RB CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM

Motion Text

That this House remembers RB Cunninghame Graham who was first elected to Parliament in 1886 and who died on 20 March 1936; notes that he was a Scottish politician, writer, journalist and adventurer, that he entered Parliament as a radical Liberal Party member standing on a platform of the abolition of the House of Lords, Scottish Home Rule, universal suffrage and an eight-hour working day, that he was suspended from the House in December 1888 for protesting about the working conditions of chain-makers and that his response to the Speaker of the House, "I never withdraw" was used later by George Bernard Shaw in Arms and the Man; and further notes that he became the first-ever socialist hon. Member of Parliament, first president of the Scottish Labour Party, a founder member of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 and first president of the Scottish National Party in 1934.