1930 Sheffield Brightside by-election

Arthur Ponsonby

The 1930 Sheffield Brightside by-election was held on 6 February 1930. The by-election was held due to the elevation to the peerage of the incumbent Labour MP, Arthur Ponsonby. It was won by the Labour candidate Fred Marshall. ^[1]

Previous result and background

General election 1929 ^[2] Electorate 47,521

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Arthur Ponsonby	20,277	55.2	−0.2
	Conservative	R. I. Money	9,828	26.8	−17.8
	Liberal	William Ashcroft Lambert	6,621	18.0	New
Majority			10,449	28.4	+17.6
Turnout			36,726	77.3	−1.6
	Labour hold		Swing

Ponsonby had held the seat for Labour since 1922. At the 1929 election he had increased his majority over the second-placed Conservatives from 3,345 votes to over 10,000. ^[3]

Candidates

• The Liberal Party ran William Ashcroft Lambert, a Sheffield solicitor and City Councillor. He had been Liberal candidate here at the last general election ^[4]
• Fred Marshall (Labour Party), an Alderman and wagon builder.
• J. T. Murphy (Communist Party)
• F. Hamer Russell (Conservative Party), a builders merchant. Russell had been a member of the Liberal Party for 25 years until 1928 when he defected to the Conservatives. ^[5]

Result

Sheffield Brightside by-election, 1930

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labour	Fred Marshall	11.543 [6]	46.37	−8.85
	Conservative	Hamer Russell	8.612 [6]	34.60	+7.84
	Liberal	William Ashcroft Lambert	3,650 [6]	14.66	−3.34
	Communist	J. T. Murphy	1,084 [6]	4.35	+4.35
Majority			2,931	11.77
Turnout			24889	52.00	−25.3
	Labour hold		Swing

Aftermath

While Marshall retained the seat for Labour, he would lose it to Russell at the following year's general election. ^[5] Four years later the pair fought each other for a third time at the 1935 general election, and Marshall regained the seat. ^[7]

See also

• List of United Kingdom by-elections (1918–1931)

References

1. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
2. British Parliamentary Election Results 1918-1949, FWS Craig
3. The Times House of Commons 1929. London: The Times Office. 1929. p. 58.
4. The Times House of Commons, 1929
5. The Times House of Commons 1931. London: The Times Office. 1931. p. 55.
6. "Sheffield Election." Times [London, England] 7 Feb. 1930: 14. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 29 Dec. 2013.
7. The Times House of Commons 1935. London: The Times Office. 1935. p. 76.