Ebbw Vale by-election, 1960
Encyclopedia
The Ebbw Vale by-election of 17 November 1960 was a by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....

 for a single seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. Caused by the death of Labour Party
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...

 Deputy Leader Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...

, the constituency was very safely held by the party and never in danger of changing hands. The selection of Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

, a prominent leftwinger out of sympathy with the party leadership on nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament refers to both the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons and to the end state of a nuclear-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated....

 and other issues, led to a lively campaign. Foot's handy win was seen as causing problems for party leader Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...

.

Bevan's illness and death

Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...

 had represented Ebbw Vale since the 1929 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1929
-Seats summary:-References:*F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987*-External links:***...

, and had been a very high profile politician almost throughout. His health was poor in the late 1950s; Bevan had a major abdominal operation in December 1959. Unknown to the general public was that the reason for his operation was that Bevan had been diagnosed with cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

. It was hoped that Bevan would be able to recover, and at the end of March 1960 Bevan told the press he intended to have a prolonged holiday but then resume active politics. Bevan's cancer proved terminal; on 2 July he was reported as critically ill, and he died "peacefully in his sleep" on 6 July.

At the 1959 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1959
This United Kingdom general election was held on 8 October 1959. It marked a third successive victory for the ruling Conservative Party, led by Harold Macmillan...

, the result in Ebbw Vale had been:

Labour

With such a large Labour majority, there was a great deal of attention on the selection of a Labour candidate for the byelection. The procedure did not begin until the end of the summer but on 24 August it was reported that two nominations had been received by the Constituency Labour Party
Constituency Labour Party
A Constituency Labour Party is an organisation of members of the British Labour Party who live in a particular UK parliamentary constituency in England, Scotland and Wales. The Labour Party in Northern Ireland has, since February 2009, been organised as a province-wide Constituency Labour Party...

. They were from Ron Evans (a steelworker, Bevan's former agent and a Monmouthshire
Monmouthshire
Monmouthshire is a county in south east Wales. The name derives from the historic county of Monmouthshire which covered a much larger area. The largest town is Abergavenny. There are many castles in Monmouthshire .-Historic county:...

 County Councillor), and from Gordon Parry, a schoolteacher and Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....

 County Councillor. On 29 August the branch of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
The Iron and Steel Trades Confederation was a British trade union for metal-workers and allied groups. It was formed on 1 January 1917 as a merger of existing steel-workers' unions and it is now part of Community.- History :...

 at Richard Thomas and Baldwins
Richard Thomas and Baldwins
Richard Thomas and Baldwins Ltd was a major United Kingdom iron, steel and tinplate producer, formed in 1948 by the merger of Richard Thomas & Co Ltd with Baldwins Ltd. It was absorbed into British Steel in 1967...

 steelworks nominated Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

, who had been a prominent left-wing Labour MP for Plymouth Devonport from 1945 to 1955 and the influential editor of unofficial Labour journal Tribune
Tribune (magazine)
Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left...

since losing his seat. Foot had been one of Bevan's close friends and strongest supporters; for Foot, it was a cause of pride that he could follow Bevan. Foot also had a following among the local party members.

Foot's main rival for the nomination was Alderman
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...

 Frank Whatley, who was nominated by the local branch of the National Union of Mineworkers on 29 August. Three further nominees were identified the following day: Dengar Evans (a 49-year-old chemist from Trethomas
Trethomas
Trethomas is a small village 2½ miles north-east of Caerphilly, south-east Wales, situated in the Caerphilly county borough, within the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire....

), Thomas Williams
Thomas Williams (UK politician)
Sir Thomas Williams, QC was a British Labour Co-operative politician.Williams was educated at University College, Cardiff and St. Catherine's College, Oxford. He was President of the South Wales University Students' Union in 1939. He was a Baptist minister and a chaplain with the Royal Air Force...

 (barrister and former Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for Hammersmith South
Hammersmith South (UK Parliament constituency)
Hammersmith South was a borough constituency in the Metropolitan Borough of Hammersmith in west London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first-past-the-post system....

 and Barons Court
Barons Court (UK Parliament constituency)
Barons Court was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1955 to 1974. It was represented by one Member of Parliament , elected by the first-past-the-post system of election.- Boundaries :...

) and George Viner (a journalist from Cardiff). Dr Kamalakant G. Pendse, president of the Socialist Medical Association
Socialist Health Association
The Socialist Medical Association was founded in 1930, in order to campaign for a National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It took in many of those who had been active in the State Medical Service Association...

 for South Wales, was the ninth candidate to be nominated, and two more had appeared by the time nominations closed on 5 September: Glyn Lewis, a steelworkers' union official, and Denis Howell, former MP for Birmingham All Saints
Birmingham All Saints (UK Parliament constituency)
Birmingham All Saints was a parliamentary constituency in the city of Birmingham, which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom...

.

A shortlist of five was agreed by the Executive Committee of Ebbw Vale Divisional Labour Party on 8 September: Fred Evans (a headmaster and President of Caerphilly
Caerphilly (UK Parliament constituency)
Caerphilly is a county constituency centred on the town of Caerphilly in South Wales. It returns one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.The constituency has always elected Labour MPs.- Boundaries...

 Labour Party), Ron Evans, Gordon Parry, Dr K. G. Pendse, and Thomas Williams. The absence of both Michael Foot and Frank Whatley caused an uproar both among Foot's supporters and the miners who were supporting Whatley, and their supporters checked the rule books to see how the shortlist could be changed. At a meeting of the General Management Committee of the local party on 17 September, there was a motion of no confidence
Motion of no confidence
A motion of no confidence is a parliamentary motion whose passing would demonstrate to the head of state that the elected parliament no longer has confidence in the appointed government.-Overview:Typically, when a parliament passes a vote of no...

 in the Executive; the party chairman Ivor Parton suggested a simpler way out which was to add both Foot and Whatley to the shortlist as proposed. His suggestion was accepted unanimously. The selection contest followed on 25 September; Foot lead clearly from the first ballot:
Ebbw Vale candidate selection: 25 September 1960
Candidate First round
Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

67
Ron Evans 27
Frank Whatley 23
Gordon Parry 22
Three others 17
Second Ballot required


Thomas Williams, Fred Evans and Dr Pendse were eliminated. On the second ballot Whatley was bottom and was eliminated; the miners, without their own candidate, did not unite around any single one of the remaining candidates. On the third ballot the result was:
Ebbw Vale candidate selection: 25 September 1960
Candidate Third round
Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...

85
Gordon Parry 41
Ron Evans 29
Foot selected


The announcement of Foot's selection victory was greeted by the singing of "The Red Flag". Immediately after the result, Ron Evans congratulated Foot on his victory and offered to act as Foot's agent just as he had for Bevan; the offer was accepted. Foot's biographer notes that Evans remained Foot's strongest supporter in the constituency until his death.

Conservatives

The Conservative Party confirmed very early on that it would definitely field a candidate. Five names were submitted to the Ebbw Vale Conservative Association for interview in the first week of September: Anthony Arnold (aged 31) had fought two previous Parliamentary elections and worked in the insurance industry; Humphrey Crum Ewing (aged 36) was a company secretary who had fought Swansea East
Swansea East (UK Parliament constituency)
Swansea East is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.- Boundaries :The constituency comprises the electoral wards of Bonymaen, Cwmbwrla, Landore, Llansamlet, Morriston, Mynydd-Bach, Penderry, and St.Thomas...

 in 1959; Paul Dean (aged 36) was head of the home affairs section of the Conservative Research Department
Conservative Research Department
The Conservative Research Department is part of the central organisation of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom. It operates alongside other departments of Conservative Campaign Headquarters at 30 Millbank, London SW1....

; Ronald Maddocks (aged 50) was a barrister based in Swansea
Swansea
Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...

; and Sir Brandon Rhys-Williams
Brandon Rhys-Williams
Sir Brandon Meredith Rhys-Williams, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative politician.Rhys-Williams was elected a Member of Parliament in the Kensington South by-election, 1968, representing that seat until 1974, then for Kensington from 1974 until his death in 1988 aged 60...

 (aged 33) worked for I.C.I.
Imperial Chemical Industries
Imperial Chemical Industries was a British chemical company, taken over by AkzoNobel, a Dutch conglomerate, one of the largest chemical producers in the world. In its heyday, ICI was the largest manufacturing company in the British Empire, and commonly regarded as a "bellwether of the British...

 as a commercial assistant. On 12 September, the executive committee of Ebbw Vale Conservative Association decided to submit Rhys-Williams to the membership for adoption as their candidate.

Liberals

It was initially thought unlikely that a Liberal candidate would stand in the byelection; the last time the Liberals had fought the seat was in 1929. At the end of August the Welsh Liberal Party decided to send an organiser to the constituency for a month to see if the party could win support. At the same time a willing potential candidate appeared: Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Lort-Phillips, (aged 49) who was a farmer, author and journalist and had twice previously campaigned in Gloucester
Gloucester (UK Parliament constituency)
Gloucester is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was established in 1295 to return two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons but in 1885 representation was reduced to one member under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885...

. Although the national headquarters of the Liberal Party was still unsure, Lort-Phillips was eventually adopted on 10 October. At the 1960 Liberal Assembly held at the end of September, he caused a stir by moving an amendment calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament which was defeated by 607 votes to 78.

Plaid Cymru and others

The Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru
' is a political party in Wales. It advocates the establishment of an independent Welsh state within the European Union. was formed in 1925 and won its first seat in 1966...

 made it clear that it would stand in the byelection, and on 7 September the Ebbw Vale area committee of the party chose Emrys Roberts (aged 28) as their candidate. Roberts had fought two previous elections in Newport
Newport (UK Parliament constituency)
There have been four Newport constituencies of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom:* Newport , split into Newport East and Newport West in 1983* Newport , disenfranchised in 1832* Newport There have been four Newport constituencies of the House of Commons of the...

 and Cardiff North
Cardiff North (UK Parliament constituency)
Cardiff North is aborough constituency in the city of Cardiff. It returns one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system....

, and was organising secretary of the party. No other candidate appeared by the time nominations closed on 7 November.

Campaign

The party conference season intervened between candidate selection and the opening of the campaign; Michael Foot made a strong speech at the 1960 Labour Party conference supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament. Conference passed a unilateralist motion against the strong views of party leader Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...

. Foot was anxious to stress that he would not raise Gaitskell's leadership during the byelection campaign, pledging not to answer questions about it if he was asked, but he would campaign on the issue of nuclear arms. On 26 October, the Labour chief whip formally started the byelection by moving that a writ for electing a new member be issued. Nominations were to close on 7 November and polling day would be 17 November.

Unilateralism intrudes

Foot opened his campaign on 30 October with an attack on "the complacency, the corruption and the poltroonery of the Tory Government". He pointed to the two largest employers of the constituency, coal-mining and steel production, and asserted that the Conservatives were hacking away at both. The other parties attempted to make political capital out of the differences between Foot and the Labour leadership. Lort-Phillips claimed Gaitskell had "signed his political death warrant" by opting to fight against the conference decision to support unilateralism, and that an effective opposition was needed. There was speculation that Foot might lose 10,000 votes because of his stance on unilateralism, although The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

correspondent could not detect any sign of crisis among the electorate. Foot and his wife were also concerned that anger over the incompetence of Ebbw Vale
Ebbw Vale
Ebbw Vale is a town at the head of the valley formed by the Ebbw Fawr tributary of the Ebbw River, south Wales. It is the largest town and the administrative centre of Blaenau Gwent county borough...

 council, run by Labour, would lead to abstentions.

At a public meeting, one of the Labour canvassers asked Foot how to deal with those who disagreed with his stance on nuclear weapons, given Bevan's opposition to a unilateralist motion in 1957. Foot invited constituents to discuss the matter with him personally, and pointed out that the British government had abandoned attempts to produce its own delivery system for nuclear warheads. Rhys Williams concentrated his campaign on talking to voters individually in pubs and clubs, where he claimed to receive a friendly welcome. He invited Joan Vickers, who had defeated Foot in Plymouth in 1955, to speak for him. Lort-Phillips, who claimed to have "a secret league of potential Liberals" at Richard Thomas & Baldwins, invited his party leader Jo Grimond to speak for him; Grimond did not accept. His attitude was thought to be influenced by Lort-Phillips' stance on nuclear arms although late in the campaign he sent a very general letter of support.

Personal attacks

After some speculation over what the contents of such a message would be, Hugh Gaitskell sent his letter of support to Foot on 11 November. It wished Foot "all good luck", frankly accepting that they were not in agreement on defence and foreign policy, but asserting that any differences were "confined to a narrow field". Gaitskell highlighted the Government proposals to sell its shared in Richard Thomas & Baldwins, and the Rent Act 1957 as policies which the Labour Party would oppose. Foot's camp believed that, nevertheless, Gaitskell would have been pleased to see Foot obtain a poor result at the polls. During the last week, Foot attacked Rhys Williams for "imbecility" in suggesting that the west had been 'at war' with Russia
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 since 1945.

The tone degenerated further when Rhys Williams contrasted Bevan and Foot to Foot's disfavour as he "comes before the Welsh public with an uncongenial armoury of hatred and malicious propaganda". Foot replied denouncing Rhys Williams' "patronising snobbery and pin-headed intellectual capacity". In the late campaign, Rhys Williams frequently reminded voters that the electoral system was absolutely secret. Labour reported that its canvass returns indicated that Foot would get 75% of the vote and a 15,000 majority.

Plaid campaign

Plaid Cymru entered the campaign with optimism, with Roberts declaring that it was "our great opportunity". He brought across an Irish economist, Tomás MacGabhann, who explained how small independent countries could be prosperous. His campaign was said to be the only one suffused with humour, as when he declared "If you think Wales is not a nation you must be Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

's uncle"; he was reliably predicted to be bottom of the poll.

Result

A heavy downpour of rain on the days before the poll gave bad omens to Foot's wife Jill Craigie
Jill Craigie
Jill Craigie was an English documentary film director, screenwriter and feminist. She was the wife of the Labour Party politician Michael Foot , whom she met during the making of her film The Way We Live....

 who blamed the rain for her husband's loss of Devonport in 1955. The votes were counted and the result declared on the day after the poll.



Foot hailed his win as being the product of a campaign "fought... on a clear policy of socialism and a demand for a new foreign policy which repudiates nuclear strategy altogether". That the result was seen as a good one for Foot and a problem for Gaitskell was shown by a cartoon by 'Vicky
Victor Weisz
Victor Weisz was a German-British political cartoonist, drawing under the name of Vicky.- Biography :...

' which depicted Gaitskell reading the result and saying "Oh dear, we've won". Foot retained the seat, which was renamed Blaenau Gwent in 1983, until he retired from Parliament in 1992.
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