Labour prepare to elect candidate for Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat

Mar 4 2010 by John Rowbotham, Hamilton Advertiser

LABOUR this week set a timetable for the procedure to select a General Election candidate for the Rutherglen and Hamilton West seat.

Tommy McAvoy announced last week that he was to step down as MP after 23 years at Westminister.

Letters went out this week informing the constituency party’s 400 members of Mr McAvoy’s decision to retire as an MP and giving details of the process to select a candidate for the General Election, expected to take place in May.

Scottish Labour’s National Executive will organise the process and have already decided that the candidate will be chosen from an ‘open’ rather than all-women short list.

A party spokesman said: “Members now have until tomorrow (Friday) to put their names forward for consideration.

“Short listing (by the National Executive) will take place on March 8 and ballot papers will be sent out on March 9.”

Potential candidates will get the chance to address party members at a hustings due to take place in Blantyre on March 12.

Members will have until March 22 to return ballot papers and the party hope to announce their candidate that day.

Constituency party chairman Rev Stuart MacQuarrie, who said he wasn’t interested in becoming the candidate, commented: “We were all saddened to hear of Tommy’s decision to stand down but we have to have a candidate in place as quickly as possible, which is why the National Executive have stepped in.”

The Advertiser understands that Mr McAvoy stood down just days before activists in Blantyre were set to table a motion of no confidence against him.

One party insider said: “Tommy didn’t have a good relationship with some of the members in Blantyre.

“They were fed up with the way he went about things and planned a vote of no confidence.

“However, he announced that he was to step down a few days before they were to send in the motion and it came to nothing.”

Now, though, with preparations for the poll continuing, members across the constituency are speculating on the names of those likely to put their names forward as a possible successor to Mr McAvoy.

One who has been tipped is Liz-Anne Handibode, daughter of South Lanarkshire councillor for Blantyre Jim Handibode.

She is a South Lanarkshire Council employee and has served as ‘link officer’ between Labour and the public services’ union Unison.

Another name put forward as a possible candidate is that of Patricia Osborne, a former Labour councillor for Fernhill, who lost her seat at the last election.

The former systems manager also worked for Glasgow Rutherglen MSP James Kelly and is currently a director for Netball Scotland and the CEO of the Brittle Bones Society.

Cambuslang East councillor Richard Tullett is also thought to have a chance of the nomination.

He was elected to South Lanarkshire Council in March 2008, following the death of Councillor John Higgins, and works as assistant to Tommy McAvoy.

Originally from Coleraine in Northern Ireland, he has lived in Halfway for eight years and spent four years working in Jack McConnell’s constituency office when the Motherwell and Wishaw MSP was Scotland’s First Minister.