Frederick Walter Scott Craig (10 December 1929 – 23 March 1989) was a Scottish psephologist and compiler of the standard reference books covering United Kingdom Parliamentary election results. He originally worked in public relations, compiling election results in his spare time which were published by the Scottish Unionist Party. In the late 1960s he launched his own business as a publisher of reference books, and also compiled various other statistics concerning British politics.
Craig also had a political career of his own, initially as an election agent and then as a candidate. Efforts to get elected in his native Glasgow being unsuccessful, after he moved to Chichester in 1970 he was first elected to the District Council and later to West Sussex County Council. However he fell out with a faction in the local Conservative Party and launched a rebel group which led to his expulsion. Late in his life he suffered severe depression and he committed suicide at the age of 59.
Early life
Craig was a native of Glasgow. He became interested in election statistics while still at school. He was active in the Scottish Unionist Party Association, and in 1954 began to contribute the 'Scottish Parliamentary Election Manual' of election results to the Yearbook for Scotland, which the party published. Craig was unhappy with existing sources for election statistics and undertook research himself to correct the vote figures and discover the source of independent candidates, and his election manual became highly respected.
Political activity
As a paid agent for the Unionist Party, Craig was the election agent for James Hutchison in Glasgow Scotstoun in the 1955 general election and for the Unionist parliamentary candidate in Rutherglen in 1964. He twice fought for election to the Glasgow City Corporation in the mid-1960s. His first attempt was in May 1966 when he came forward as an Independent Conservative candidate against the 'Progressive Party', a local alliance between Conservatives and Liberals which controlled the council, in Kelvinside ward. Craig offered to withdraw if the Progressive councillor would repudiate that party's policy on council house rents, and to sit as a Conservative if the party split up; the offer was rejected.
In September 1967 Craig was selected as official Conservative candidate for Gorbals ward in a byelection; he was one of seven candidates and attempted to stand out by distributing on the eve of poll 5,000 'wage packets' containing an appeal to vote for him. However Craig came third in the poll.
Reference books
His research into elections continued and widened from Scotland to the whole of the United Kingdom, and he compiled a card index to all elections from 1918 onwards. In 1966 he had completed a manuscript of a reference book on statistics about elections since 1918, which was intended to be published in two volumes of 700 pages each to be part-funded by the Institute of Electoral Research; the calling of a general election annoyed him because he would have to add the statistics from it to the book. Craig took a decisive step in 1968 when he was paid off from his public relations job and set up Political Reference Publications, to publish his work. The first book to be published was British Parliamentary Election Statistics 1918–1966 which summarised the results of every general election as well as giving a wealth of other information. Critical reception was very positive and Craig always considered it his favourite book. It has continued to be updated, under the title British Electoral Facts.
His series of British Parliamentary Election Results began to appear the next year with the volume for 1918–1949. The series has been completed to run from the Reform Act 1832 to date. Craig also started the Political Companion, a quarterly update, which ran from 1969 to 1983. His work was a family affair with his wife Phyllis helping with the production and administration, and his daughters undertaking the proofreading. Craig pioneered the use of technology and put the source data onto computer readable tape; the distinctive clear layout of his books was a result of his use of early computer typesetting.