Fishing Party | |
---|---|
Leader | George Geddes |
Founded | 2003 |
Dissolved | 2004 |
Ideology | Single issue |
The Fishing Party was a political party in Scotland [1] [2] [3] [4] formed and officially registered in 2003. [5] Largely a single-issue party, [6] [7] its formation was prompted by those involved in the fishing industry angry at cuts in the quantity of fish they were being allowed to catch as a result of the European Union Single Fisheries Policy. [4] The rationale behind its formation was that they were in the best position to represent the fishing industry as they were part of it themselves. [3] The party was led by George Geddes, formerly vice chairman of the Scottish White Fish Producers' Association, [3] supported by the then Chairman Mike Park, [8] with the aim of securing seats in the Scottish Parliament. [9] The party was supported by Albert McQuarrie, the former Conservative Member of Parliament for Banff and Buchan, but he refused to stand as a candidate on the grounds of age. [10]
There was speculation that this might result in the loss of votes for the Scottish National Party, [6] as traditionally it has won the majority of the votes of those involved in the Scottish fishing industry. However, the Fishing Party did not win any seats in the 2003 election to the Scottish Parliament. Its only candidate, George Geddes, received 5,566 votes (2.28%) on the regional list in North East Scotland. [11] The best result was in the Banff and Buchan Scottish constituency, where the party polled 2,007 votes (7.7%). The party did not stand any candidates in the single-member constituencies.
The party was deregistered as a political party with the Electoral Commission on 23 March 2004. [5]
Margaret Anne Ewing was a Scottish teacher, journalist and politician. She served as a Scottish National Party (SNP) Member of Parliament for East Dunbartonshire from 1974 to 1979 and Moray from 1987 to 2001, and was the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Moray from 1999 until 2006.
James Alexander Stewart Stevenson is a Scottish politician who served as Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change from 2007 to 2010 and Minister for Environment and Climate Change from 2011 to 2012. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), he was Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Banffshire and Buchan Coast, formerly Banff and Buchan, from 2001 to 2021.
ProLife Alliance (PLA) or simply ProLife, was an anti-abortion, single-issue political party that was active in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2004. Since that time it has continued as an advocacy group. It is opposed to any form of euthanasia and opposes human cloning, abortion and experiments on human embryos. It supports and guaranteed maternity and paternity leave. Its leader is Dominica Roberts.
Douglas Henderson was a Scottish politician. He was Depute Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 1971 to 1973 and from 1979 to 1981. He served as a Scottish National Party Member of Parliament (MP) for East Aberdeenshire from 1974 to 1979, and held virtually every national office in the SNP, short of party leader. His political style has been described as "no-nonsense" and "very blunt and forthright". He was also known for his forceful public speaking, which former SNP leader Alex Salmond described as "messianic".
North East Scotland is one of the eight electoral regions of the Scottish Parliament which were created in 1999. Ten of the parliament's 73 first past the post constituencies are sub-divisions of the region and it elects seven of the 56 additional-member Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). Thus it elects a total of 17 MSPs.
Moray is a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Banff and Buchan is a constituency of the House of Commons, located in the north-east of Scotland within the Aberdeenshire council area. It elects one Member of Parliament at least once every five years using the first-past-the-post system of voting.
Gordon is a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (Westminster), which elects one member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. The constituency first returned a member in the 1983 general election, but has undergone boundary changes since that date.
East Renfrewshire is a constituency of the House of Commons, to the south of Glasgow, Scotland. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) using the first-past-the-post system of voting.
Scottish Labour is a social democratic political party in Scotland. It is an autonomous section of the UK Labour Party. From their peak of holding 56 of the 129 seats at the first Scottish parliament election in 1999, the Party has lost seats at each Holyrood election, returning 22 MSPs at the 2021 election. The party currently holds one of 59 Scottish seats in the UK House of Commons, with Ian Murray having represented Edinburgh South continuously since 2010.
The Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party, often known simply as the Scottish Conservatives and colloquially as the Scottish Tories, is a centre-right political party in Scotland. It is the second-largest party in the Scottish Parliament and the third-largest in Scottish local government. The party has the second-largest number of Scottish MPs in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom and the seventh overall.
Scotland has elections to several bodies: the Scottish Parliament, the United Kingdom Parliament, local councils and community councils. Before the United Kingdom left the European Union, Scotland elected members to the European Parliament.
The 2011 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2011 to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament.
The 2007 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday 3 May 2007 to elect members to the Scottish Parliament. It was the third general election to the devolved Scottish Parliament since it was created in 1999. Local elections in Scotland fell on the same day.
Kenyon Edward Wright was a priest of the Scottish Episcopal Church and a political campaigner. Wright chaired the Scottish Constitutional Convention (1989–1999), which laid the groundwork for the creation of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999.
The 2008 Glasgow East by-election was a by-election for the UK Parliamentary constituency of Glasgow East which was held on 24 July 2008. The election was triggered when, on 30 June 2008, the sitting MP David Marshall stood down due to ill health.
Eilidh Whiteford is a Scottish National Party (SNP) politician who served as the Member of Parliament for Banff and Buchan from 2010–17.
Banffshire and Buchan Coast is a constituency of the Scottish Parliament (Holyrood) covering parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Moray. It elects one Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) by the first past the post method of election. It is one also of ten constituencies in the North East Scotland electoral region, which elects seven additional members, in addition to ten constituency MSPs, to produce a form of proportional representation for the region as a whole.
The 2016 Scottish parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2016 to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament. It was the fifth election held since the devolved parliament was established in 1999. It was the first parliamentary election in Scotland in which 16 and 17 year olds were eligible to vote, under the provisions of the Scottish Elections Act. It was also the first time the three largest parties were led by women.
A general election was held in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2015 and all 59 seats in Scotland were contested under the first-past-the-post, single-member district electoral system. Unlike the 2010 general election, where no seats changed party, the Scottish National Party (SNP) won all but three seats in Scotland in an unprecedented landslide victory, gaining a total of 56 seats and taking the largest share of the Scottish vote in sixty years, at approximately 50 per cent. The Labour Party suffered its worst ever election defeat in Scotland, losing 40 of the 41 seats it was defending, including the seats of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy and the then Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander. The Liberal Democrats lost ten of the eleven seats they were defending, with the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander and former leader Charles Kennedy losing their seats. The election also saw the worst performance by the Scottish Conservative Party, which received its lowest share of the vote since its creation in 1965, although it retained the one seat that it previously held. In all, 50 of the 59 seats changed party, 49 of them being won by first-time MPs.