2013 Labour Party Falkirk candidate selection

In 2013, Eric Joyce, Member of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom for Falkirk, resigned from the Labour Party and announced he would not seek re-election. The process of nominating a replacement candidate for the 2015 General Election led to a dispute between the party and its major financial backer Unite the Union, causing the suspension of two local party members, the resignation of Tom Watson MP as Labour's 2015 election strategist, and the forwarding of an internal report into the situation to Police Scotland.

Eric Stuart Joyce was selected as the Labour Party candidate and subsequently voted in as Member of Parliament for Falkirk at the 2005 General Election. After a series of alcohol-related incidents, including a drink-driving conviction and two fights in a House of Commons bar, Joyce resigned from the Labour Party, saying that he intended to complete his term as an MP but not seek re-election.

The selection process for a new Labour prospective parliamentary candidate (PPC) for Falkirk began in late 2012. Until Joyce had resigned his membership of the Labour Party in February 2012, the membership of Falkirk West Constituency Labour Party (CLP), which makes-up 70% of the total electoral constituency, stood at fewer than 100 members.

Soon after Joyce's resignation, Stephen Deans - a local shop steward who had risen to become chairman for the Unite union in Scotland - became chair of the Falkirk West CLP. In line with the then Unite policy, and also within the Labour Party rules in force at the time, Deans began recruiting Unite members, mainly from the local Ineos Grangemouth Refinery, where Unite had been involved in a pensions dispute in 2008, - as new members of the Falkirk West CLP, and paying their membership fees. By January 2013 membership of the Falkirk West CLP stood at over 200 members, all of whom were entitled to vote in the process to select a new parliamentary candidate. Although he was now no longer a member of the Labour Party, Joyce, whose own actions had been at the root of the need to select a new candidate, blogged about allegations arising from unnamed persons, supposedly, he claimed, to 'flood' the CLP with Unite members. Joyce was threatened with legal action via a solicitor's letter from Unite.

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