¹ Bassett, R., Democracy and Foreign Policy, a Case History: The Sino-Japanese Dispute, 1931–3 (London, 1952), p. 528;Google ScholarMowat, C. L., Britain Between The Wars, 1918–40 (London, 1955), p. 422;Google ScholarSeaman, L. C. B., Post-Victorian Britain, 1902–1951 (London, 1966), p. 254;CrossRefGoogle ScholarThomson, D., England in the Twentieth Century (Penguin, 1965), p. 156;Google ScholarYoung, G. M., Stanley Baldwin (London, 1953), p. 177.Google Scholar

² Taylor, A. J. P., English History, 1914–1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. 367.Google Scholar

³ See, e.g., Young, loc. cit.

⁴ From the general election in 1924, results at East Fulham were as follows:

⁵ Newspapers consulted include The Times, Manchester Guardian and Daily Herald.

⁶ Census of England and Wales, 1931. Volume headed ‘Occupations’.

⁷ For a brief but perceptive account of the 1931 general election, see Bassett, R., Nineteen Thirty-One (London, 1958), pp. 284–338.Google Scholar

⁸ The eight which were straight fights and had been in 1931 were (with the fall in the National Government poll in figures; also swing percentages): Wakefield (2,600, 8·0%); Wednesbury (6,800, 9·2%); South Croydon (21,500, 12·8%); New Forest and Christchurch (12,200, 1·2%); Twickenham (13,800, 17·8%); Liverpool Exchange (8,800, 13·7%); Rotherham (10,700, 20·7%), and Hitchin (11,300, 17·3%).

⁹ In this article all percentages are calculated from figures given in The Times House of Commons, 1929, 1931 and 1935.

¹⁰ Butler, D., The Electoral System in Britain Since 1918 (Oxford, 2nd ed., 1963), pp. 182–9;Google Scholar also p. 207.

¹¹ For press comments on Vaughan-Morgan's personal following, see Manchester Guardian, 16 Oct., Daily Herald, 12 and 20 Oct. and The Times, 25 Oct. After the by-election, the Conservatives stressed this as a reason for Waldron's defeat: see Daily Telegraph, 27 Oct.

¹² For comments on the weakness of Conservative organization, see Daily Herald, 23 Oct., The Times, 25 and 27 Oct. and Daily Telegraph, 27 Oct. There is also an article on the subject in Conservative Agents’ Journal, Dec. 1933.

¹³ West London and Fulham Gazette, 6 Oct.: ‘… the East Fulham Conservative Association had defined its attitude on the Indian policy even before the demise of the late Sir Kenyon Vaughan-Morgan, and it is not entirely in conflict with the opponents of the White paper.’

¹⁴ For a note on the Archer-Shee incident, see Manchester Guardian, 13 Sept. Waldron was actually the party's second choice, for Dame Beatrix Lyall had earlier refused the nomination. See West London and Fulham Gazette, 13 Oct.

¹⁵ The Times, 12 Oct.

¹⁶ After the election, Waldron told a reporter from the Morning Post that ‘There was very strong resentment at the White Paper (on India) among people throughout the constituency to whom I had looked for wholehearted support’. Morning Post, 27 Oct.

¹⁷ This can be seen from the speeches they delivered to agents’ meetings which were reported in Conservative Agents’ Journal. Stonehaven also encouraged Baldwin to withstand the pressure applied by Churchill and others for a change in the Government's India policy. See, e.g., Baldwin Papers, vol. CVI, Stonehaven to Baldwin, 14 May 1933. Stonehaven stressed the importance of the Government making its voice heard between the Conservative diehards and the Liberals, ‘the natural enthusiasts against and for the White Paper on India’.

¹⁸ Daily Express, 12 Oct. 1933.

¹⁹ The message is printed in full in Manchester Guardian, 19 Oct.

²⁰ Baldwin Papers, vol. XLVIII. The memorandum was prepared by Sir George Bowyer, Deputy Chairman of Party Organization; dated 19 July 1934.

²¹ Daily Herald, 25 Oct.; Daily Telegraph, 25 Oct.; Economist, 28 Oct.

²² Butler, , op. cit. p. 187.Google Scholar

²³ See, e.g., The Times, 20 Oct. The Labour agent's prediction is in Manchester Guardian, 24 Oct.; that of Waldron's agent, The Times, 25 Oct. Even the Daily Express (25 Oct.) thought that Wilmot would win.

²⁴ West London and Fulham Gazette, 6 Oct.

²⁵ At a by-election in Liverpool earlier in the year Lloyd George had written to Liberal voters in the following manner: ‘Seeing that there is no Liberal Free Trade candidate in the field I would have no hesitation in voting for the Labour candidate…’ Manchester Guardian, 11 Jan.

²⁶ See Wilson, T., The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (London, 1966), p. 376.Google Scholar

²⁷ Daily Herald, 14 Oct. Wilmot took his figures from the Census of England and Wales, 1931.

²⁸ Census of England and Wales, 1931. Volumes ‘London’ and ‘Housing’.

²⁹ Daily Herald, 20 Oct. The estate in question was the Fulham Court Housing Estate, the construction of which was approved by the Borough Council.

³⁰ Waldron's election address was printed in The Times, 13 Oct. See also West London and Fulham Gazette, 20 Oct. Copies of his and Wilmot's election addresses can be seen at Conservative Research Department.

³¹ Daily Herald, 18 Oct.; Manchester Guardian, 26 Oct.; Round Table, Dec. 1933, p. 150.

³² The Times, 13 Oct.

³³ See, e.g., Taylor, , op. cit. p. 284.Google Scholar

³⁴ London County Council, London Statistics, XXXVII (1933), 71. The figures were for 25 Sept. 1933Google Scholar

³⁵ Taylor, , op. cit. p. 284 and p. 367.Google Scholar

³⁶ From a Table in Ministry of Labour Gazette, Dec. 1935.

³⁷ At one of Wilmot's Town Hall meetings (attended by an estimated 2,000 people), Waldron's daughter was howled down when she attempted to show that food prices had not risen. Daily Herald, 24 Oct.

³⁸ This conclusion is based on a general assessment of press opinion in 1933, and on an examination of Cabinet minutes for 1933.

³⁹ Cab. 23/77, 20 Sept.

⁴⁰ Ibid. 9 Oct.

⁴¹ Mowat, , op. cit. p. 425.Google Scholar

⁴² Cab. 23/77, 18 Oct.

⁴³ The Times, 14 and 18 Oct.

⁴⁴ Daily Herald, 21 Oct.

⁴⁵ News Chronicle, 19 Oct.

⁴⁶ Daily Herald, 21 Oct. The Fulham Gazette (20 Oct.) also reported Greenwood's speeches and referred to his large personal following among local Liberals.

⁴⁷ G. A. Gale, the Liberal in question, had become an Empire Free Trader in 1930 and, like Waldron, he had supported the candidature of a Conservative, Sir Cyril Cobb, at the 1931 general election.

⁴⁸ For every five votes polled by Labour at East Fulham in 1931, the Liberals polled one. If Labour and Liberal voters voted in the same proportions in 1933, but with all the votes going to Labour, then Wilmot's votes, if divided in the ratio of 5:1, would give a pure Labour vote of approximately 14,800, and a Liberal vote of approximately 3,000. For every five votes polled by Labour in 1929, the Liberals polled two. If Labour and Liberal electors voted in the same proportions in 1933, but with all the votes going to Labour, then Wilmot's votes, if divided in the ratio of 5:2, would give a pure Labour vote of approximately 12,600, and a Liberal vote of approximately 5,200. It would appear that the Liberal vote received by Wilmot was probably some figure between the extremes of 3,000 and 5,200.

⁴⁹ In his reply to the Liberal Association questionnaire, Wilmot condemned tariffs and advocated an early return to free trade. Waldron hedged on the subject: he ‘did not slam tariffs’, and he opposed any unilateral reduction of tariffs. For Wilmot's reply, see News Chronicle, 17 Oct. For Waldron's reply, see The Times, 18 Oct.

⁵⁰ Fulham Chronicle, 27 Oct.: ‘Socialism was hardly mentioned as an issue during the campaign.’

⁵¹ The details of Wilmot's career in this and the following paragraph come from The Times House of Commons, 1929, and from press descriptions.

⁵² Daily Herald, 26 Oct. In the daytime, with the aid of a van, he addressed many people, particularly housewives, at impromptu meetings.

⁵³ The Times, 25 Oct.

⁵⁴ See, e.g., The Times, 24 Oct.; less credibly, Daily Herald, 23 Oct.: ‘Mr. Wilmot is dislocating thousands of women from their old support of the Conservatives. Each one of the four great issues of the campaign-dearer food, higher rents, terrible over-crowding and the war menace-touch women directly, intimately, personally.“

⁵⁵ Morning Post, 25 Oct.

⁵⁶ For a note on the sound condition of the East Fulham Labour Party, see Labour Organizer, Nov. 1933. Also Dalton, H., The Fateful Years: Memoirs, 1931–1945 (London, 1957), p. 47.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The Times, 14 Oct.

⁵⁸ Taylor, , op. cit. p. 366.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid. p. 367.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ LCC London Statistics, XXXVII, 57 and 71. At most 3,000 people were unemployed, and only a small proportion of this number was on public relief.

⁶² Least of all in his Election Address. Daily Herald, 13 Oct.

⁶³ LCC London Statistics, XXXVIII (1934), 16–18. All percentages cited in this paragraph are from this source.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ The Times, 2 Nov. 1934.

⁶⁵ Ibid. 1 Nov. 1934.

⁶⁶ The Times, 25 Oct.

⁶⁷ Ibid. 18 Oct.

⁶⁸ Daily Herald, 27 Oct.

⁶⁹ See, e.g., News Chronicle, 30 Aug. Henderson campaigned almost solely on the peace and disarmament issue. East Fulham was the first by-election to be held after Henderson's victory at Clay Cross.

⁷⁰ News Chronicle, 17 Oct.

⁷¹ West London and Fulham Gazette, 27 Oct.; Fulham Chronicle, 27 Oct. To my knowledge, the only historian who has based his account of the East Fulham by-election on reports in the local press is Marwick, A., Britain in the Century of Total War (London, 1968), p. 251.Google Scholar Marwick's impression-he did not quote or give detailed evidence of any sort-was that ‘domestic questions, particularly the bad housing in Fulham, and the poor record generally of the National Government, appeared to play a much bigger role’ than foreign affairs. Housing was mentioned frequently, as was the peace and disarmament issue, but mainly in reports of speeches made by the candidates and their supporters, and not as independent newspaper assessments of the nature of the campaign. From the assessments quoted in the text of the article, it is clear that the newspapers themselves did not consider that domestic questions played a ‘much bigger role’ than foreign affairs in determining the outcome of the contest.

⁷² See the works listed in note 1. Also Medlicott, W. N., Contemporary England 1914–1964 (London, 1967), p. 332.Google Scholar

⁷³ Young, , op. cit. p. 177;Google ScholarTaylor, , op. cit. p. 367.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Daily Express, 7 Nov.

⁷⁵ The Times, 18 Nov.

⁷⁶ Only thirteen days before the East Fulham by-election, Baldwin had broadcast to the nation that ‘We can go no farther on the road of one-sided disarmament…’ The Times, 13 Oct. On 9 November 1932 he had addressed the Lord Mayor of London's Guildhall Banquet in the following manner: ‘… the time had now come when Great Britain could proceed no further in regard to unilateral disarmament.’ Financial Times, 10 Nov. 1932.

⁷⁷ The Times, 13 Oct. 1933. Also Daily Telegraph, 7 Oct. 1933 (Baldwin at the Annual Conference of the Conservative Party); and The Times, 26 June 1933 (Baldwin to Conservatives at Glasgow).

⁷⁸ Daily Express, 7 Nov.

⁷⁹ For Central Office opinion, see the New Year and other addresses by Lord Stonehaven, Chairman of Party Organization, and Sir Robert Topping, Director General or Principal Agent of the Party, in the Conservative Agents’ Journal, 1932–5.

⁸⁰ Cohen, P., Disraeli's Child: A History of the Conservative and Unionist Party Organization (unpublished. Copyright, Conservative Research Department), II, 370.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Lloyd George Papers, Beaverbrook Library, G/83/4. Col. T. Tweed to Lloyd George, 6 Nov. 1933: Hore-Belisha (a Liberal National member of the Co-ordinating Committee) wants ‘a joint committee for propaganda and by-election purposes’. A new committee was not formed, but the existing one was transformed into a publicity machine for the National Government. The Times, 2 Dec. 1933, commented on this development: ‘Since the Fulham by-election there have been several meetings of the committee and arrangements are now well-advanced for a campaign which is to be held early in the New Year.’

⁸² Daily Telegraph, 15 Feb. 1934.

⁸³ Cab. 23/77, 23 Oct 1933.

⁸⁴ Ibid. 26 Oct.

⁸⁵ Ibid. 6 Nov.

⁸⁶ Ibid. 29 Nov.

* The Historical Journal is shortly to publish a full review (Ed.).

¹ Unless otherwise stated, all page references in the footnotes are to Middlemas’ and Barnes’ Baldwin; discussion centres on pp. 745–6, 757, 764, 791, 805, 817, 864, 867–8.

² p. 745.

³ They believed in the ‘swing of the pendulum’; they compared actual voting figures at by-elections with the 1931 and 1929 general election figures. They also converted increases and decreases into percentages; for example, a fall of 5,000 on a previous vote of 15,000 was described as a decline of 33 per cent.

⁴ See The Times, Daily Telegraph and Manchester Guardian, 3–5 Sept. 1933.

⁵ Daily Herald, 4 Sept.

⁶ At the time of the East Fulham by-election, Wilmot was not a member of the ILP.

⁷ p. 757.

⁸ The Times, 19 Oct.

⁹ Daily Herald, 20 and 26 Oct.

¹⁰ Manchester Guardian, 30 Oct.

¹¹ News Chronicle, 1 Nov.

¹² Lloyd George Papers, G/83/4, Col. Tweed to Lloyd George, 1 Nov.: ‘My information of various constituencies tends to confirm the opinion I expressed that the remarkable result in Fulham was something of the nature of a freak.’

¹³ Manchester Guardian, 2 Nov.

¹⁴ The Times, 4 Nov. So troublesome was the agricultural issue that Walter Elliot, the Minister for Agriculture, sent a special assurance to the Government's critics that if the district rate for milk was too high it could be brought down by negotiation.

¹⁵ Daily Herald, 3 Nov. Besides the many thousands of textile workers already unemployed, a further 9,000 were faced with the threat of wage cuts.

¹⁶ The Times, 9 Nov.

¹⁷ Manchester Guardian, 17 Nov.

¹⁸ Daily Herald, 13 Nov.; The Times, 28 Nov.

¹⁹ The Times, 17 and 31 Jan. 1934.

²⁰ Morning Post, 5 Feb.; Daily Herald, 7 Feb.

²¹ p. 746.

²² p. 746. The authors add their own belief that ‘a party leader can ignore a phenomenon of this size only through ignorance or folly’, the implication being that Baldwin was guilty of neither. Baker is introduced as a friend of one of Baldwin's confidants, J. C. C. Davidson. The authors’ intention is clear enough: they wish to establish that the story which follows comes from a source with ‘inside contacts’, a source to be relied upon to know the mind of the Conservative leader. Davidson may have been a link-man between Baldwin and Baker on occasion (though there is no evidence of this in the authors’ Baldwin, etc.) but he does not appear to have been on this particular occasion.

²³ No references are cited for pp. 745–8.

²⁴ James, R. Rhodes (Ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910–1937 (London, 1969).Google Scholar

²⁵ Young, G. M., Stanley Baldwin (London, 1952);Google ScholarBaldwin, A. W., My Father: The True Story (London, 1955).Google Scholar

²⁶ Baker, p. 38.

²⁷ At this point attention should be drawn to an error the authors make in regard to a Cabinet decision taken at the time of East Fulham. They ascribe to the ‘verdict of by-elections’ (p. 747) an influence on the government it could not have had. They argue that ‘the ineluctable conclusion which followed was that somehow Germany must be brought back to Geneva, both to the Conference and the League’. Far from this decision being the product of the ‘verdict of the by-elections’, it was actually taken by the Cabinet at its meeting on 23 October, two days before the East Fulham by-election (Cab. 23/77). It is a mistake symptomatic of the authors’ predilection for ascribing to by-election results too great an importance.

²⁸ p. 764.

²⁹ See Daily Mail, 10 Apr. 1934; Daily Express, 16 Apr.

³⁰ The Times (21 Apr.) commented that: ‘It seems fairly clear that no great change of opinion has taken place in constituencies with a large agricultural interest’.

³¹ Manchester Guardian, 21 Apr.; The Times, 11 Apr.; Daily Herald, 19 Apr.

³² At Upton, the Conservative candidate was reported to have said that ‘he could find nothing in Fascism that was not in the Conservative programme'! He later recanted but the damage had been done. See Daily Herald, 3 May; Manchester Guardian, 11 May. The low turnout owed more to the staleness of the register than to other factors.

³³ Of course, Baldwin may have used a magnifying glass, but Middlemas and Barnes should have told us its make and intensity, and whether Baldwin himself was actually holding it.

³⁴ p. 791.

³⁵ p. 805.

³⁶ The Times, 11 Oct.; News Chronicle, 18 Oct.; Manchester Guardian, 20 Oct.

³⁷ Furthermore, as The Times (28 Nov.) noted: ‘housing estates have been developed in the district, and in the Southfields area many houses have been converted into small flats or let off in rooms … This type of dwelling, as Hammersmith and other places have shown, is productive of Socialist votes.’

³⁸ p. 817.

³⁹ Baldwin Papers, vol. XLVII, Gritten to Baldwin, 20 May 1935: ‘An election should be deferred till (1) prosperity is more stabilised and reaches further; (2) another favourable Budget; (3) the benefits have time to be realized of the Unemployment Act, which at present is the chief weapon against us.’

⁴⁰ Ibid. Topping to G. Lloyd (Baldwin's PPS), 8 Apr. 1935.

⁴¹ In its report of the West Edinburgh by-election, The Times (4 May) concluded happily that ‘there is less sign than ever of disintegration among the Government's supporters’.

⁴² ‘By-Election Report’, appended to Minutes, NEC meeting, 26 June.

⁴³ p. 864.

⁴⁴ Financial Times, 10 Nov. 1932, contains the text of the speech delivered by Baldwin to the Lord Mayor's Banquet. For later speeches on the end of unilateral disarmament and the need to repair gaps in the nation's defences, see The Times, 13 Oct. 1933; Daily Telegraph, 15 Feb. 1934; The Times, 23 July 1934; The Times, 24 Nov. 1934; and Manchester Guardian, 25 Mar. 1935.

⁴⁵ p. 868.

⁴⁶ Cf. Wightman, J., ‘The Rearmament Issue in the British General Election, 1935’, The Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association (1963), pp. 22–9.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ pp. 866–7.

⁴⁸ See The Times. 9, 22 and 29 Oct.; also 1 and 6 Nov. 1935.