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1920 South Norfolk by-election

UK parliamentary by-election

Field	Value
election_name	1920 South Norfolk by-election
type	presidential
country	United Kingdom
previous_election	South Norfolk (UK Parliament constituency)#Elections in the 1910s
previous_year	1918
next_election	South Norfolk (UK Parliament constituency)#Elections in the 1920s
next_year	1922
election_date	27 July 1920
candidate1	George Edwards
image1	George Edwards_crop.jpg
party1	Labour Party (UK)
popular_vote1	8,594
percentage1	45.7%
candidate2	James Batty
image2	No image wide.svg
party2	Coalition Liberal
popular_vote2	6,476
percentage2	34.5%
candidate3	Charles Roberts
image3	Charles Roberts.jpg
party3	Liberal Party (UK)
popular_vote3	3,718
percentage3	19.8%
map_size	250px
title	MP
posttitle	Subsequent MP
before_election	Cozens-Hardy
before_party	Liberal Party (UK)
after_election	Hay
after_party	Unionist Party (UK)
image_size	100px

The 1920 South Norfolk by-election was a by-election held on 27 July 1920 for the British House of Commons constituency of South Norfolk.

Vacancy

The by-election was triggered by the succession to the peerage of the serving Coalition Liberal Member of Parliament (MP), William Cozens-Hardy.

Electoral history

South Norfolk had been a safe Liberal seat since Arthur Soames's victory in the 1898 by-election.

Candidates

The Liberal vote was now divided. The Coalition Liberal candidate was James Henley Batty, who received the support of the Coalition leaders, David Lloyd George and Bonar Law. He had contested the 1918 general election at Clitheroe, as a Coalition Liberal coming third behind Labour and Unionist.

Charles Henry Roberts ran as a Liberal who received the support of H. H. Asquith. He had sat as a Liberal MP before the war. He was elected to Parliament for Lincoln in the 1906 general election and served under Asquith as Under-Secretary of State for India 1914 to 1915 and as Comptroller of the Household from 1915 to 1916. He lost his seat in 1918.

They were opposed by a strong Labour Party candidate, George Edwards, a former agricultural labourer. In 1906 he founded the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labourers & Small Holders Union later known as the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, and became its general secretary. In 1906 he was elected to Norfolk County Council, in 1914 he became a magistrate, and in 1918 he became a county alderman. During the war he served on various committees and was given the OBE. He contested the South Norfolk constituency at the 1918 general election. He won 26% of the votes, losing to the Liberal Party candidate William Cozens-Hardy.

Campaign

Batty recommending those of his supporters who could not bring themselves to vote for the Coalition to support Edwards instead. A local landowner and Norfolk county councillor, the Earl of Kimberley, endorsed Edwards.

Result

The result was a clear win for Edwards, who picked up around 2,000 votes on a very similar turnout to the general election, and exploited the split in the Liberal vote.

Aftermath

Edwards was defeated in the next election, but won the seat again between 1923 and 1924.

References

The Times, 10 August 1920

References

''The Times'', 26 July 1920

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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