Edwin Scrymgeour
Edwin Scrymgeour, usually known as
Neddy Scrymgeour (
July 28,
1866 –
February 1,
1947), was a
Scottish Member of Parliament for
Dundee. He is the only person ever elected to the
House of Commons on a
prohibitionist ticket as the candidate of the
Scottish Prohibition Party.http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?search=ss&sText=Edwin+Scrymgeour&LinkID=mp63366
Scrymgeour was a native
Dundonian educated at West End Academy. He established his party in
1901 and served on
Dundee Town Council. He began contesting elections in the
1908 Dundee by election which saw
Winston Churchill first elected for Dundee and continued to fight at every election thereafter, increasing his vote. Because of his popularity, general left-wing sympathies and history with the labour movement, from
1922 the
Labour Party came to an arrangement whereby they nominated only one candidate for the two-member Dundee constituency and ran what was in effect a joint campaign.
In the
1922 election, Scrymgeour and Labour candidate
E. D. Morel jointly ousted
Winston Churchill, who had represented the city as a
Liberal (at that point Coalition Liberal). Scrymgeour remained an MP for Dundee until the
1931 general election when he lost his seat. Out of Parliament Scrymgeour worked as an evangelical Chaplain at East House and Maryfield Hospitals in Dundee. Scrymgeour was a leader of the unsuccessful opponents of disbanding the Scottish Prohibition Party in January
1935.