THREAD about #electoralHistory: #HannahSpencer's #GortonAndDenton #byelection win is the first by-election gain by #GreenParty #GPEW or its predecessors going back 51 years.
Hannah Spencer's win is also the 13th time since 1900 that a party has first gained a #HouseOfCommons seat at a Westminster by-election: This thread is about those 13 by-elections.
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Note that this list is of by-elections where the winning party had not won the seat in the previous election. In seven cases, this was the party's first MP, but the other six parties had previously won a seat at a general election.
One by-election (Clacton 2014) saw the re-election of an MP who had changed party.
4 of the 13 seats were in the island of Ireland. One was in Wales, one in Scotland, and the other 7 in England.
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First Westminster by-election gain by a political party:
Labour: 1902 Clitheroe
Independent Labour Party: 1907 Colne Valley
All-for-Ireland League: 1909 Cork City
Northern Ireland Labour Party: 1943 Belfast West
Common Wealth: 1943 Eddisbury
SNP: 1945 Motherwell
Ulster Unionist: 1946 Down
Plaid Cymru: 1966 Carmarthen
SDP: 1981 Crosby
DUP: 2000 South Antrim
UKIP: 2014 Clacton
Reform UK : 2025 Runcorn and Helsby
Green Party: 2026 Gorton andDenton
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1/ #LabourRepresentationCommittee: Clitheroe by-election, 1 August 1902. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1902_Clitheroe_by-election
Won by David Shackleton of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), who was returned unopposed. Immediately after the 1906 general election, the 29 LRC MPs renamed the group as the #LabourParty.
Shackleton left the Commons in 1910, to become a senior civil servant.
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1a/ #LabourRepresentationCommittee: Woolwich by-election, 11 March 1903.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1903_Woolwich_by-election
Won by Will Crooks of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). This was the first contested by-election won by the LRC
Crooks was a noted trade unionist. Apart from a break in 1910, he served as an MP until his death in 1921.
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1b/ #LabourParty: Jarrow by-election, 4 July 1907.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Jarrow_by-election.
The first by-election won by a candidate standing for the Labour Party. The winner, Pete Curran, was a veteran trade unionist in poor health. He was defeated at the January 1910 general election, and died soon after.
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2/ #IndependentLabourParty: Colne Valley by-election, 18 July 1907.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1907_Colne_Valley_by-election
Won by Victor Grayson, the candidate of the Independent Labour Party (#ILP). Grayson's unresolved disappearance in 1920 has been linked to the widespread sale of honours by Maundy Gregory.
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3/ #AllForIrelandLeague Cork City by-election, 1 May 1909
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1909_Cork_City_by-election
Won by Maurice Healy, the candidate of the nationalist unity All-for-Ireland League (AFIL). Healy was a prominent solicitor, and a former Irish Parliamentary Party MP. After a short break in early 1910, he remained an AFIL MP until AFIL dissolved in 1918 as nationalisrs united around Sinn Féin.
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4/ #NorthernIrelandLabourParty (#NILP): Belfast West by-election, 9 February 1943
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Belfast_West_by-election
The first and only Westminster seat won by the Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP). The winner Jack Beattie later sat in Westminster for the Irish Labour Party, making Beattie the only MP to have sat in the UK House of Commons for any party which has ever held seats in Dáil Éireann.
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5/ #CommonWealthParty: Eddisbury by-election, 7 April 1943.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Eddisbury_by-election
Won by John Loverseed, a former RAF pilot, and later a co-founder of the pacifist Fellowship Party.
Common Wealth was a libertarian socialist party which contested by-elections during WWII. It won a further by-election in Skipton in 1944, and one seat at the 1945 general election.
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6/ #ScottishNationalParty #SNP: Motherwell by-election , 2 April 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Motherwell_by-election
Robert McIntyre's win in Motherwell is often overlooked, because he held the seat for only 2 months before Parliament was dissolved for the 1945 general election, when he was defeated.
But McIntyre was the first SNP MP. The second came 22 years later, when Winne Ewing won the 1967 Hamilton by-election.
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7/ #UlsterUnionistParty: Down by-election .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Down_by-election
The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) had been created in 1905, and governed Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972. Its candidate Lieutenant Commander C. H. Mullan was the party's first by-election-wInning Westminster MP, but he served only until standing down in 1950.
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8/ #PlaidCymru: Carmarthen by-election, 14 July 1966.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Carmarthen_by-election
Gwynfor Evans was was a pacifist, amd President of Plaid Cymru from 1945 to 1981. He had been an unsuccessful candidate in seven general elections before his 1966 victory, becoming the first Plaid Cymru MP, serving for a total of 9 years.
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9/ #SocialDemocraticParty (#SDP): Crosby by-election, 26 November 1981
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Crosby_by-election
Shirley Williams was the first MP to be elected to the Commons as an SDP candidate. More than 20 sitting Labour MPs & one Conservative had defected to the SDP, but Williams was the first elected in SDP colours.
Williams was defeated in 1983, after unfavourable boundary changes. She never returned to the Commons.
The SDP merged with the Liberals in 1988, only 7 years after the SDP's creation.
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10/ #DemocraticUnionist Party (#DUP): South Antrim by-election, September 2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_South_Antrim_by-election
Rev. Willie McCrea was the DUP MP for Mid Ulster from 1983 until his defeat in 1997 by Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness. His return to the Commons for South Antrim was the DUP's first Westminster by-election gain, 29 years after the partys foundation.
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11/ #UKIP: Clacton by-election, 9 October 2014
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Clacton_by-election
Douglas Carswell was elected as MP for Clacton in 2005 and in 2010, both times as a Conservative. When he defected to UKIP in 2014, he resigned his seat and was re-elected for UKIP. He won again at the 2015, but left UKIP in early 2017, and stood down at the 2017 general election.
Carswell was UKIP's first MP elected as a UKIP candidate, but not its first MP. Conservative MP Bob Spink had defected to UKIP in 2008.
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12/ #ReformUK: Runcorn and Helsby by-election, 1 May 2025.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Runcorn_and_Helsby_by-election
Reform UK was founded in 2018 as the #BrexitParty, and was renamed Reform UK in January 2021. Its first MP came in 2024 as a defector from the Conservatives. At the July 2024 election, four MPs were elected as Reform UK candidates. Sarah Pochin's victory by 6 votes in Runcorn was the party's first by-election gain.
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13/ Green Party #GPEW: Gorton and Denton by-election, 26 February 2026.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Gorton_and_Denton_by-election
The Green Party's predecessor the Ecology Party first contested a Parliamentary election in 1979. The first Green MP was elected in 2010, and at the 2024 general election, the party won 4 seats. #HannahSpencer's victory in #GortonAndDenton is the party's first win at a Westminster by-election.
END THREAD
Claire McNab
Reg