Scottish Prohibition Party

The Scottish Prohibition Party was a minor Scottish political party which advocated alcohol prohibition.

The party was founded in 1901. In its early years, Bob Stewart acted as the party's full-time organiser.^[1] In 1908, Stewart and Edwin Scrymgeour were elected to Dundee Town Council.

From the 1908 by-election onwards, Scrymgeour stood for the party in the Dundee constituency. Stewart acted as his election agent in 1910, but fell out with him over his religiosity. He led a Marxist split, the Socialist Prohibition and Reform Party, which merged with the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920.^[1]

Scrymgeour was finally elected as an MP for Dundee in the 1922 general election, when he and the Labour candidate E. D. Morel defeated the National Liberal candidates, one of which was future Prime Minister Winston Churchill.^[2] In Parliament, on issues other than prohibition, he generally supported the Labour Party.

Scrymgeour lost his seat at the 1931 general election.^[3] The party was disbanded in 1935, against the wishes of Scrymgeour.

See also

• National Prohibition Party (UK)
• Prohibition Party; the third longest established party in the United States.

References

1. "Bob Stewart, Communist Biographies
2. "Discontent, War & the Impact of Revolution in Dundee". Archives, Records and Artefacts at the University of Dundee. University of Dundee. February 2012. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
3. "Scrimgeour, Edwin". Who Was Who (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2007. Retrieved 16 February 2013. (subscription required)

Further reading

• Southgate, Donald, "Edwin Scrymgeour" in Three Dundonians (Dundee: Abertay Historical Society, 1968)