1924 United Kingdom general election

United Kingdom general election, 1924

← 1923 29 October 1924 1929 →
← outgoing members elected members →
All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	77.0%, 5.9%
First party Second party   Leader Stanley Baldwin Ramsay MacDonald Party Conservative Labour Leader since 23 May 1923 21 November 1922 Leader's seat Bewdley Aberavon Last election 258 seats, 38.0% 191 seats, 30.7% Seats won 412 151 Seat change 154 40 Popular vote 7,418,983 5,281,626 Percentage 46.8% 33.3% Swing 8.8% 2.6%   Third party Fourth party   Leader H. H. Asquith Winston Churchill Party Liberal Constitutionalist Leader since 30 April 1908 January 1924 Leader's seat Paisley (defeated) Epping Last election 158 seats, 29.7% N/A Seats won 40 7 Seat change 118 7 Popular vote 2,818,717 185,075 Percentage 17.8% 1.1% Swing 11.9% 1.1%
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in as shown in § Results[a]
Prime Minister before election Ramsay MacDonald Labour Appointed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin Conservative

The 1924 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 29 October 1924, as a result of the defeat of the Labour minority government, led by Ramsay MacDonald, in the House of Commons on a motion of no confidence. It was the third general election to be held in less than two years.

The Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin, performed better, in electoral terms, than in the 1923 general election and obtained a large parliamentary majority of 209. Labour, led by Ramsay MacDonald, lost 40 seats. The election also saw the Liberal Party, led by H. H. Asquith, lose 118 of their 158 seats which helped to polarise British politics between the Labour Party and Conservative Party.

The Conservative landslide victory and the Labour defeat in this general election has been, in part, attributed to the Zinoviev letter, a forgery, which was published in the Daily Mail four days before the election. However, it is difficult to prove that this had a major impact on the election result. The Labour vote increased by around one million popular votes in comparison to the 1923 general election, however, the increase in the number of popular votes for the Labour Party may be due, in part, to the party putting up eighty-seven more candidates than it did in the previous year's general election.

Contents

• 
  1 Overview
  


• 
  2 Results
  
  
  
  • 
    2.1 Votes summary
    
  
  
  • 
    2.2 Seats summary
    
  
  
  
  


• 
  3 Transfers of seats
  


• 
  4 See also
  


• 
  5 Notes
  


• 
  6 References
  
  
  
  • 
    6.1 Sources
    
  
  
  
  


• 
  7 External links
  
  
  
  • 
    7.1 Manifestos
    
  
  
  
  

Overview

After the previous general election, the Labour Party had finished as the second-largest party, but formed their first-ever government with the support of the Liberal Party, after the ruling Conservative Party's shock loss of their majority made it untenable for Baldwin to continue as Prime Minister. However, relations between Labour and the Liberals proved stormy, eventually resulting in Asquith calling a motion of no confidence in MacDonald's government, which was carried by a large majority. Asquith had gambled that neither Baldwin nor MacDonald would want to put the country through a third general election in two years, and that one of them would be forced to enter into a formal coalition with the Liberals. However, the gambit backfired when MacDonald instead called an election, knowing full well that a Conservative landslide was the only likely outcome, but himself gambling that it would be primarily at the expense of the Liberals. MacDonald's judgement proved correct, as the Liberals, who were still mostly dependant on former Prime Minister David Lloyd George for funds, ended up financially crippled from the very start of the campaign, while Labour were actually able to expand the scope of their own campaign thanks to increasing support from the workers' unions.

It is speculated that the combination of Labour forming its first government in January 1924 and the Zinoviev letter helped to stir up anti-socialist fears in Britain among many traditional anti-socialist Liberal voters, who then switched their support to the Conservative Party. This partly helps to explain the poor performance of the Liberal Party in the general election. The party also had financial difficulties which allowed it to contest only 339 seats, a lack of distinctive policies after the Conservative Party dropped their support for protected trade, and poor leadership under Asquith, who lost his own seat for the second time in six years. It would be the final election for Asquith, who was subsequently forced to lead the party from the House of Lords after being elevated to the Earldom of Oxford and Asquith the following year, before declining health saw him replaced by the returning David Lloyd George in 1926.

The fourth party in terms of number of candidates, number of seats and number of votes were not a party but a group of former National Liberals standing under the Constitutionalist label, led by Winston Churchill. They favoured Conservative/Liberal co-operation and had intended to formally organize as a party, but the election was called before they had the opportunity to actually do so. Three of the seven Constitutionalists elected, including Churchill, had been opposed by official Liberal candidates, and sat as Conservatives after the election. The other four sat as Liberals.

Sinn Féin ran Westminster candidates for the first time since 1918, running a total of eight candidates; all but two of them lost their deposits, however, and none came close to winning the seats they contested, halting any serious prospect of the Northern Irish counties seceding and forming a United Ireland. Aside from a largely abortive attempt at a comeback in the 1950s, it would be 1983 before the party began regularly fielding candidates at Westminster elections.

1922 election MPs

1923 election MPs

1924 election MPs

1929 election MPs

1931 election MPs

Results

↓ 

412	151	40	13
Conservative	Labour	Lib	O

UK General Election 1924

			Candidates						Votes
Party		Leader	Stood	Elected	Gained	Unseated	Net	% of total	%	No.	Net %
	Conservative	Stanley Baldwin	534	412	164	10	+154	66.99	46.8	7,418,983	+8.8
	Labour	Ramsay MacDonald	514	151	23	63	−40	24.55	33.3	5,281,626	+2.6
	Liberal	H. H. Asquith	339	40	10	128	−118	6.5	17.8	2,818,717	−11.9
	Constitutionalist	Winston Churchill	12	7	7	0	+7	1.14	1.2	185,075	+1.1
	Communist	Albert Inkpin	8	1	1	0	+1	0.16	0.2	51,176	+0.1
	Sinn Féin	Éamon de Valera	8	0	0	0	0		0.2	34,181	N/A
	Independent	N/A	7	2	1	1	0		0.2	25,206	−0.1
	NI Labour	Sam Kyle	1	0	0	0	0		0.1	21,122	N/A
	Scottish Prohibition	Edwin Scrymgeour	1	1	0	0	0		0.1	14,596	0.0
	Independent Liberal	N/A	1	0	0	1	−1		0.0	3,241	−0.1
	Independent Labour	N/A	1	0	0	0	0		0.0	1,775	−0.1
	Independent Unionist	N/A	1	0	0	0	0		0.0	517	−0.1
	Nationalist	Joseph Devlin	1	1	0	2	−2		0.0	0	−0.4

Total votes cast: 15,856,215. Turnout: 77.0%.^[1][b]

Votes summary

Popular vote Conservative   46.79% Labour   30.68% Liberal   17.78% Constitutionalist   1.17% Others   3.58%

Seats summary

Parliamentary seats Conservative   66.99% Labour   24.55% Liberal   6.5% Constitutionalist   1.14% Independent   0.49% Others   0.81%

Transfers of seats

• All comparisons are with the 1923 election.
  
  
  
  • In some cases the change is due to the MP defecting to the gaining party. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
  
  
  • In other circumstances the change is due to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1924. Such circumstances are marked with a †.
  
  
  
  

To		From		No.	Seats
	Communist		Liberal	1	Battersea North
	Labour			16	Stirling and Falkirk, Paisley, Edinburgh East, Gateshead, Rochdale, Bermondsey West, Southwark Central, Newcastle upon Tyne East, Newcastle upon Tyne West, Burslem, Middlesbrough East, Elland, Keighley, Penistone, Bradford South, Dewsbury
			Conservative	7	Motherwell, Barrow-in-Furness, Liverpool West Toxteth, Lincoln, Peckham, Wolverhampton Bilston, Birmingham King's Norton
Labour gains:				23
	Liberal		Labour	8	Walthamstow West, Bristol North, Hackney South, Norwich (one of two), Bradford East, Batley and Morley, Wrexham, Swansea West
			Independent Liberal	1	Cardiganshire *
Liberal gains:				9
	Conservative		Labour	55	Stirlingshire West, Renfrewshire East, Dunbartonshire, Lanark, Glasgow Partick, Lanarkshire North, Renfrewshire West, Glasgow Maryhill, Kilmarnock, Midlothian & Peebles North, Linlithgow, Berwick & Haddington, Reading, Birkenhead West, Crewe, Carlisle, Whitehaven, Derby (one of two), Barnard Castle, Leyton East, East Ham North, Essex SE, Maldon, Upton, Dartford, Gravesend, Bolton (one of two), Eccles, Oldham (one of two), Salford North, Salford South, Salford West, Warrington, Leicester East, Holland with Boston†, Greenwich, Kennington, Hammersmith North, St Pancras North, St Pancras South East, Norfolk South, Norwich (one of two), Kettering, Northampton, Enfield, Tottenham South, The Wrekin, Frome, Lichfield, Ipswich, Coventry, Wakefield, Bradford Central, Pontefract, Cardiff South
			Liberal	106	Bodmin, Cornwall North, Penryn and Falmouth, St Ives, Banff, East Aberdeenshire & Kincardineshire, Aberdeen and Kincardine Central, Forfarshire, Perth, Fife East, Argyll, Edinburgh West, Edinburgh North, Dumfriesshire, Galloway, Bedfordshire Mid, Luton, Abingdon, Newbury, Aylesbury, Wycombe, Huntingdonshire, Isle of Ely, Altrincham, Birkenhead East, Stalybridge and Hyde, Stockport (one of two), Wirral, Barnstaple, South Molton, Tavistock, Tiverton, Torquay, Totnes, Dorset North, Stockton-on-Tees, The Hartlepools, Chelmsford, Harwich, Stroud, Thornbury, Basingstoke, Portsmouth Central, Isle of Wight, Hemel Hempstead, Hull South West, Sevenoaks, Blackpool, Darwen, Lancaster, Lonsdale, Preston (one of two), Manchester Blackley, Manchester Exchange, Manchester Moss Side, Manchester Rusholme, Manchester Withington, Royton, Bootle, Liverpool Wavertree, Liverpool West Derby, Southport, Bosworth, Harborough, Leicester South, Gainsborough, Horncastle, Louth, Hackney North, Brixton, Islington East, Camberwell North-West, Hackney Central, Stoke Newington, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Norfolk East, Hexham, Nottingham Central, Nottingham East, Finchley, Willesden East, Oxford†, Shrewsbury, Bath, Bridgwater, Taunton, Wells, Weston-super-Mare, Walsall, Sudbury, Chichester, Nuneaton, Rugby, Chippenham, Westbury, Devizes, Salisbury, Cleveland, Bradford North, Sowerby, Flintshire, Pembrokeshire, Brecon and Radnor, Cardiff East
			National Liberal	1	Loughborough
			Independent	1	Harrow1
Conservative gains:				163
	Constitutionalist		Liberal	4	Accrington, Heywood and Radcliffe, Stretford, Stoke
			Independent Liberal	1	Camborne
			Conservative	2	Epping, Walthamstow East
	UUP		Nationalist	2	Fermanagh and Tyrone (both seats)

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¹ Previous MP had defected to Labour by the time of the 1924 election

See also

• MPs elected in the UK general election, 1924

Notes

1. 
   ^ Northern Ireland and university constituencies not shown.
   


2. 
   ^ All parties shown. The only Irish Nationalist candidate was elected unopposed. The Conservatives include the Ulster Unionists.
   

References

1. 
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Sources

• 
  Craig, F. W. S. (1989), British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower, ISBN 0900178302
  

External links

• United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979

Manifestos

• 1924 Conservative manifesto


• 1924 Labour manifesto


• 1924 Liberal manifesto

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