Sixty years ago on 27th January 1966 Labour won a By-Election at Kingston on Hull North.
Labour’s Kevin McNamara won with 52% of the vote. Labour’s majority following the 1964 Election was just 4 seats and the victory motivated Harold Wilson to call a further General Election which saw Labour get a 96 majority.
Another candidate was Richard Gott (1838-2025)who stood for the Radical Alliance, a split off from CND, He got 253 votes 0.54% and lost his deposit. It did allow Gott to raise the question of Labour’s complicity in the Vietnam War. Tony Benn noted in his diary that he attended a meeting in support of McNamara and was able to overcome hecklers on Vietnam.
Left candidates beyond the Communist Party were quite unusual at this point when Parliament consisted of Labour and Tory MP and a single figures number of Liberals and that was it.
Lawrence Daly, an NUM trade unionist did stand for the Fife Socialist League in West Fife at the 1959 General Election and got 10.7% of the vote.
By the time of the 1970 Election (and after) left candidates at election became a more regular feature
Richard Gott who died in November 2025 was a significant figure in the post-1945 left
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