Candidates and Constituency Assessments

'I'm delighted that we have turned the tide against the corrupt power of nationalism.' Scottish Tory MP, Peter Duncan, 8 th June 2001.

Dumfries & Galloway

Candidates

	Labour	Russell Brown MP
	Scottish National Party	Douglas Henderson
	Conservative & Unionist	Peter Duncan MP
	Liberal Democrat	Keith Legg
	Scottish Socialist Party	John Dennis
	Scottish Green Party	John Schofield
	Operation Christian Vote	Pastor Mark Smith

Candidates

The Labour candidate is Russell Brown MP. He was born in 1951 and brought up in Annan where he lives with his wife and two daughters. Before his election, he worked for ICI where he was also a TGWU official. He is also a JP and served as a Labour Councillor on Dumfries & Galloway council from 1986 until 1997 and was leader of the Labour group. Russell Brown won Dumfries from the Tories in 1997 when he increased the Labour vote by a record 17.9 % following the retiral of Sir Hector Munro who had represented the constituency since 1964. In 2001 Mr Brown's majority fell from 9,643 to 8,834 due to a reduced turnout, but he increased his vote by a further 1.4 % in this once Tory stronghold. Mr Brown will not be complacent however, as the boundary changes have reduced his majority from 21 % to a notional 12 % and the 2003 Scottish parliamentary elections saw a significant recovery by the Tories in Dumfries.

The SNP candidate is Douglas Henderson. He has been a lifelong nationalist. He was President of Edinburgh University Nationalist Club in his student days and subsequently held virtually every office at branch and constituency level in the years that followed. He was a Vice-Chairman of the Party and eventually Senior Vice-Chairman (now described as Depute leader). He was MP for East Aberdeenshire from 1974-79, having won two elections to the seat in 1974. During his five and a half years in the House of Commons he was SNP Chief Whip and then Spokesman on Employment and Industry,to which he brought his extensive experience as a management consultant. He fought the seat again in 1983 losing by less than 1000 votes. A prolonged period of misdiagnosed illness sidelined him from active politics until he had a major operation in 1998 for cancer. After several months of chemotherapy he was given the All Clear and since then he has resumed active duty for the Party, standing as a Euro-candidate in 2004 and now embarked on winning the Dumfries and Galloway seat for which he has been selected for next year's Westminster Election.

Peter Duncan is currently Conservative MP for the Galloway & Upper Nithsdale. He is also Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, which is no longer a Shadow cabinet post. Peter Duncan was born in Kilwinning, Ayrshire, and brought up in the area. He is married with two children.

Lib Dem candidate, Keith Legg, was born in 1973 and educated at madras College, St Andrews, the University of Dundee, and the University of Illinois in the USA where he graduated with a MA in MA European Studies & Modern History. Married with one duaghtre, he works for a life assurance company in Edinburgh. His interests include Education, Europe, Foreign Affairs, music, theatre, cinema and travel. As well as being a Lib Dem election agent at District, Regional and Europen elections, he stood for the London Borough of Sutton in 1988. At the 1997 and 2001 Westminster elections, he contested Hamilton North & Bellshill, coming fourth with 5.1 % and 7.8 % respectively. At the 2003 Scottish election, he contested Motherwell & Wishaw, coming sixth (after the SSP and the SSCUP's John Swinburne) with 4.2 %.

The SSP candidate is John Dennis who is ne of the founding members of the Dumfries Scottish Socialist Party branch, John is a teacher at Dumfries High School and is an EIS trade union activist. He has been politically active for 35 years and was co-ordinator of the Dumfries & Galloway Anti-Poll Tax Federation from 1989-91. John is married and has two teenage children. He has twice stood for the SSP in Dumfries, in the 2001 Westminster election when he came fifth with 1.65 % and at the 2003 Scottish Parliament election when he came fifh with 3.78 %.

The Scottish Green Party candidate is John Schofield, a secondary school teacher from Dumfries. He has been active in the campaign to stop Tesco coming to Castle Douglas, has called for sensitively sited and appropriately scaled wind farms in D&G, and has been campaigning locally for D&G farmers to receive a fair price for their produce from supermarkets.

The Operation Christian Vote candidate is Pastor Mark Smith.

Peter Clarke had intended standing as an Independent but is finally not a candidate He is a journalist and former private secretary to Enoch Powell. He has been a Conservative party member since 1959 and in the 1980s he was Conservative candidate for East Lothian. He stood down after it was alleged that he had contributed financially to a Federation of Conservative Students pamphlet that backed changing Scots law on incest. In 1992 the Independent newspaper lost a libel court case for alleging Clarke had stood down because he favoured legalising child sex. The Tory party recently abandoned an internal mediation process which would have declared Clarke innocent. As Clarke has been effectively blacklisted as a Conservative candidate, he has decided to stand against Scottish Tory Chairman Peter Duncan MP. Clarke is a former client of Scottish Tory leader David McLetchie MSP at his legal firm Tods Murray, and has the support of ex Glasgow Cathcart MP Sir Teddy Taylor who is retiring from Westminster at this election.

Notional 2001 result

Logo	Party	Denver			Baxter
		Votes	%		Votes	%
	Labour	16,327	32.36 %		15,851	32.31 %
	Conservative & Unionist	16,186	32.08 %		14,811	30.19 %
	Scottish National Party	12,660	25.09 %		12,846	26.18 %
	Liberal Democrat	4,465	8.85 %		4,677	9.53 %
	Scottish Socialist Party	819	1.62 %		879	1.79 %
Notional Labour win	Notional Labour majority	141	0.28 %		1,040	2.13 %

Local Government wards in the constituency

This consists of the whole of the old Galloway & Upper Nithsdale consittuency (with the exception of three wards shared with the old Dumfries constituency) plus eleven wards from the old Dumfries constituency. Two wards shared between the two constituencies are now wholly within Dumfries & Galloway constituency.