helped Dennis Canavan. Indeed he increased his majority to 13,783, up from a notional 11,430, due to a swing of 7.3 % at the expense of the Conservatives. The SNP vote was steady here with David Alexander, councillor for the Victoria ward on Falkirk Council taking only 0.1 % less than the party obtained in 1992, compared to a 4.4 % drop in neighbouring Falkirk East.
Dennis Canavan had always been a rebel. He was called 'You short crisp obscenity!' by Dennis Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Callaghan Labour government of the 1970s when he rebelled on spending cuts. He belonged to the nationalist wing of the Labour party, having been a member of Scottish Labour Action and Scotland United. He was a poll tax non payer and rebelled against the Labour leadership on several occasions including the Gulf War in 1990-91, on Maastricht in 1993. After the 1997 Labour landslide he also rebelled on cutting benefits for the children of single parents and grants for students from low-income families.
Dennis Canavan had the support of his constituency party which put in a motion at the Perth Labour conference in 1998 describing the planned cuts in benefits for single-parent families as 'These changes are economically inept, morally repugnant and spiritually bereft.' The party conference endorsed the motion and the party leadership, embarrassed by a rebuke from their own party conference, would never forgive Canavan or the Falkirk West constituency.
The leadership's chance of revenge came at the selection of Labour candidates for the new Scottish parliament. Dennis Canavan was one of only nine of the 56 Scottish Labour Party MPs who wished to stand for the Scottish Parliament. Like Michael Connarty in neighbouring Falkirk East and Ian Davidson in Glasgow Govan he was rejected by the Blairites, in theory for not being good enough, but in actual fact for being a nationalist and left-winger who would put the interests of Falkirk and Scotland before those of Tony Blair and London Labour.
Despite obtaining the backing of over 95 % of his constituency party, Dennis Canavan was banned from standing as a Labour candidate. The constituency office bearers resigned en masse and Dennis Canavan announced that if necessary, he would contest Falkirk West against the official Labour candidate. Once he had submitted his nomination papers he was beyond the pale and was expelled from the Labour party.
Labour were confident that they would hold on to Falkirk West. Party rebels had tended to be steamrollered by the Labour machine. The only rebel to hold on to his seat had been Bob Maclennan who had defected to the SDP in 1982, and that was in Caithness & Sutherland where personalities counted for much more than mere party labels. The next best result obtained by a rebel had been in Ayrshire South in 1979 when Jim Sillars, the founder of the Scottish Labour Party, was beaten by just 1,521 votes by the official Labour party candidate, George Foulkes. Paisley had also been won back in 1979 after John Robertson had defected to the Scottish Labour Party. Greenock & Port Glasgow had been regained in 1983 after Dickson Mabon had defected to the SDP. The local Liberals had refused to let him stand there for the SDP and he contested, and closely lost, the neighbouring three-way marginal of Renfrew West & Inverclyde. In Edinburgh Leith in 1992, the deselected MP Ron Brown had come fifth with 10.3 % of the vote. Dunfermline West was regained in 1992 after Dick Douglas had defected to the Scottish National Party. What chance did Dennis Canavan stand in Falkirk West?
Dennis Canavan chose to stand for the Scottish Parliament not as an Independent or Independent Labour candidate but as the 'Member of Parliament for Falkirk West'. In the election he obtained 18,511 votes, 55.0 % of those cast, while the official Labour candidate, Cllr Ross Martin, West Lothian Council education convenor, took just 6,319 (18.8 %), down by a massive 40.6 % on the Labour vote in the 1997 general election. As the votes for Dennis Canavan piled higher and higher, Ross Martin hid in the car park until 10 minutes before the result was announced. Cllr Martin had been so confident of winning the seat that he had sold his house in Livingstone in order to move to Falkirk West.
Dennis Canavan also won 27,700 votes (8.4 %) on the Central Scotland Regional list, and therefore even had he been defeated in Falkirk West, he would have taken the fifth list seat and have become a member of the Scottish Parliament.
After he was elected, Dennis Canavan offered the hand of friendship to Donald Dewar, hoping to be accepted back into the Labour party. He was rebuked by the presiding officer, Lord Steel of Aikwood for crossing the floor of the house. Dennis Canavan admitted that he wished to remain an independent spirit and the Labour party refused to consider his re-admission before the statutory five year period.
Dennis Canavan announced that he would be resigning from Westminster in order to concentrate on the Scottish parliament. However, on the request of the Labour party he agreed not to call on by-election until a candidate could be selected by the local party to replace him rather than have a candidate imposed by London.
On the second October 2000, Dennis Canavan announced that he would be resigning at the end of the month and the parties went into by-election mode. However, the end of the month came and went without any resignation. At the beginning of November it was revealed that Dennis Canavan had been engaged in talks with the new First Minister Henry McLeish about the possibility of being allowed to rejoin the Labour party.
The by-election, it was appeared, was off, and Canavan, once seen as the man of honour who had taken on the moral corruption and nepotism of New Labour and won, was accused of being a turncoat. However, by the 20 th of November, Canavan had revoked his application to rejoin the Labour party. He said that he had discovered that his exclusion from the Labour Party's list of approved candidates for last year's election to the Scottish Parliament had been ordered by none other than Tony Blair himself.
The by-election was on again and Labour moved the writ for the 21 st of December, just four days before Christmas, obviously hoping that if there is an upset in Falkirk West that it will go almost unnoticed amongst the Christmas festivities. Shades of Hamilton South when Labour held the by-election in the middle of the SNP conference - and still came close to losing the seat.
Labour will have been heartened by having held both Glasgow Anniesland seats following the tragic death of First Minister Donald Dewar in October. However, circumstances in Falkirk West are very different to those in Anniesland. Back in 1997, Dennis Canavan obtained a 13,783 (35.9 %) majority over the SNP. In the Scottish parliamentary elections, Labour were just 333 votes ahead of the SNP in Falkirk West, taking 18.8 % of the vote to 17.8 % for the SNP. In the list vote the result was even closer with Labour just 218 votes ahead, taking 24.7 % compared to 24.0 % for the SNP. Much will obviously depend on what happens to the Canavan vote, which added up to 55 % in the Scottish Parliamentary election. In the European elections, where Dennis Canavan was not a candidate, Labour was 671 votes ahead of the SNP in Falkirk West taking 4,323 votes (36.1 %) compared to 3,652 (30.5 %) for the Nationalists.
Clearly there is everything to play for in Falkirk West.
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