United Kingdom general election, 1929
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Turnout | 76.3%  0.7% |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
136| 1923 election • MPs |
| 1924 election • MPs |
| 1929 election • MPs |
| 1931 election • MPs |
| 1935 election • MPs |
The 1929 United Kingdom general election was held on 30 May 1929, and resulted in a hung parliament. It was the second of four general elections under the secret ballot and the first of three under universal suffrage in which a party lost the popular vote (i.e. gained fewer popular votes than another party) but gained a plurality of seats (the others being 1874, 1951 and February 1974). In 1929 that party was Ramsay MacDonald's Labour, which won the most seats in the Commons for the first time ever but failed to get an overall majority. The Liberals led by David Lloyd George regained some of the ground they had lost in the 1924 election, and held the balance of power.
The election was often referred to as the "Flapper Election" in that it was the first election in which women aged 21 or over were allowed to vote, under the provisions of the Fifth Reform Act.
The election was fought against a background of rising unemployment with the memory of the 1926 General Strike still fresh in voters' minds. By 1929 the Cabinet was being described by many as "old and exhausted".[1]
The Liberals campaigned on a comprehensive programme of public works under the title "We Can Conquer Unemployment". The Conservatives campaigned on the theme of "Safety First".
Contents
Results
| UK General Election 1929 | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
| Party | Leader | Standing | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
| Conservative | Stanley Baldwin | 590 | 260 | − 152 | 42.227 | 38.1 | 8,252,527 | − 8.7 | |||
| Labour | Ramsay MacDonald | 569 | 287 | + 136 | 46.666 | 37.1 | 8,048,968 | + 3.8 | |||
| Liberal | David Lloyd George | 513 | 59 | + 19 | 9.593 | 23.6 | 5,104,638 | + 5.8 | |||
| Independent | N/A | 11 | 4 | 3 | 1 | + 2 | 0.650 | 0.4 | 94,742 | + 0.2 | |
| Communist | Harry Pollitt | 25 | 0 | 0 | 1 | − 1 | 0.2 | 47,554 | − 0.1 | ||
| Independent Conservative | N/A | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 46,278 | ||||
| Scottish Prohibition | Edwin Scrymgeour | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 25,037 | + 0.1 | ||
| Nationalist | Joseph Devlin | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | + 2 | 0.1 | 24,177 | + 0.1 | ||
| Independent Labour | N/A | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | + 1 | 0.1 | 20,825 | + 0.1 | ||
| Independent Liberal | N/A | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.1 | 17,110 | + 0.1 | ||
| National (Scotland) | Roland Muirhead | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 3,313 | N/A | ||
| Plaid Cymru | Saunders Lewis | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 | 609 | N/A | ||
Total votes cast: 21,685,779. Turnout 76.3%.[2] All parties shown. Conservatives include Ulster Unionists.
Votes summary
Seats summary
Constituency results
For a full list of the results by constituency; Constituency election results in the United Kingdom general election, 1929.
References
- ↑ Paul W. Doerr British foreign policy 1919-1939 p.104-5
- ↑ http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons/lib/research/rp2008/rp08-012.pdf
Further reading
- F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987
- Howell, David. MacDonald’s Party: Labour Identities and Crisis, 1922–1939 (Oxford, 2002)
- Redvaldsen, David. "'Today is the Dawn': The Labour Party and the 1929 General Election," Parliamentary History (2010) 29#3 pp 395-415.
- Williamson, Philip. "'Safety First': Baldwin, the Conservative Party and the 1929 General Election," Historical Journal (1982) 25: 385–409.
External links
See also
- MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1929
- Constituency election results in the United Kingdom general election, 1929
