1906 Huddersfield by-election

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1906 Huddersfield by-election
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg
  1906 28 November 1906 Jan. 1910  
  Russell Williams.jpg John Foster Fraser.jpg
Candidate Sherwell Williams Fraser
Party Liberal Labour Conservative
Popular vote5,7625,4224,844
Percentage36.0%33.8%30.2%

MP before election

Sir James Woodhouse
Liberal

Subsequent MP

Arthur Sherwell
Liberal

The 1906 Huddersfield by-election was a Parliamentary by-election held on 28 November 1906. [1] The constituency returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.

Contents

Vacancy

Sir James Woodhouse had been Liberal MP here since the 1895 general election. He resigned upon his appointment as the Rail and Canal Traffic Commissioner.

Electoral history

The seat had been Liberal since Woodhouse re-gained it in 1895. It had been a marginal seat, but Woodhouse had won with a bit to spare in 1895 and 1900. He narrowly held the seat at the last election after the intervention of a Labour candidate.

Woodhouse Sir James Woodhouse.jpg
Woodhouse
General election 1906 Huddersfield [2]
PartyCandidateVotes%±%
Liberal James Woodhouse 6,302 38.2 15.4
Labour Repr. Cmte. T. Russell Williams 5,81335.2New
Conservative John Foster Fraser 4,39126.619.8
Majority4893.04.2
Turnout 16,50694.0+6.2
Registered electors 17,568
Liberal hold Swing +2.2

Candidates

The local Liberal Association selected the 43-year-old temperance campaigner Arthur Sherwell to defend the seat. The Conservatives retained the 38-year-old journalist John Foster Fraser as their candidate. The 37-year-old Thomas Russell Williams, who had stood as a candidate of the Labour Representation Committee, at the general election also stood again but this time as the candidate of the Labour Party. Although raised in Huddersfield, he worked as a mill manager in Keighley. [3]

Campaign

Polling day was fixed for 28 November 1906. The Conservative and Labour challengers started with an advantage, as their names were known from having contested the constituency nine months earlier. The Liberals had received a setback, losing Cockermouth to the Conservatives in a by-election three months earlier. Liberal candidates in other by-elections had also seen their vote share fall from the party's general election high point. In Huddersfield, since the general election, the Liberal association had undergone reorganisation and had substantially increased its membership. Williams, the Labour candidate, was regarded as a quasi-Marxist socialist and struggled to relate his stances to local trade unionists, who wanted firm policy commitments from him. [3] Sherwell, the Liberal candidate, supported giving women the vote. However, the Women's Social and Political Union set up a local campaign office to campaign against him. [4]

Result

The Liberals held the seat with a slightly reduced majority.

Huddersfield by-election, 1906 [2]
PartyCandidateVotes%±%
Liberal Arthur Sherwell 5,762 36.0 −2.2
Labour T. Russell Williams 5,42233.8−1.4
Conservative John Foster Fraser 4,84430.2+3.6
Majority3402.2−0.8
Turnout 16,02891.2−2.8
Liberal hold Swing -0.4

Aftermath

The Labour Party decided that after two contests, Williams was not a good candidate and so it changed him for another for the next election, only to see their share of the vote drop further. The Huddersfield Liberals stifled the growth of the Labour Party up to the First World War. [3]

General election January 1910: Huddersfield [2]
PartyCandidateVotes%±%
Liberal Arthur Sherwell 7,158 39.8 +3.8
Labour Harry Snell 5,68631.62.2
Conservative Harold Smith5,15328.6−1.6
Majority1,4728.2+5.2
Turnout 17,99794.6+0.6
Registered electors 19,021
Liberal hold Swing +2.6

References

  1. Craig, F.W.S. (1987). Chronology of British Parliamentary By-elections 1833–1987. Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 100.
  2. 1 2 3 British parliamentary election results, 1885-1918, F. W. S. Craig
  3. 1 2 3 Liberalism and the Rise of Labour 1890-1918 by Keith Laybourn, Jack Reynolds, Routledge, 1984
  4. The Scottish Suffragettes and the Press by Sarah Pedersen, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017