The 1938 Oxford by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Oxford, held on 27 October 1938. The by-election was triggered when Robert Croft Bourne, the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament died on 7 August 1938. He had served as MP for the constituency since a 1924 by-election.
On 29 September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had signed the Munich Agreement, handing over the Sudetenland to German control. This issue polarised British politics at the time, with many Labour supporters, Liberals, and some Conservatives strongly opposed to this policy of appeasement. [1] Many by-elections in the autumn of 1938 were fought around this issue, including this one and also the Bridgwater by-election, three weeks later, where Liberals and Labour again united in support of an Independent anti-appeasement candidate.
The Liberal Party had selected Ivor Davies, [2] a 23-year-old graduate of Edinburgh University, despite the fact that he was the candidate for Central Aberdeenshire at the same time. The Labour Party selected Patrick Gordon Walker, who had contested the seat at the 1935 general election.
On 13 September, Davies offered to stand down from the by-election if Labour did the same and backed a Popular Front candidate against the Conservatives. [3] Eventually, Gordon Walker reluctantly stood down and both parties supported Sandy Lindsay, who was the Master of Balliol, as an Independent Progressive. [4]
On 14 September, the Conservatives selected Quintin Hogg, who was a fellow of All Souls and a former President of the Oxford Union Society. [5]
The campaign was intense and focused almost entirely on foreign affairs. Hogg supported Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Lindsay opposed appeasement; his campaigners used the slogan "A vote for Hogg is a vote for Hitler."
Lindsay was supported by many dissident Conservatives such as Harold Macmillan who were opposed to the Munich Agreement. A number of future politicians such as Edward Heath and Roy Jenkins, at the University of Oxford at the time, cut their teeth in the Michaelmas campaign.
A 1988 TV drama-documentary A Vote for Hitler dramatized the events surrounding the by-election, and included interviews with Denis Healey and Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, who had campaigned for Labour during the election, and Quintin Hogg, by then Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone. Actors played their younger versions and included John Woodvine as Lindsay, and James Coombes as Richard Crossman.
The by-election forms the basis of part 'XIV' of poet Louis MacNeice's masterwork, Autumn Journal, which he wrote in the autumn of 1938 strongly influenced by the shadow of impending war. The persona in part 'XIV' apparently campaigns for Lindsay: "use your legs and leave a blank for Hogg / And put a cross for Lindsay".
The intensive campaign caused turnout to increase from 67.3% at the last election to 76.3%. Hogg won the seat with a reduced majority of 3,434 or 12.2%.
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Conservative | Quintin Hogg | 15,797 | 56.1 | −6.7 | |
Independent Progressive | Sandy Lindsay | 12,363 | 43.9 | New | |
Majority | 3,434 | 12.2 | −13.4 | ||
Turnout | 28,160 | 76.3 | +9.0 | ||
Conservative hold | Swing | -6.7 |
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Conservative | Robert Bourne | 16,306 | 62.8 | N/A | |
Labour | Patrick Gordon-Walker | 9,661 | 37.2 | New | |
Majority | 6,645 | 25.6 | N/A | ||
Turnout | 25,967 | 67.3 | N/A | ||
Conservative hold | Swing |
Notwithstanding his pro-appeasement campaign, Hogg would subsequently vote against Neville Chamberlain in the Norway Debate of May 1940.
Arthur Neville Chamberlain was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940 and Leader of the Conservative Party from May 1937 to October 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.
Quintin McGarel Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone, known as the 2nd Viscount Hailsham between 1950 and 1963, at which point he disclaimed his hereditary peerage, was a British barrister and Conservative Party politician.
Appeasement, in an international context, is a diplomatic negotiation policy of making political, material, or territorial concessions to an aggressive power with intention to avoid conflict. The term is most often applied to the foreign policy between 1935 and 1939 of the British governments of Prime Ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and most notably Neville Chamberlain towards Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Under British pressure, appeasement of Nazism and Fascism also played a role in French foreign policy of the period but was always much less popular there than in the United Kingdom.
Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax,, known as the Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and the Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a senior British Conservative politician of the 1930s. He held several senior ministerial posts during this time, most notably those of Viceroy of India from 1926 to 1931 and of Foreign Secretary between 1938 and 1940. He was one of the architects of the policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1936–1938, working closely with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. After Kristallnacht on 9–10 November 1938 and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, he was one of those who pushed for a new policy of attempting to deter further German aggression by promising to go to war to defend Poland.
Douglas McGarel Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham, was a British lawyer and Conservative politician who twice served as Lord Chancellor, in addition to a number of other Cabinet positions. Mooted as a possible successor to Stanley Baldwin as party leader for a time in the very early 1930s, he was widely considered to be one of the leading Conservative politicians of his generation.
The 1945 United Kingdom general election was a national election held on Thursday 5 July 1945, but polling in some constituencies was delayed by some days, and the counting of votes was delayed until 26 July to provide time for overseas votes to be brought to Britain. The governing Conservative Party sought to maintain its position in Parliament but faced challenges from public opinion about the future of the United Kingdom in the post-war period. Prime Minister Winston Churchill proposed to call for a general election in Parliament, which passed with a majority vote less than two months after the conclusion of the Second World War in Europe.
The National Labour Organisation, also known simply as National Labour, was formed in 1931 by supporters of the National Government in Britain who had come from the Labour Party. Its leaders were Ramsay MacDonald (1931–1937) and his son Malcolm MacDonald (1937–1945).
Patrick Chrestien Gordon Walker, Baron Gordon-Walker, was a British Labour Party politician. He was a Member of Parliament for nearly 30 years and twice a cabinet minister. He lost his Smethwick parliamentary seat at the 1964 general election in a bitterly racial campaign conducted in the wake of local factory closures.
In the politics of the United Kingdom, a National Government is a coalition of some or all of the major political parties. In a historical sense, it refers primarily to the governments of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain which held office from 1931 until 1940.
Guilty Men is a British polemical book written under the pseudonym "Cato" that was published in July 1940, after the failure of British forces to prevent the defeat and occupation of Norway and France by Nazi Germany. It attacked fifteen public figures for their failed policies towards Germany and for their failure to re-equip the British armed forces. In denouncing appeasement, it defined the policy as the "deliberate surrender of small nations in the face of Hitler's blatant bullying". A classic denunciation of the former government's policy, it shaped popular and scholarly thinking for the next two decades.
Alexander Dunlop Lindsay, 1st Baron Lindsay of Birker,, known as Sandie Lindsay, was a Scottish academic and peer.
Robert Hamilton Bernays was a Liberal Party and later Liberal National politician in the United Kingdom who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1931 to 1945.
The 1938 Bridgwater by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Bridgwater, Somerset held on 17 November 1938.
Humphrey Frank Owen was a British journalist, writer, and radical Liberal Member of Parliament. He was Liberal MP for Hereford between 1929 and 1931. He was an editor of the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail. He was awarded the OBE in 1946.
Ivor Roland Morgan Davies CBE was a British Liberal Party politician, journalist and United Nations Association administrator. Politically, his chief claim to fame was his decision in October 1938 to withdraw as Liberal candidate at the Oxford by-election along with the Labour candidate Patrick Gordon-Walker to allow an independent, Popular Front, anti-Munich candidate, A. D. Lindsay, the Master of Balliol, to challenge the government candidate Quintin Hogg.
The 1938 Walsall by-election was a parliamentary by-election held for the British House of Commons constituency of Walsall on 16 November 1938. The by-election was caused by the death of the sitting Liberal National Member of Parliament, Joseph Leckie. The election was won by George Schuster, a fellow Liberal National.
The 1937 St Ives by-election was a by-election held in England on 30 June 1937 for the House of Commons constituency of St Ives in Cornwall.
The 1940 Argyllshire by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Argyllshire, on 10 April 1940.
The Popular Front in the United Kingdom attempted an alliance between political parties and individuals of the left and centre-left in the late 1930s to come together to challenge the appeasement policies of the National Government led by Neville Chamberlain.
A Total and Unmitigated Defeat was a speech by Winston Churchill in the House of Commons at Westminster on Wednesday, 5 October 1938, the third day of the Munich Agreement debate. Signed five days earlier by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the agreement met the demands of Nazi Germany in respect of the Czechoslovak region of Sudetenland.