East Dunbartonshire Independent Alliance
Encyclopedia
The East Dunbartonshire Independent Alliance is a minor political party operating in East Dunbartonshire
East Dunbartonshire
This article is about the East Dunbartonshire council area of Scotland. See also East Dunbartonshire .East Dunbartonshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders onto the north-west of the City of Glasgow. It contains many of the suburbs of Glasgow as well as containing many of...

, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. They presently have two councillors on East Dunbartonshire Council: Charles Kennedy who is one of three councillors representing Campsie and Kirkintilloch North, and Jack Young who is one of three councillors representing East Kirkintilloch and Twechar.

Both Kennedy and Young were elected as Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 councillors in 2003.

Charles Kennedy was forced to sit as an independent on being expelled from the Labour Party in June 2004 accused of actively supporting an independent Scottish Parliamentary candidate http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=782&id=747112004. Jack Young then resigned from the party in support of Kennedy but chose to sit as an independent councillor without contesting a by-election.

In November 2004 these two individuals announced the formation of the Strathkelvin People's Independent Labour Party with the intention of campaigning on issues such as displeasure with council tax, and the closure of the local Stobhill Hospital and their intention to try to win support from people disillusioned with the way in which East Dunbartonshire council is being run.

An inaugural meeting was held on 6 December 2004 with it being announced beforehand that the party's name may be changed from the Strathkelvin People's Independent Labour Party. However, the name East Dunbartonshire Independent Alliance had already been registered with the Electoral Commission
Electoral Commission (United Kingdom)
The Electoral Commission is an independent body set up by the UK Parliament. It regulates party and election finance and sets standards for well-run elections...

and it is this name that the grouping (which largely seems confined to Kennedy and Young themselves) has continued to use, with the more unwieldy Strathkelvin People's Independent Labour Party not seemingly having been used at all, beyond the outset of the party's formation and early days.

During the 2007 Local Elections, the East Dunbartonshire Independent Alliance fielded six candidates across East Dunbartonshire. They ranged from Donald Macdonald, a community activist, to Jim Gilmour a successful business man who was an unsuccessful Labour local government candidate in 2003.

Two East Dunbartonshire Independent Alliance councillors were returned at that election on May 3, 2007; Charles Kennedy and Jack Young.

External links

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