1923 United Kingdom general election

Overview

In May 1923, Prime Minister Bonar Law fell ill and resigned on 22 May, after just 209 days in office. He was replaced by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Stanley Baldwin. The Labour Party had also changed leaders since the previous election, after J. R. Clynes was defeated in a leadership challenge by former leader Ramsay MacDonald.

Having won an election just the year before, Baldwin's Conservative Party had a comfortable majority in the House of Commons and could have waited another four years, but the government was concerned and the Conservatives were divided. Baldwin felt the need to receive a mandate from the people, which, if successful, would strengthen his grip on the Conservative Party leadership and allow him to introduce tariff reform and imperial preference as protectionist trade policies over the objections of the free trade elements of his party.

Oxford historian and Conservative MP John Marriott depicts the gloomy national mood:{{blockquote| The times were still out of joint. Mr. Baldwin had indeed succeeded in negotiating (January 1923) a settlement of the British debt to the United States, but on terms which involved an annual payment of £34 million, at the existing rate of exchange. The French remained in the Ruhr. Peace had not yet been made with Turkey; unemployment was a standing menace to national recovery; there was continued unrest among the wage-earners, and a significant strike among farm labourers in Norfolk.

Confronted by these difficulties, convinced that economic conditions in England called for a drastic change in fiscal policy, and urged thereto by the Imperial Conference of 1923, Mr. Baldwin decided to ask the country for a mandate for Preference and Protection.

Parliament was dissolved on 16 November and the result backfired on Baldwin, who lost a host of seats to Labour and the Liberals, resulting in a hung parliament.

The Liberals' gains were regionally concentrated: they made sweeping gains across the South-West, including areas such as Bath, Salisbury, Wells, Bridgwater, St Ives, Weston-Super-Mare and Torquay. They increased their share of the vote from 45.2% to 51.3% in those constituencies where a straight fight with the Conservatives had taken place in both 1922 and 1923.

A reformation of the Conservative-Liberal coalition which had governed the country from 1918 to 1922 was not practical, as Baldwin had alienated both of the two most prominent Liberals, Asquith and David Lloyd George.

Aftermath

Faced with the decision of whether to support a minority Conservative or Labour government on an issue-by-issue basis, Asquith ultimately chose to support the Labour government. This decision was influenced by Lloyd George's faction, which was strongly opposed to collaborating with Baldwin, and the belief amongst the Liberals as a whole that Labour's electoral success was largely due to the previous split within the Liberal Party. Asquith anticipated that a Labour government would reveal Labour's policies as impractical, thereby enabling the Liberals to surpass them in the subsequent election. Consequently, the Liberals joined forces with Labour to defeat Baldwin's King's Speech, leading to the fall of his government and allowing Labour to form its first government.

Campaign

The Conservative manifesto said that action would be taken to "impose duties on imported manufactured goods" in order "to raise revenue" and "give special assistance" to industries facing unfair foreign competition while negotiating  for "a reduction of foreign tariffs" to help British exports and giving "substantial preference to the Empire."

In Liverpool, Baldwin was asked how shipping would be affected by protectionism, and he replied that Liverpool's prosperity began before free trade "and to imagine that it would decline on a return to protection, or indeed that any responsible statesman could support measures that would put it in peril, was absurd."

Labour's manifesto said that Labour would "abolish the slums [and] build an adequate supply of decent homes." Labour also planned to nationalise mines, railways and power stations. Under their plans, "a non-recurring, graduated war debt redemption levy" was announced for "all individual fortunes in excess of £5,000." MacDonald said proceeds of the levy would be used to reduce debt.

The Liberal manifesto condemned the government’s failure to prevent the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr and claimed that the maintenance of a peace on a long-term basis was dependent upon Europe’s economic recovery. The Liberals also advocated the admittance of all countries to the League of Nations and pledged to re-open diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. In addition, the programme contained a planned national credit to ease unemployment, and the Liberals had plans for afforestation.

Results

|votes % = 38.0 |seats % = 41.95 |plus/minus = −0.5 |votes % = 29.7 |seats % = 30.1 |plus/minus = +1.0 |votes % = 29.7 |seats % = 25.69 |plus/minus = +0.9 |votes % = 0.8 |seats % = 1.0 |plus/minus = -0.1 |votes % = 0.3 |seats % = 0.3 |plus/minus = N/A |votes % = 0.3 |seats % = 0.325 |plus/minus = −0.5 |votes % = 0.2 |seats % = |plus/minus = 0.0 |votes % = 0.2 |seats % = |plus/minus = N/A |votes % = 0.2 |seats % = |plus/minus = 0.0 |votes % = 0.1 |seats % = 0.1 |plus/minus = 0.0 |votes % = 0.1 |seats % = |plus/minus = 0.0 |votes % = 0.1 |seats % = |plus/minus = −0.8 |votes % = 0.1 |seats % = |plus/minus = 0.0 |votes % = 0.1 |seats % = 0.2 |plus/minus = N/A |votes % = 0.0 |seats % = |plus/minus = N/A |}

Votes summary

Seats summary

Constituency results

Transfers of seats

• All comparisons are with the 1922 election.
  • In some cases the change is due to the MP defecting to the gaining party. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
  • In other circumstances the change is due to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1923. Such circumstances are marked with a †.

Notes

References

Sources

References

1. Morgan, William Thomas. (1924). "The British Elections of December, 1923". American Political Science Review.
2. "Andrew Bonar Law".
3. (25 March 1997). "Parliamentary Election Timetables". [[House of Commons Library]].
4. "The 1923 general election – Journal of Liberal History".
5. (2023-08-09). "How Stanley Baldwin lost the premiership a few months after achieving it, 100 years ago".
6. "Election Statistics: UK 1918–2007".