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Richard Giles "Dick" Douglas

 

 

 

 

Richard Giles "Dick" Douglas (born 4 January 1932) is a former Scottish politician, having been a member of the British House of Commons firstly as a Labour Co-operative candidate, then latterly as a Scottish National Party member.

He was elected to Westminster as a Labour and Co-operative candidate at the 1979 general election which saw a victory for the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher. Douglas was elected to represent the Dunfermline constituency.

By the time of the 1983 general election his constituency had been altered due to boundary changes. Douglas was returned to parliament, once again as a Labour and Co-operative candidate, to represent the new Dunfermline West seat (his neighbouring MP, for Dunfermline East was the newly returned Gordon Brown who became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 2007). Douglas once again won the Dunfermline West seat in 1987.

In 1990 Douglas defected from Labour to the SNP. He took the decision as he felt the Labour Party was adopting too centrist a position on the political spectrum, and was especially angry at the lack of direction in the Labour Party in their attitude to the Poll Tax. He favoured a non-payment campaign which Labour did not officially support, whilst the SNP had been quick to adopt such as policy. Douglas' defection took the number of SNP MPs from four to five through to the 1992 general election.

At that election Douglas took the decision not to seek re-election in Dunfermline West, the seat he had represented for 13 years, but to stand against Donald Dewar (a then high profile Scottish Labour MP) in his Glasgow Garscadden seat. The decision backfired, with Dewar winning his seat comfortably and Dunfermline West returning a Labour MP. Douglas has not since returned to front-line active politics, but remains a member of the SNP.