1913 South Lanarkshire by-election

[1] The constituency returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.

Sir Walter Menzies had been Liberal MP for South Lanarkshire since 1906 until he died on 26 October 1913.

Tom Gibb was no exception, stating "I am no believer in policy of social reform paid for out of the earnings of the workers, such as we have seen illustrated in the Insurance Act.

The Liberal Government had introduced a Scottish Home Rule Bill that had passed its second reading in May 1913, despite Unionist opposition.

The Labour Party campaign believed that Gibb could win the election; They hoped that he could secure the votes of the constituency's 3,000 miners as a minimum and with the support of the railwaymen, farm servants and other workmen, he would romp home.

The Labour poll represented barely half the number of miners voters in the constituency and significantly down on their expectations; David Lloyd George the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a letter to Morton said he "regretted the division in the progressive ranks of the electors in the constituency and the only satisfaction reserved for the Labour competitor was that he would possibly succeed in manoeuvering a Liberal constituency into the Tory lobby to vote for land monopoly in Great Britain and to support civil war in Ireland."