The Glasgow East By-Election was won on 24th July 2008 by John Mason, the SNP candidate who opposes social abortion and abortion on demand. His pro-life stance also makes him “extremely uncomfortable” with research using embryos.
John Mason had openly countered the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that the Government will try to push through this autumn, saying on 13th July that the Government wanted to “experiment with babies”. The HFE Bill (as it is known) liberalises embryo experimentation and provides for the creation and exploitation of animal-human hybrid embryos, so called “spare part” children and IVF children who have no father or alternatively no mother.
By contrast, Margaret Curran, the Labour candidate, supports the Bill.
The predominantly Roman Catholic Glasgow East constituency rejected the Labour candidate in what should have been an easy Labour victory—if the size of the previous majority was to be heeded. Instead, in Labour’s 25th most secure seat, there was a 22% swing away from the governing party, so that the SNP candidate won by 365 votes.
The final votes on the Bill were due to take place in the House of Commons during the run up to the by-election, but Alive and Kicking said that the Government had been unnerved by the heavy defeat in the previous by-election in Crewe (which came a day after the move to block lowering the 24 week upper limit for abortion in May) and wanted to avoid alienating public opinion further in the run up to this by-election in Glasgow East.
The HFE Bill was not, of course, the only contentious issue in the by-election, but it did play a significant role in the campaign.
In the run-up to the election, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Motherwell, Joseph Devine, had said that the Labour Government had "introduced more anti-family and anti-life legislation than any government in living memory" in a letter to The Scotsman. The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, had described the controversial Embryology Bill as "monstrous" and had even posted a recording of his views on You Tube on 10th April.
Catholic priests had made their views clear and an anti-abortion campaign group, Right to Life, had sent letters to 11 churches in the constituency spelling out the beliefs of the candidates.
Alive & Kicking wrote to Westminster MPs during the third week of July enclosing the results of a Comres survey carried out immediately after Parliament rejected a lowering of the 24 week upper limit on 20th May. The poll showed that 66% of adults (71% of women) believed that by 20 weeks’ gestation, a healthy unborn baby had a right to life equal to that of its mother. Two out of three people (69% of women) believed that, since Parliament declined to reduce the upper limit at 2nd Reading, it should tighten up the rules on early abortion to reduce the number of abortions.
Alive & Kicking Alliance spokesperson Julia Millington said, “The swing against Labour in this by-election was much larger than expected...suggesting that factors other than Gordon Brown’s unpopularity and the economy were playing a part. It is particularly noteworthy that in a constituency where a third of voters are Catholic, the candidate who won, John Mason, was well known to be the only one of the four main party candidates who supported a lowering of the upper limit for abortion.”
She added, “the pro-life vote in this by-election was...significant and almost certainly swung the final vote in favour of the SNP. We are entering a new era in politics where abortion will be a significant election issue.”
Alive & Kicking commissioned a ComRes survey of 1006 British adults by telephone on 21st–22nd May 2008. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all British adults. ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.