Candidates and Constituency Assessments

'Shona Robison, the SNP's deputy health spokeswoman, yesterday claimed the idea of removing the responsibility of meat inspection from government agencies was "a recipe for disaster." There was a real danger that self- regulation would lead to a conflict between safety and profit, she said. She said public confidence in food production in this country already had declined since the BSE and E. coli crises. She said the protection of public health should not be at the mercy of privatisation. Frances Horsburgh in the Herald, 18 th April 2001.

Dundee East (North East Scotland Region)

	Shona Robison MSP		John McAllion MP
	Edward Prince		Clive Sneddon
Ind	James Gourlay

Dundee was a single two-member constituency until 1950 when it was split into Dundee East and Dundee West. In 1997 the population of the City Dundee was reduced from 190,000 to 155,000 due to Tory gerrymandering of Angus and Perth & Kinross.

Dundee is perceived to be a Labour stronghold largely through the reputation of the left-wing Dundee district council which raised the Palestinian flag over the city chambers and twinned the city with Nabulus in the West Bank long before Monklands District Council gained notoriety.

In fact, Dundee has a very mixed political tradition and was represented by Liberals at the beginning of the century including Winston Churchill who, prior to before 1914 was a supporter of Home Rule for Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Churchill represented North West Manchester until he was appointed as President of the Board of Trade in 1908. It was then customary to stand for re-election when appointed to cabinet and Churchill narrowly lost the by-election in April 1908 to a Tory. Less than a month later he was a candidate for Dundee, then a two member constituency and was elected MP. Churchill's term as a Scottish MP ended on 15 th November 1922 when, after illness, he finished fourth behind a Prohibitionist (Ernest ('Neddy') Scrymgeour, the only Prohibitionist ever elected in Britain), a Labourite and a local Liberal. Churchill later wrote: 'I found myself without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix.'

There have been two post-war by-elections in Dundee East. The first was in July 1952 when Labour comfortably held the seat ahead of the Tories with the SNP in third place with 2,931 votes (7.4 %). However, things were dramatically different in March 1973.

When the MP for Dundee East, George (later Lord) Thomson resigned in 1973, the rivalry in the local Labour party had reached the level of vendettas. Mr George Machin from Yorkshire was nominated by the engineering union in an attempt to avoid bloodshed.

In the subsequent by-election Mr Machin was elected with a mere 1,100 majority over the Scottish National Party's Mr Gordon Wilson, who increased the SNP vote from 8.9% in 1970 to 30.2% in 1973. Eight months later, Margo MacDonald delivered a humiliating blow to Labour when she won her famous SNP by-election victory in Glasgow Govan.

A year after the Dundee East by-election, Ted Heath went to the country. Gordon Wilson increased the SNP's percentage vote to 39.5% and ousted Mr Machin, who had been MP for only 364 days. In the second election of that year in October, Gordon Wilson and Mr Machin clashed for the third time. Bill Walker, who became Tory MP for Perth & East Perthshire in 1979, was the Conservative candidate. Gordon Wilson took 22,120 votes (47.7 %) and increased his majority over George Machin to 6,983. The Conservatives, who had once commanded around 20,000 votes here, fell to a low of 7,784.

In 1979, the Labour party candidate was ex-Communist Jimmy Reid, now a columnist with the Herald. Although the SNP lost 9 of their 11 seats, Mr Wilson held on with a reduced majority of 2,519 over Labour.

The boundary changes here in 1983 were minor and gave Gordon Wilson a notional 2,200 majority here. Although 1983 saw a general decline in the SNP vote to a low of 11.8 %, in Dundee East, Gordon Wilson increased his majority to 5,016 over Labour's Cllr Charles Bowman.

By 1987, Mr Wilson had represented Dundee East for 13 years and was one of Scotland's most hard working MPs. The seat was considered to be a safe SNP seat. However, in 1987, the Right Honourable Mrs Margaret Hilda Thatcher, First Lord of the Treasury (or simply as 'that bloody woman!' to many Scots) was at her most unpopular in Scotland. While her party was re-elected with flying colours in England, in Scotland the Alliance vote crashed and there was a 6% swing from the Conservatives to Labour. Eleven of Scotland's 21 Tory MPs lost their seats and the Labour tidal wave even reached Dundee East. Gordon Wilson's vote fell from 20,276 to 18,524 while Labour's increased from 15,260 to 19,539, allowing Tayside Regional Council convenor, John McAllion to take the seat with a majority of 1,015.

In 1992 David Coutts replaced Mr Wilson in the SNP corner. Although the SNP vote rose by over 7% in Scotland, in Dundee East it fell by almost 7%, giving John McAllion an increased majority of 4,564, a sure sign that both Gordon Wilson and John McAllion were popular MPs with high personal votes.

Mr McAllion is on the nationalist wing of the Labour party and his appointment as Scottish Constitutional Spokesman seemed a natural one. When George Robertson announced Labour's referendum U-turn in 1996 , Donald Dewar, said 'There is no change of policy.' Astonishingly, Labour's London leadership had not seen the need to consult their Scottish Constitutional Spokesperson about the U-turn and John McAllion learned about it by chance when meeting Jim Wallace in a TV studio. McAllion resigned his post in protest and ex-Labour Minister Lord Ewing of Kirkford resigned as co-chairman of the Scottish Constitutional Convention over Labour's 'no change of policy'.

In the Labour landslide of 1997, John McAllion took 20,718 votes (51.1 %) increasing his majority from a notional 5,517 to an actual 9,961 over the SNP's Shona Robison.

In 2001, John McAllion had been elected to the Scottish parliament and Labour selected Cllr Iain Luke, who represented the local ward of Tay Bridges, as John McAllion's replacement. In 1995, Iain Luke was elected to the West End ward which he held with 69.2 % of the vote in a four way contest. In 1999, following boundary changes, Cllr Luke won Tay Bridges with 48.5 % of the vote.

The Scottish National Party was their National Secretary Stewart Hosie, who was the SNP's Social Security & Pensions spokesman in the Scottish general election. Stewart Hosie contested Kirkcaldy in 1992, doubling the SNP vote from 11.7 % to 22.6 %, taking them from fourth to second place behind Labour. He also contested Kirkcaldy in the 1997 general election and the 1999 Scottish general election when he increased the SNP vote by a further 9.4 % to 32.4 %.

The Tories selected Alan Donnelly. However, the days when the Tories were an electoral force to be reckoned with in Dundee had long gone. In the 1997 general election they took 15.8 %, in the Scottish election they took 14.0 %, while in the 1999 Euro elections, one of the best Tory results in decades, they only managed 17.6 % in Dundee East.

The Lib Dem's once again selected Raymond Lawrie who took 6.8 % in the Scottish election. The Scottish Socialist Party candidate was Harvey Duke, a youth worker. He had already contested Dundee East twice, in 1997 when he came sixth with 0.6 % and in 1999 when he came fifth with 1.7 % of the vote.

At the 2001 Westminster election, Iain Luke was elected with 45.2 % of the vote and a 4,475 majority over the SNP's Stewart Hosie who polled 31.4 %. The Tories came third with 12.1 % followed by the Lib Dems with 8.6 % and the SSP with 2.7 %.

In the 1999 Scottish parliamentary elections, John McAllion was one of a handful of Labour MPs who decided to enter Scottish politics. The Scottish National Party's candidate was once more Shona Robison who had contested the seat at the 1997 Westminster election. Despite the presence of John McAllion, there was a swing of 7.8 % to the SNP and John McAllion was elected as MSP for Dundee East with 43.3 % of the vote a majority of 2,854 (9.0 %) over Shona Robison, down from 9,961 at the 1997 general election. Shona Robison took 34.3 % of the vote, up 7.7 % on 1997, and was elected as the North of Scotland's fifth MSP thanks to her third place on the SNP's list.

John McAllion is one of the few Labour MPs who was genuinely in favour of devolution for Scotland and who could see no problem with independence if that if what the Scots wish. His honest, forthright left wing and pro Scottish views have often resulted in him being in conflict with the Labour's London Leadership. He was one of only nine Scottish Labour MPs who applied to represent their party at Holyrood. Although Rosemary McKenna's Network cabal sabotaged the chances of Michael Connarty and rejected Dennis Canavan and Ian Davidson, they did not feel strong enough to remove the two other troublesome Scottish Labour MPs, John McAllion and Malcolm Chisholm, who resigned as Scottish Office Minister over benefits cuts. Although John McAllion was brought into Labour's election team in an attempt to neutralise him, he has still spoken out against a number of anti Scottish diktats by the London Labour Leadership. McAllion was once seen as a likely deputy to Donald Dewar at Holyrood and a potential leader of a breakaway Scottish Labour Party if, as many predict, the tensions between Unionist right and nationalist left become too much in the divided Labour presence at Holyrood. For the first 18 months, John McAllion tended to toe the party line in the Scottish Parliament, appearing to be somewhat lost. However, after that he returned to his old rebel ways. With the SNP's Alex Neil he supported Tommy Sheridan's bill for the abolition of warrant sales which was shelved by the Executive.

On the 14 th March 2003 he tabled an amendment stating that 'no case for military action against Iraq has been made'. The amendment won the support of the SNP, the Lib Dems, the three minority MSPs and the Labour MSPs Bill Butler (Glasgow Anniesland), Pauline McNeill (Glasgow Kelvin), Elaine Smith (Coatbridge & Chryston), Cathy Peattie (Falkirk West) and Susan Deacon (Edinburgh East & Musselburgh). Other Labour and Tory MSPs backed the onslaught despite the fact that it did not have the approval of the United Nations Security Council. After the amendment was overturned, McAllion called for the resignation of the whole UK and Scottish cabinets and said that if McConnell supported Blair's illegal invasion of Iraq then he was as guilty as Blair was.

John McAllion was born in Glasgow in 1948 and educated at St Augustine's Secondary. He studied at St Andrew's University and Dundee College of Education before becoming a teacher. He became a Tayside Regional councillor in 1984 and council leader two years later in 1986, before winning Dundee East from the SNP's Gordon Wilson in 1987. From then he went on to make Dundee a safe Labour seat, until 1999 when it began to look marginal once more.

Shona Robison was born in Alva in 1966 and educated at Alva Academy. She studied Social Sciences at Glasgow University and community education at Jordanhill college. She then went on to work for Glasgow Council as a community worker and care organiser. She stood in Dundee East at the 1997 Westminster election, coming second with 26.5 %, increasing that to 34.7 % in 1999. In the Scottish Parliament she was appointed Secretary of the Scottish National Party Group in May 1999 and became Shadow Deputy Health & Community Care in September 2000. She has also been deputy convenor of the Equal Opportunities Committee.

The Tory candidate is Edward Prince, Clive Sneddon is the Lib Dem candidate and James Gourlay is standing as an Independent.

Labour suffered a humiliating reverse in the 1999 local council elections when the number of Labour councillors in Dundee was halved from 28 to 14 while the SNP group increased in size from three to 10. Following a by-election win by the SNP in Logie in August 2000, Labour's majority over the SNP in the council was reduced to just two seats. The Labour embarrassment was increased by the fact that the election agent for their losing candidate was none other than Cllr Iain Luke, their Westminster candidate for Dundee East.

The collapse of the Labour vote throughout Dundee, McAllion's criticism of his own party's warmongering, and the decision of the SSP to stand down make Dundee East a seat to watch. Although Labour had a majority of almost 10,000 over the SNP at the 1997 general election, that was cut to just 2,854 in the Scottish general election of 1999. In 1999 the SNP actually 'won' the constituency in the regional list vote with a majority of 284 over Labour. The SNP also 'won' the constituency in the 1999 European elections with a 1,502 majority over Labour, taking 38.1 % of the vote compared to 28.1 % for Labour. If John McAllion manages to hold on in Dundee East, it will be thanks to his personal vote rather than votes for the Labour party.

Assessment:

Rank on Scottish National Party hit list: 9
Swing required for Scottish National Party gain: 4.51 % from Labour to Scottish National Party

Dundee East (North East Scotland Region)

6 th May 1999 Holyrood Election - Constituency result

Logo	Party	Candidate	Votes	%	% change
	Labour	John McAllion MP	13,703	43.28 %	- 7.84 %
	Scottish National Party	Shona Robison	10,849	34.26 %	+ 7.72 %
	Conservative	Iain Mitchell	4,428	13.98 %	- 1.80 %
	Liberal Democrat	Raymond Lawrie	2,153	6.80 %	+ 2.66 %
	Scottish Socialist Party	Harvey Duke	530	1.67 %	+ 1.33 %
	Lab win	Lab majority	2,854	9.02 %	- 15.56 %

6 th May 1999 Holyrood Election - Regional list result

Logo	Party	Votes	%
	Scottish National Party	11,449	36.13 %
	Labour	11,167	35.24 %
	Conservative & Unionist Party	4,756	15.01 %
	Liberal Democrats	2,490	7.86 %
	Scottish Green Party	721	2.29 %
	Scottish Socialist Party	534	1.69 %
	Socialist Labour Party	457	1.44 %
	Natural Law Party	73	0.23 %
	Sleaze Buster	22	0.07 %
	Hamish Watt	20	0.06 %
	SNP maj	284	0.89 %

1 st May 1997 Westminster Election

Logo	Party	Candidate	Votes	%
	Labour	John McAllion	20,718	51.12%
	Scottish National Party	Shona Robison	10,757	26.54%
	Conservative	Cllr Bruce Mackie	6,397	15.78%
	Liberal Democrat	Gurudeo Saluja	1,677	4.14%
	Referendum	Edward Galloway	601	1.48%
	Scottish Sociazlist Alliance	Harvey Duke	232	0.57%
	Natural Law	Elisabeth MacKenzie	146	0.36%
	Lab hold	Lab majority	9,961	24.58%

Links

• Shona Robison MSP (Scottish National Party)

• Dundee SNP

• Dundee Labour Party

• Edward Prince (Conservative)

• Dundee East and Clive Sneddon (Lib Dem)