1929 United Kingdom general election
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All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 76.3%,  0.7% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Colours denote the winning party—as shown in § Results | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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136The 1929 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 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 of the four being 1874, 1951 and February 1974. In 1929 that party was Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party, which won the most seats in the House of Commons for the first time, but failed to get an overall majority. The Liberal Party led by David Lloyd George regained some of the ground it had lost in the 1924 election, and held the balance of power.
The election was often referred to as the "Flapper Election", because it was the first election in which women aged 21–29 were allowed to vote, under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act 1928. (Women over 30 had been able to vote since the 1918 election.)
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 incumbent Conservatives campaigned on the theme of "Safety First", with Labour campaigning on the theme of "Labour & the Nation".
The 1929 election was the first general election to be contested by the newly formed Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru.
This election would be the last time that a non-Labour or Conservative force polled more than one-fifth of the nationwide popular vote until 1983.
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Contents
1 Results
1.1 Votes summary
1.2 Seats summary
1.3 Constituency results
2 Transfers of seats
3 See also
4 Notes
5 References
5.1 Sources
6 Further reading
7 External links
7.1 Manifestos
Results
287 | 260 | 59 | 8 |
Labour | Conservative | Lib | O |
| Candidates | Votes | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Leader | Stood | Elected | Gained | Unseated | Net | % of total | % | No. | Net % | |
| | Conservative | Stanley Baldwin | 590 | 260 | 2 | 154 | −152 | 42.3 | 38.1 | 8,252,527 | −8.7 |
| | Labour | Ramsay MacDonald | 569 | 287 | 140 | 4 | +136 | 46.7 | 37.1 | 8,048,968 | +3.8 |
| | Liberal | David Lloyd George | 513 | 59 | 36 | 17 | +19 | 9.6 | 23.6 | 5,104,638 | +5.8 |
| | Independent | N/A | 11 | 4 | 3 | 1 | +2 | 0.8 | 0.4 | 94,742 | +0.2 |
| | Communist | Harry Pollitt | 25 | 0 | 0 | 1 | −1 | 0.2 | 47,554 | −0.1 | |
| | Ind. Conservative | N/A | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 46,278 | ||
| | Scottish Prohibition | Edwin Scrymgeour | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 25,037 | +0.1 |
| | Nationalist | Joseph Devlin | 4 | 3 | 2 | 0 | +2 | 0.5 | 0.1 | 24,177 | +0.1 |
| | Independent Labour | N/A | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | +1 | 0.2 | 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 | |
Votes summary
Seats summary
Constituency results
Transfers of seats
- All comparisons are with the 1924 election.
- In some cases, the change is owing to the MP having defected to the gaining party, and then retaining the seat in 1929. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
- In other circumstances, the change is owing to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1929. Such circumstances are marked with a †.
| To | From | No. | Seats | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Independent Labour | Labour | 1 | Govan* | ||
Labour | Communist | 1 | Battersea North | ||
Liberal | 15 | Chesterfield, South Shields, Walthamstow West, Bristol North, Bristol South, Hull Central*, Blackburn (one of two), Oldham (one of two), Hackney South, Lambeth North, Bradford East, Batley and Morley, Wrexham, Carmarthen, Swansea West | |||
Constitutionalist | 3 | Walthamstow East1, Accrington2, Stoke2 | |||
Conservative | 121 | Stirlingshire West, Dunbartonshire, Lanark, Partick, Lanarkshire North†, Renfrewshire West, Maryhill, Kilmarnock, Edinburgh West, Linlithgow†, Berwick & Haddington, Reading, Birkenhead West, Crewe, Stalybridge and Hyde, Stockport (one of two)†, Carlisle, Whitehaven, Derby (one of two), Belper, Derbyshire South, Drake, Barnard Castle, Sedgefield, Darlington†, Stockton-on-Tees, Sunderland (both seats), Leyton East, East Ham North, Essex SE, Leyton West, Romford, Upton, Bristol Central, Portsmouth Central, Southampton (both seats), Dudley, Stourbridge†, Hull East, Hull South West, Chatham, Dartford, Blackburn (one of two), Ormskirk, Rossendale, Ashton-under-Lyne†, Bolton (both seats), Eccles, Hulme, Oldham (one of two), Salford North, Salford South, Salford West, Bootle, Everton, Kirkdale, Warrington, Widnes, Leicester East, Loughborough, Brigg, Fulham West, Hammersmith South, Islington North, Kensington North, Battersea South†, Greenwich, Islington East, Camberwell North-West, Hackney Central, Kennington, Hammersmith North†, St Pancras North, St Pancras South East, St Pancras South West, Wandsworth Central, Norfolk South West, Norwich (one of two), Kettering, Northampton†, Peterborough, Bassetlaw, Nottingham South, The Wrekin, Frome, Lichfield, Walsall, Wolverhampton West, Nuneaton, Duddeston, Coventry, Aston, Deritend, Erdington, Ladywood, Yardley, Swindon, York, Cleveland, Acton, Enfield, Tottenham South, Sheffield Central, Bradford North, Leeds Central, Sowerby, Wakefield, Sheffield Park, Bradford Central, Pontefract, Newport (Monmouthshire), Brecon and Radnor, Llandaff & Barry, Cardiff Central, Cardiff East, Cardiff South | |||
Speaker | 1 | Halifax† | |||
Independent | 1 | Mossley | |||
| Labour gains: | 142 | ||||
Liberal | Labour | 2 | Bethnal Green North-East, Newcastle upon Tyne East | ||
Constitutionalist | 2 | Camborne, Heywood and Radcliffe* | |||
Conservative | 32 | Banff, Aberdeenshire West and Kincardine, Fife East, Dumfriesshire, Galloway, Bedfordshire Mid, Luton, Huntingdonshire, Isle of Ely, Birkenhead East, Eddisbury, Bodmin, Cornwall North, Penryn and Falmouth, St Ives†, South Molton, Dorset East, Harwich, Hereford, Ashford, Darwen, Preston (one of two), Blackley, Withington, Bosworth†, Holland with Boston†, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk East, Nottingham East, Eye, Flintshire, Pembrokeshire | |||
| Liberal gains: | 36 | ||||
Conservative | Labour | 1 | King's Norton | ||
Constitutionalist | 1 | Epping* | |||
| Conservative gains: | 2 | ||||
Independent | Constitutionalist | 1 | Stretford* | ||
Ind. Conservative | Conservative | 1 | Exeter* | ||
Nationalist | UUP | 2 | Fermanagh and Tyrone (both seats) | ||
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1 Previous MP had defected to the Conservatives by the 1929 election
2 Previous MP had defected to the Liberals by the 1929 election
See also
- MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1929
- Constituency election results in the United Kingdom general election, 1929
Notes
^ All parties shown. Conservatives include Ulster Unionists.
References
^ Doerr, pp. 104–5.
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Sources
Craig, F. W. S. (1989), British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower, ISBN 0900178302
Doerr, Paul W., British foreign policy 1919–1939
[year missing]
Further reading
Howell, David (2002), MacDonald's Party: Labour Identities and Crisis, 1922–1939, Oxford
Redvaldsen, David (2010), "'Today is the Dawn': The Labour Party and the 1929 General Election", Parliamentary History, 29 (3): 395–415
Williamson, Philip (1982), "'Safety First': Baldwin, the Conservative Party and the 1929 General Election", Historical Journal, 25: 385–409
External links
- United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979
Manifestos
- 1929 Conservative manifesto
- 1929 Labour manifesto
- 1929 Liberal manifesto
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