Scottish Universities Parliamentary Election

Abstract

ON January 20, a writ was issued for the Scottish Universities by-election, made necessary by the death of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. A group of strong candidates is in the field: Sir John Anderson, former Governor of Bengal, the nominee of the Unionist Associations of the Universities ; Prof. A. Dewar Gibb, regius professor of law in the University of Glasgow, a Scottish Nationalist ; Dr. Frances H. Melville, formerly mistress of Queen Margaret College, University of Glasgow, an Independent candidate ; and Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell, biologist and former secretary of the Zoological Society of London, standing as an Independent Progressive. Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen as well as of the University of Oxford, and he has maintained contact, during a life devoted to biological science and administration, with the arts and with educational developments in Great Britain and abroad. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London for thirty-two years, and for a long period was leader writer and scientific correspondent of The Times. At a meeting of Scottish graduates in London he stated that the principle of university seats in Parliament is most difficult to defend if these are simply to be held by official nominees of the political parties, and that he considers it the duty of university electors to select the candidate with the best qualifications to advocate the services which the arts and sciences can give the nation. Sir Peter is particularly well qualified to present and uphold in the House of Commons the scientific outlook upon modern problems touched by science, and on this account his election to Parliament would be widely welcomed.