Kilmarnock by-election, 1933

The Kilmarnock by-election, 1933 was a by-election held on 2 November 1933 for the British House of Commons constituency of Kilmarnock in Ayrshire.

The vacancy had arisen when Scotland's second most senior judge, the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Alness, retired. It was a long-standing convention that when a vacancy arose in this office (or in the most senior judicial office, that of Lord President), the Lord Advocate (head of the Scottish criminal justice system) of the day would be appointed to fill the vacancy. The Lord Advocate in 1933 was Sir Craigie Mason Aitchison, K.C., M.P., and so he was appointed to the bench, automatically resigning his seat.

Aitchison had been elected as a member of the Labour Party in a 1929 by-election following the death of Robert Climie. In 1931, the Labour Government had split, with a handful of Labour MPs, including Aitchison, following Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald into a coalition National Government with the Conservatives. These MPs were expelled from the Labour Party and called themselves National Labour.

The National Labour candidate was 37-year-old Kenneth Lindsay, who had contested the 1924 and 1929 elections as a Labour Party candidate in English constituencies.

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