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British By-elections, 1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Richard M. Scammon
Richard M. Scammon
Affiliation:
Department of State
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Extract

Since the hard-fought general election of February 23, 1950, the narrow margin of Labor's control of the British House of Commons has been tested at the polls on ten occasions. This number of by-elections to fill vacancies in the membership of the House is a normal post-World War II figure (the previous House saw fifty-two replacements in its four and one-half years of life), although it is somewhat under that of prewar averages. In terms of locale, however, these ten by-elections were atypical. Though the overall distribution within the various parts of the United Kingdom was not unrepresentative (six in England, one in Wales, actually Monmouthshire, two in Scotland, and one in Northern Ireland), all vacancies chanced to come in urban areas. Eight of the contests involved borough seats and the other two (West Dunbartonshire and Abertillery, Monmouthshire) were primarily urban in character.

Type
Foreign Governments and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1951 , pp. 474 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1951

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References

1 Of 625 members elected in February, 1950, Laborites numbered 315, Conservatives 298, and Liberals 9. Also elected were two Irish Nationalists (who have not taken their seats) and the Speaker, who stood as a non-partisan.

2 See Pollock, J. K., “British By-elections Between the Wars,” in this Review, Vol. 35, pp. 519–528 (June, 1941)Google Scholar. Professor Pollock reported an average of sixteen or seventeen by-elections annually for the period 1919–1939.

3 Mr. MacDonald's second Labor government, formed after the May, 1929, election, lost its first seat to the Conservatives a year later; his National government, which won an overwhelming victory in October, 1931, lost its first seat in Commons in April of the following year. It was only four months after its November, 1935, victory that the reelected National government lost its first seat in the House.

4 Pollock, loc. cit.; of 352 by-elections, 173 were caused by death, 67 by resignation, 56 by elevation or succession to the peerage, and 56 by appointment to some other office.

5 The vote percentages in February, 1950, were 46.1 Labor, 43.5 Conservative (including associated parties), 9.1 Liberal, and 1.3 Independent and Miscellaneous. Not only were the ten constituencies voting in the by-elections thus marked by a somewhat higher Labor and lower Conservative figure than for the country as a whole, but also the Liberal poll was much lower in these ten districts in February than in the United Kingdom as a whole.

6 For a contrary view, see Laing, Lionel H., “Fifty British By-Elections,” in the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, Vol. 16, pp. 222–227 (May, 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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