The Scottish National Party (or SNP) is a political party in Scotland which seeks to remove Scotland from the United Kingdom in favour of forming an independent Scottish state. The party sat on the fringes of politics in Scotland after losing the Motherwell parliamentary constituency at the 1945 general election, until the party won a by-election in the Labour stronghold of Hamilton in 1967. In the subsequent 1970 general election, the party gained its first seat in a UK Parliamentary election in the Western Isles.