Malcolm St. Clair (UK politician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other persons named Malcolm St. Clair, see Malcolm St. Clair (disambiguation).

Malcolm Archibald James St. Clair (16 February 1927 – 1 February 2004) was a British Conservative Party politician.

After leaving school, St. Clair joined the Royal Armoured Corps as a trooper, and in 1946 he was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Scots Greys. After leaving the army, he was Winston Churchill's honorary secretary for two years, before returning to run his family's dairy farm at Tetbury in Gloucestershire.^[1]

In 1955, St. Clair stood unsuccessesfully as a Conservative candidate at the London County Council elections, in Islington East. At the 1959 general election, he stood as Conservative candidate in the Bristol South East, but lost to the sitting Labour Member of Parliament MP Tony Benn, whose majority was nearly 6,000 votes.^[2]

However, Benn's father died in November 1960, and Benn inherited his peerage as Viscount Stansgate, with its automatic seat in the House of Lords. This disqualified Benn from the House of Commons, triggering a by-election on 4 May 1961. Benn and St Clair were the only two candidates, and Benn was elected with a majority of over 13,000, winning nearly 70% of the votes.^[3] However, an Election Court overturned the result on the grounds that Benn was disqualified. St. Clair's campaign proved that they had displayed posters near every polling station warning voters that Benn was disqualified and that any votes for him would be thrown away, and so the court awarded the seat to St. Clair without ordering another election.

Outside Parliament Benn continued to campaign a change in the law to allow him to continue as an MP, and eventually the Conservative government agreed. The Peerage Act 1963, allowing renunciation of peerages, was given the Royal Assent and became law shortly after 6 p.m. on 31 July 1963. Benn was the first peer to renounce his title, at 6.22 p.m. that day. St. Clair had already given an undertaking that he would respect the wishes of the people of Bristol if Benn became eligible to take his seat again, and therefore took the Manor of Northstead immediately, causing another by-election. St. Clair did not stand, and on 20 August 1963 Benn won the by-election with over 75% of the votes.^[4]