By-Elections In British Politics

Chris Cook, John Ramsden, Dr Chris Cook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134225491
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

In this text, historians and political scientists present a survey of the role and influence of by-elections in British politics since 1918.

CHAPTER 5

Interpreting East Fulham

Martin Ceadel

General Election, 1929	(Electorate 51,066)
Vaughan-Morgan (Conservative)	15,130	(44.4)
Palmer (Labour)	13,425	(39.4)
Greenwood (Liberal)	5,551	(16.3)
Conservative majority	1,705	Turnout 66.8%
General Election, 1931	(Electorate 51,688)
Vaughan-Morgan (Conservative)	23,438	(68.7)
Maynard (Labour)	8,917	(261)
Greenwood (Liberal)	1,788	(5.2)
Conservative majority	14,521	Turnout 66.1%
By-Election, 25 Oct 1933	(Electorate 51,642)
Wilmot (Labour)	17,790	(57.9)
Waldron (Conservative)	12,950	(42.1)
Labour majority	4,840	Turnout 59.5%
General Election, 1935	(Electorate 50,682)
Astor (Conservative)	18,743	(51.4)
Wilmot (Labour)	17,689	(48.6)
Conservative majority	1,054	Turnout 71.9%

The East Fulham by-election of 25 October 1933 has aroused more controversy than any other.¹ Caused by the death in August 1933 of Sir Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan, the Conservative who had held the seat since 1922, it was won dramatically two months later by Labour on a turnover of over 19,000 votes and a swing of 29.1 per cent. But it was not merely as a spectacular electoral upset that the result at East Fulham became controversial. It was cited as an indicator of the popular pacifism which delayed the National Government’s rearmament programme, and it therefore became notorious as a political symbol of the locust years – the vital early years of the Hitler regime – during which Baldwin and MacDonald failed to build up adequate national defences. More recently, the by-election has become a matter of dispute among historians who have disagreed over the issues which the result reflected, despite subjecting the campaign at East Fulham to the minutest scrutiny.² This account will therefore seek not to retell the details of the campaign, but to answer three questions of interpretation which lie at the heart of the East Fulham controversy. Why did East Fulham become a political myth? What was the decisive issue or issues which determined the result? And what was the contemporary impact of the result?

The political myth

That East Fulham achieved political notoriety was a demonstration of the speed with which conditions in the 1930s changed, rendering obsolete and ludicrous attitudes and positions which had seemed sensible in the previous context. East Fulham, on 25 October 1933, was the first, most dramatic and the only actual government loss among six bad by-election results within five weeks. It occurred at a time when the National Government faced major problems both domestically and internationally. The domestic problems were the social effects of the economic crisis: unemployment and cuts in the social services. The international problems arose from the growing threat posed by the nine-month-old Nazi regime to the peace of Europe, for which the success of the World Disarmament Conference that had been sitting at Geneva since February of the previous year was seen to be crucial.

During the three years it took for East Fulham to become the centre of political controversy, the situation changed. There was a measure of economic recovery, but all prospects of disarmament faded and an arms race had begun. The most vocal criticisms of government defence and foreign policy were no longer those of militaristic warmongering but of inadequate vigilance and determination. It was while defending the government’s rearmament programme in the Commons on 12 November 1936 that Stanley Baldwin invoked East Fulham and thereby ensured it political immortality. In reply to Winston Churchill’s criticisms, he explained: ‘We started late, and I want to say a word about the years the locusts have eaten.’ These were the years 1933–4 when Baldwin, not yet (until June 1935) Prime Minister, had nevertheless been the most powerful man in the government. He went on, in what was to become one of the most notorious speeches of the decade:

I put before the whole House my own views with an appalling frankness. From 1933, I and my friends were all very worried about what was happening in Europe. You will remember at that time the Disarmament Conference was sitting in Geneva. You will remember at that time there was probably a stronger pacifist feeling running through this country than at any time since the War. I am speaking of 1933 and 1934. You will remember the election at Fulham in the autumn of 1933, when a seat which the National Government was lost by about 7,000 [sic] votes on no issue but the pacifist. You will remember perhaps that the National Government candidate who made a most guarded reference to the question of defence was mobbed for it.

The accuracy or otherwise of Baldwin’s interpretation of the issues at East Fulham, which now interests historians, received less attention than did the implications of what Baldwin went on to say:

That was the feeling in the country in 1933. My position as the leader of a great party was not altogether a comfortable one. I asked myself what chance was there – when that feeling that was given expression to in Fulham was common thoughout the country – what chance was there within the next year or two of that feeling being so changed that the country would give a mandate for rearmament? Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain.

Four years later, in war-time when circumstances had once more dramatically altered, this unfortunately worded admission came to be quoted as part of the mounting indictment of Baldwin’s inadequate leadership. With Churchill as Prime Minister of a Coalition Government unable to prevent the British Expeditionary Force being driven into the sea or the fall of France, ex-appeasers, Conservative anti-appeasers and the Labour Party found unity in a time of national crisis by agreeing to condemn Baldwin for the country’s unpreparedness.

The fact of Baldwin’s negligence was not discussed, merely the degree of his culpability. In his influential indictment of the National Government written in the immediate aftermath of Dunkirk, ‘Cato’ (Michael Foot) misdated the East Fulham by-election into 1935 and interpreted Baldwin’s remarks about the loss of an election to refer to the 1935 general election.³ Baldwin therefore stood accused of failing to alert the British people to the need for rearmament as late as November 1935. This error was compounded by Hamilton Fyfe in an article in 1941 which bowdlerized (and misdated) the 12 November 1936 speech so as to put into Baldwin’s mouth an admission of having failed to inform the country of German rearmament explicitly in the 1935 election. Fyfe’s article had been on ‘Leadership and Democracy’⁴ and the mistaken reference to 1935 crept even into constitutional textbooks as a stock illustration of when representative government should not defer to the general will.⁵

It was not until 1948 that R. Bassett put the record straight by pointing out that Baldwin was referring to a hypothetical election in the years 1933–4.⁶ On the outcome of such an election Baldwin’s judgement had been anticipated less than three weeks previously by Hugh Dalton, who wrote in the New Statesman: ‘When early in the life of the last Parliament John Wilmot won East Fulham, though his outstanding personal qualities swelled his majority, he proved that a tide was running which, had a General Election come soon after, might easily have carried us to victory.’⁷ Yet Baldwin had so phrased his speech as to invite the charge of putting party before country. In the words of his official biographer, G. M. Young: ‘Never I suppose in our history has a statesman used a phrase so fatal to his own good name, and at the same time so wholly unnecessary, so incomprehensible. One can think of half a dozen ways of ending that passage, all convincing and all true.’⁸ Young’s lack of sympathy with his subject has become notorious, but his impressionistic style evoked not a ‘guilty’ man but an inadequate one. The ‘appalling frankness’ speech was an incompetent admission rather than an admission of incompetence. Baldwin’s cloudy and equivocal phraseology has made it hard to estimate the degree to which he sought a mandate for rearmament in the 1935 general election campaign itself.

Although the more recent biography by Middlemas and Barnes has argued that he did explicitly seek such a mandate, earlier critics had argued that the notion of a mandate was irrelevant in a representative democracy. In the debate of 12 November 1936, Winston Churchill had argued that ‘The responsibility of Ministers for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate’. This remark was quoted approvingly in 1941 in A. L. Rowse’s essay, ‘Reflections on Lord Baldwin’, which criticized Baldwin for failing to give public opinion the political leadership which the situation required and the apparently impregnable electoral position of the National Government facilitated. Churchill’s remark was also quoted by C. L. Mowat in an article prompted by Young’s biography which added very little to Rowse’s arguments.⁹ Baldwin having died in 1947, East Fulham had exhausted itself as a source of political controversy by the middle of the affluent 1950s.

The campaign issues

The facts

The explosion of historical research in the 1960s meant that East Fulham was rediscovered as a source of problems to resolve, in particular the central problem of whether or not East Fulham had been ‘lost in a wild flood of pacifism’.¹⁰ Baldwin’s view in 1936 that the election had been decided ‘on no issue but the pacifist’ had been accepted by his supporters and critics alike, but more recently it has been investigated by several historians, and in 1971 two detailed articles devoted entirely to the by-election appeared simultaneously. This historical activity has produced a fundamental division of opinion between those who regard the international situation as decisive, and those who believe that the domestic situation provides the explanation.

On many aspects of the election, however, all accounts are in agreement. For an indication of the political complexion of the constituency, which dated from 1918, the 1929 result was a better guide than the panic election of 1931.¹¹ Though the Conservatives had always held the seat, they were by 1929 closely challenged by Labour, with the Liberal vote holding the balance of power. Three factors contributed to the by-election result: Conservative abstention, a high turnout of Labour supporters, and a significant number of Liberals voting Labour.

This analysis is supported by the literary evidence, which is surprisingly clear-cut. All accounts agree that East Fulham is an extreme case of a disastrous candidate with a weak organization being defeated by an outstanding one with strong support. To start with the Conservatives, their adoption of Alderman W. J. Waldron as candidate had occasioned considerable infighting among a local party organization of acknowledged weakness, and his diehard views on India meant he had only half-hearted support from Central Office. Lacking the personal popularity of his predecessor who had held the seat for the five previous contests, Waldron had nevertheless been Mayor of Fulham six times in the 1920s, but, far from being a source of political strength, it identified him as responsible for imposing wage cuts on the borough council staff in 1931. As a local property-owner he was on the defensive over the housing problem. His campaign fared badly, culminating in the tactical blunder of a ‘smear’ leaflet about his opponent which completely rebounded.

The Labour candidate, John Wilmot, was, at the age of 38, nineteen years younger than his opponent but of equal political experience. His organization was helped by nearby constituencies, including Kennington where he lived. The organizer of the London Labour Party acted as his agent, and the party’s national organization, untroubled by any policy divisions, sent their leader, George Lansbury, plus J. R. Clynes, Hugh Dalton, Herbert Morrison, A. V. Alexander, Arthur Greenwood and others to speak for Wilmot. It was Wilmot who took the initiative in the campaign, branding his opponent as a warmonger, and making a personal investigation of the housing situation in the borough, contrasting his findings with the plans of the Tory council. Waldron’s attempt to wrest the initiative from Wilmot had been to ‘smear’ him with his involvement with a local Shareholders Provident Association, which Waldron claimed was inconsistent with his professed Socialism. But since the association was known to protect the small investor against fraudulent company promoters, it was a source of political strength – not least among middle-class voters – for Wilmot, who made his career in banking and later in business.

This raises the question of the Liberal vote. The Liberal Association had maintained its organization and contested every previous election except 1924. Although its 5,551 votes in 1929 had slumped to 1,788 in the crisis election of 1931, Wilmot believed Liberalism to be a force worth courting. He advocated free trade and electoral reform, and over the question of India he claimed his opposition to Waldron’s diehard stance to be in the best Liberal tradition of Campbell-Bannerman. Waldron’s chances of winning Liberal support were slender, since the tide of Liberal opinion was moving away from the National Government. In 1931 the Liberals had ‘agreed to differ’ on the question of protection, but after the Ottawa Conference the Liberal Ministers had resigned in September 1932, although they continued to sit on the government benches. In response to pressure in the National Liberal Federation they were to cross over, in November 1933, on to the opposition benches, leaving only the Simonite Liberal Nationals in the administration. There was no Simonite organization in East Fulham, and indeed throughout the campaign Sir John Simon was playing an unhappy role in the international crisis which broke during the campaign. Since the Great War, foreign affairs, and in particular support for the League of Nations, had become one of the two major areas of Liberal interest, and as the economic depression made free trade seem an unrealistic ideal, internationalism became the predominant Liberal preoccupation. Waldron actually attacked the League of Nations, to which most Conservatives were careful to pay lip-service. Therefore it was scarcely a surprise when, having sent a questionnaire to both candidates about their attitudes to matters of interest to Liberals, the Liberal Association announced a week before polling day that ‘The replies of the two candidates having been received and considered, the Association, regarding the question of disarmament as of vital importance, recommends all Liberal voters to give Mr Wilmot their support’. The former Liberal candidate, J. H. Greenwood, joined Wilmot on his platforms to speak on disarmament, leaving Wilmot to deal with food prices and housing. The Times reporter, basing his calculations on the assumption that the Liberals would divide evenly, underestimated Wilmot’s vote which was over 4,000 higher than the best previous Labour vote. A case can thus be made for hypothesizing that Liberalism was still a recognisable political entity in Fulham, and that in 1933 it largely supported Wilmot, mostly because of the disarmament question.

Where no opinion polls exist to provide additional evidence, all descriptions and explanations of electoral behaviour must necessarily be hypothetical and approximate. It is here argued that the most plausible such explanation of East Fulham was that Waldron failed to turn out all the Conservative voters, whereas Wilmot succeeded in mobilizing the maximum Labour vote. Waldron was a poor candidate in a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tables
• List of Contributors
• Introduction and acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 By-elections and their interpretation
• Chapter 2 The Newport by-election and the fall of the Coalition
• Chapter 3 By-elections of the first Labour Government
• Note: 1924 to 1931
• Chapter 4 St George's and the Empire Crusade
• Note: 1931 to 1939
• Chapter 5 Interpreting East Fulham
• Chapter 6 Oxford and Bridgwater
• Chapter 7 By-elections of the Second World War
• Note: 1945 to 1960
• Chapter 8 Orpington and the ‘Liberal revival'
• Chapter 9 By-elections of the Wilson Government
• Chapter 10 Lincoln and the Liberal surge, 1972–73
• Chapter 12 ‘Breaking the mould?' The Alliance by-election challenge, 1981–82
• Chapter 13 By-elections since 1983: did they matter?
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C Bibliography
• Appendix D Index of outstanding results
• Appendix E Index of Persons