The British general election of 1923; an anomaly or the election that changed British political history?

Abstract

The 1920`s saw British Politics in a state of flux. The First World War had shattered the conventions and issues existing before it, broken the pre-war Liberal Party into two warring factions and seen the emergence of a developing and stronger Labour Party. There were three General Elections in 1922, 1923 and 1924, each fought on different issues and with different results. Including the 1929 election, by the end of the decade the Conservative-Labour hegemony had been established. And yet, despite books and articles being published about most General Elections held in the 20th Century, no substantial research has been undertaken on that of 1923. This thesis is a comprehensive examination of the 1923 General Election. A core theme of the research is to establish to what extent it was an anomaly and one of the most important General Elections of the century. There are a number of reasons for calling at an anomaly. It was a “snap” unexpected election fought on the shortest ever election campaign lasting just 22 days. It was the first election fought by three relatively equal parties, all of whom could have formed a government. It produced the only Parliament in the century where three parties had over 150 MPs. For the first time, women were elected in their own right without having inherited their seat from their husbands. Most of all, however, in producing the first Labour government it can also claim to be an election that changed the course of British political history. The research that underpins the thesis draws substantially on a broad range of primary sources from political archives and an analysis of national and local newspapers.