Following the death of Sir Gerald Kaufman a by-election was supposed to be held yesterday for his seat, Manchester Gorton. It has been deferred until the General Election next month.
Historian, Dr Kathryn Rix, has unearthed other by-elections that did not take place and her research is on The History of Parliament website. Here is an interesting example that she cites.
In November 1923, following the appointment of their Conservative MP, Sir Ernest Pollock, as Master of the Rolls, the voters of Warwick and Leamington faced a by-election to fill the vacancy. Three candidates came forward. The most politically experienced was the Liberal, George Nicholls, who had sat as Labour MP for North Northamptonshire from 1906 until January 1910. He had since made several unsuccessful attempts to return to the Commons, both as a Labour candidate and, more recently, as a Liberal. His Conservative opponent was Anthony Eden, the future Prime Minister. Eden had just got married, and his wife Beatrice was greeted with bouquets and confetti as she toured the constituency’s villages during his by-election campaign. He was making his second attempt to win a parliamentary seat, having stood the previous year for Spennymoor, county Durham. The Labour candidate was Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick. A former mistress of Edward VII, she had long been engaged in politics, being elected as a poor law guardian in 1894, and in 1904 had joined the Social Democratic Federation. Her candidature generated a great deal of interest, not only as an aristocratic woman campaigning for the Labour party, but also because she and Eden were related: her son, Lord Brooke, was married to Eden’s sister.
All three candidates handed in their nomination papers on 13 November 1923. However, since the Conservative Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, informed the Commons on the same day of his decision to call a snap general election on the question of free trade, the returning officer, acting on advice from the Home Office, cancelled the by-election the following day. Instead of polling on 22 November, Warwick and Leamington’s electors voted with the rest of the country on 6 December. They returned Eden at the top of the poll, with Nicholls second and Lady Warwick a distant third. Eden represented the constituency throughout his Commons career.
Another is closer to home, at least for me. County Louth returned two MPs to Westminster. In 1834 they were Thomas Fitzgerald and Montesquieu Bellew. The former died in October and a by-election was called for Christmas Eve, 1834, with two candidates contesting the vacancy: the Hon. Chichester Thomas Skeffington Foster and Sir Patrick Bellew (Montesquieu’s elder brother). Patrick had represented the county already, in 1831/32. It became apparent in December that a General Election was imminent and Skeffington Foster withdrew his candidacy. As a result Patrick Bellew was returned unopposed in December and then contested the seat against Foster in the General Election the following month, when he and his brother were returned and Skeffington Foster beaten into third place.
Christopher,
From memory, I think there is a portrait of Montesquieu Bellew (or Patrick Bellew) hanging in the library at Barmeath?
Have a great weekend!
There are portraits of Patrick and his Spanish wife. I don’t remember any of Montesquieu but Bru may have discovered one.
Daisy Greville had a son who was ,reputedly, the son of Edward VII. I used to see him in Dunmow in Essex, where I lived as a child, and near the demolished Easton Lodge, which had been Daisy’s home and the scene of great Edwardian parties. He had a beard cut, deliberately I assume, like the King’s. He came to sad end as he committed suicide by cutting his own throat