Bath by-election, 1929

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The Bath by-election, 1929 was a parliamentary by-election held on 21 March 1929 for the constituency of Bath in Somerset.

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

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

Bath is a constituency in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom represented by Wera Hobhouse of the Liberal Democrats.

Somerset County of England

Somerset is a county in South West England which borders Gloucestershire and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east and Devon to the south-west. It is bounded to the north and west by the Severn Estuary and the Bristol Channel, its coastline facing southeastern Wales. Its traditional border with Gloucestershire is the River Avon. Somerset's county town is Taunton.

Contents

Vacancy

The by-election was caused by the death of the sitting MP, the Unionist Charles Foxcroft on 11 February 1929. He had been the MP since the October 1918 by-election, apart from 1923-24 following his defeat to the Liberals.

Captain Charles Talbot Foxcroft was a British Conservative Party politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Bath from 1918 to 1923, and from 1924 until his death.

History

Before 1918, Bath was a two-member seat that had regularly changed hands between Unioinsts and Liberals. Since 1918, the Unionists had won on every occasion apart from the 1923 General Election, when the Liberal, Frank Raffety won, thanks to the absence of a Labour candidate. Raffety was defeated by Foxcroft at the last General Election when Labour intervened;

General Election 29 October 1924: Electorate 34,042
PartyCandidateVotes%±
Unionist Charles Foxcroft 16,067 55.8 +7.4
Liberal Frank Raffety 8,800 30.6 -21.0
Labour Walter Barton Scobell 3,914 13.6 +13.6
Majority 7,267 25.2 28.4
Turnout 84.5 +5.4
Unionist gain from Liberal Swing +14.2

Candidates

The Unionist candidate was the Honorable Charles Baillie-Hamilton, younger brother of the Earl of Haddington. The Liberal candidate was a recently retired Indian civil servant, 56-year-old Sidney Daniels, rather than the previous Liberal MP, Frank Raffety who had been selected to contest Cheltenham at the pending General Election. Daniels had spent 33 years in India before returning to England to practice law in 1928. This was his first parliamentary election. The Labour candidate was a barrister and journalist, George Gilbert Desmond.

The Honourable Charles William Baillie-Hamilton was a British Conservative politician.

George Baillie-Hamilton, 12th Earl of Haddington, was a Scottish peer from 1917 to 1986.

Sidney Reginald Daniels British politician

Sidney Reginald Daniels, was a British Liberal Party politician, Civil Servant and Barrister-at-law.

Campaign

Polling Day was fixed for 21 March 1929, just 38 days after the death of the former MP. This left little time for campaigning. Since a general election was due in May and the Liberal and Labour parties were not strong in the constituency, little effort was put into the campaign. [1] On 1 March, nationally, Liberal leader, David Lloyd George launched the Liberal programme for the upcoming General election, titled We Can Conquer Unemployment.

Result

On polling day, news came through of a Liberal by-election victory at Eddisbury the day before, however this news came too late to influence the campaign. The Unionists held the seat with a reduced majority;

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

Eddisbury is a constituency in Cheshire represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Antoinette Sandbach, a Conservative.

Bath by-election, 1929
PartyCandidateVotes%±
Unionist Charles Baillie-Hamilton 11,171 45.1 -10.7
Liberal Sidney Reginald Daniels 7,255 29.3 -1.3
Labour George Gilbert Desmond 6,359 25.7 +12.1
Majority 3916 15.8 -9.4
Turnout 24,785 72.8 -11.7
Unionist hold Swing -4.6

Aftermath

All three fought the seat in the general election in May with a similar outcome;

General Election 30 May 1929: Electorate 46,877
PartyCandidateVotes%±
Unionist Charles Baillie-Hamilton 17,845 46.9 +1.8
Liberal Sidney Reginald Daniels 11,485 30.1 +0.8
Labour George Gilbert Desmond 8,769 23.0 -2.7
Majority 6,360 16.8 +1.0
Turnout 81.3 +8.5
Unionist hold Swing +0.5

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References

  1. ↑ 'The Bath Contest', The Times, 15 March 1929.
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