Barnard Castle by-election, 1903

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The Barnard Castle by-election, 1903 was a parliamentary by-election held for the British House of Commons constituency of Barnard Castle, in County Durham, on 24 July 1903.

By-elections, also spelled bye-elections, are used to fill elected offices that have become vacant between general elections.

Barnard Castle was a county constituency centred on the town of Barnard Castle in County Durham, which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was created for the 1885 general election and abolished for the 1950 general election.

County Durham County of England

County Durham is a county in North East England. The county town is Durham, a cathedral city. The largest settlement is Darlington, closely followed by Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees. It borders Tyne and Wear to the north east, Northumberland to the north, Cumbria to the west and North Yorkshire to the south. The county's historic boundaries stretch between the rivers Tyne and Tees, thus including places such as Gateshead, Jarrow, South Shields and Sunderland.

Contents

Vacancy

Pease SirJosephWhitewellPease.jpg
Pease

The by-election was caused by the death of the sitting Liberal MP, Sir Joseph Pease on 23 June 1903 at the age of 75. Pease had been MP for Barnard Castle since the 1885 general election, and before that one of the two MPs for South Durham since 1865.

Liberal Party (UK) political party of the United Kingdom, 1859–1988

The Liberal Party was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom with the opposing Conservative Party in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free trade Peelites and Radicals favourable to the ideals of the American and French Revolutions in the 1850s. By the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and then won a landslide victory in the following year's general election.

Sir Joseph Pease, 1st Baronet British politician

Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, 1st Baronet was a British Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1903.

Candidates

Beaumont Hubert Beaumont.jpg
Beaumont

The Liberals selected Hubert Beaumont to succeed Pease. Beaumont had fought King's Lynn in 1895 and Buckingham in 1900. He would go on to become the MP for Eastbourne at the 1906 election. He was 39 years old at the election.

Hubert Beaumont (Liberal politician) British politician (1864-1922)

Hubert George Beaumont, styled The Honourable from 1906, was a British Liberal Party politician.

King's Lynn was a constituency in Norfolk represented continually in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1298 until it was abolished for the February 1974 general election.

Buckingham (UK Parliament constituency) Parliamentary constituency in the United Kingdom

Buckingham /ˈbʌkɪŋm̩/ is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 1997 by former Conservative MP John Bercow, who later became Speaker of the House of Commons.

William Lyonel Vane was the Unionist candidate. Vane had fought the seat as the Unionist candidate in the 1895 and 1900 elections. losing on both occasions in straight fights against Pease. He was 43 years old and was a colonel in the 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry.

Conservative Party (UK) Political party in the United Kingdom

The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. Presently led by Theresa May, it has been the governing party since 2010. It presently has 314 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, 249 members of the House of Lords, and 18 members of the European Parliament. It also has 31 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 12 members of the Welsh Assembly, eight members of the London Assembly and 9,008 local councillors. One of the major parties of UK politics, it has formed the government on 45 occasions, more than any other party.

The Friendly Society of Iron Founders agreed to sponsor a Labour Representation Committee candidate. Arthur Henderson was selected, receiving 5,619 votes from their membership, defeating Robert Morley, who took only 1,411. [1] Henderson was one of the delegates to the founding conference of the LRC in 1900, and had been elected Mayor of Darlington earlier in 1903. He had previously worked as agent for Pease, and was also 39 years old.

Labour Representation Committee (1900)

The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) was a pressure group founded in 1900 as an alliance of socialist organisations and trade unions, aimed at increasing representation for labour interests in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Labour Party traces its origin to the LRC's foundation.

Arthur Henderson British politician

Arthur Henderson was a British iron moulder and Labour politician. He was the first Labour cabinet minister, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934 and, uniquely, served three separate terms as Leader of the Labour Party in three different decades. He was popular among his colleagues, who called him "Uncle Arthur" in acknowledgement of his integrity, his devotion to the cause and his imperturbability. He was a transitional figure whose policies were, at first, close to those of the Liberal Party. The trades unions rejected his emphasis on arbitration and conciliation, and thwarted his goal of unifying the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Robert Morley was a British trade unionist and politician.

Result

A crowd of 3,000 gathered in the market place at Barnard Castle on Saturday 26 July to hear that Henderson had beaten Vane by 47 votes, with Beaumont in third place. [2]

Henderson 1900s Arthur Henderson MP.jpg
Henderson
Barnard Castle by-election, 1903 [3] [4]
PartyCandidateVotes%±
Labour Arthur Henderson 3,370 35.4
Conservative William Lyonel Vane 3,323 35.0
Liberal Hubert Beaumont 2,809 29.6
Majority 47
Turnout 84.6
Labour gain from Liberal Swing

He was the first Labour candidate to win against both Liberal and Conservative opposition, becoming only the fifth Labour MP, joining Keir Hardie, Richard Bell, who had been elected at the 1900 election David Shackleton who had been elected for Clitheroe in a by-election in 1902, and Will Crooks who had been elected for Woolwich in a by-election four months earlier.

Aftermath

Henderson would remain as MP for the division until 1918, when he instead fought, and lost, the southern division of East Ham. He would go on to serve three times as Leader of the Labour Party, and as both Home and Foreign Secretary.

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References

  1. ↑ David E. Martin, "Morley, Robert", Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol.IX, pp.225-227
  2. ↑ Teesdale Mercury Archived 5 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine .
  3. ↑ The Liberal Year Book, 1908
  4. ↑ The Constitutional Year Book, 1904, published by Conservative Central Office, page 143 (167 in web page), Durham

See also

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