The 1938 Combined Scottish Universities by-election was a

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

held from 21 to 25 February 1938 for the Combined Scottish Universities, a

university constituency A university constituency is a constituency, used in elections to a legislature, that represents the members of one or more universities rather than residents of a geographical area. These may or may not involve plural voting, in which voters ar ...

of the British House of Commons.

Vacancy

The seat had become vacant when the National Labour

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP) (and former Prime Minister), Ramsay MacDonald had died on 9 November 1937, aged 71. He had held the seat since the by-election in 1936, having held several other seats since he was first elected to

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

at the 1906 general election.

Candidates

The parties in the National Government did not usually stand candidates against each other, and since in this case the seat was held by National Labour, there was no Unionist of

National Liberal National liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal policies and issues with elements of nationalism. Historically, national liberalism has also been used in the same meaning as conservative liberalism (right-liberalism). A seri ...

candidate. The National Government supported a "National" candidate

Sir John Anderson John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, (8 July 1882 – 4 January 1958) was a Scottish civil servant and politician who is best known for his service in the War Cabinet during the Second World War, for which he was nicknamed the "Home Front Pr ...

, a former civil servant who had been Governor of Bengal from 1932 to 1937. The Scottish National Party candidate was Andrew Dewar Gibb, the Regius Professor of Law at Glasgow University who had also contested the by-election in 1936. Two other candidates stood as

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

Result

The result was a victory for Anderson (the National candidate), won nearly 50% of the votes, the remainder being quite evenly between the other candidates. He held the seat until the university constituencies were abolished for the 1950 general election.

Votes

References

Sources