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The last December General Election was almost a century ago: 6 Dec 1923. The result wasnt too bad

In Uncategorized on October 30, 2019 by kmflett

While the media have noted that the last December General Election took place almost a century ago (6th December 1923) it will be interesting to see how much attention is paid to the actual result.

Whether Tory PM Baldwin really needed to call an Election is a moot point, there were of course various crisis including a financial one and Baldwin thought he could win an increased majority (this may sound rather familiar).

In reality the Election saw the brief tenure of the first ever Labour Government headed by Ramsay MacDonald. He was not yet the figure who came to be hated on the left from 1931 onwards when he led a National Government, Rather he was an MP who had up to a point opposed the First World War and lost his Parliamentary seat in 1918 because of it, returning as an MP in 1922 for the Welsh constituency of Aberavon.

In the 1923 Election Labour had built on its trade union support, in some cases recently detached from the Liberals. While the Liberals got 158 seats they were a party in decline, with Labour as the coming force.

The result was:

Tory 258 seats 41.59%

Labour 191 seats 31.06%

Liberal 158 seats 25.69%

When its considered that in the 1918 Election Labour had got 42 seats and in 1922 142 seats the trajectory is clear. Labour formed  a brief minority Government with Liberal support

 

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