India is too much of a strain on British resources. You don't want a depression and thus more socialism, do you?
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Now this was an AAR I wasn't expecting to see making a comeback!
Great update, as usual. Hoping to see the Liberals of all varieties suffer a massacre.
Great update, as usual. Hoping to see the Liberals of all varieties suffer a massacre.
I shall throw my hat into the ring for Squiffy – expecting, naturally, that it will return to me in much the same state as Lieutenant George's helmet.
Similarly naturally, I am most pleased to see this make a return to the reading schedule. Now that you are back to working on this (for now), I trust that my GCSEs won't have ended before the prologue finally reaches a conclusion?
Similarly naturally, I am most pleased to see this make a return to the reading schedule. Now that you are back to working on this (for now), I trust that my GCSEs won't have ended before the prologue finally reaches a conclusion?
I shall throw my hat into the ring for Squiffy – expecting, naturally, that it will return to me in much the same state as Lieutenant George's helmet.
Similarly naturally, I am most pleased to see this make a return to the reading schedule. Now that you are back to working on this (for now), I trust that my GCSEs won't have ended before the prologue finally reaches a conclusion?
Don't you mean your Cambridge degree in Engineering?
It returns, 6 months after last update? Seen worse.
Of course you have, you nine-time FoTW you.
Indian dominion? Surely that must be a joke, why would any Briton support abandoning the crown jewel of the empire? Next thing those damned socialist will be talking about dismantling the entire empire!
In their defence, they are merely expanding upon the colonial programme put forth by past Conservative and Liberal Unionist administrations.
I wouldn't worry too much about that - after all, members of the Entente are immune to the effects of economic depressions.
That's the spirit! it's never too late to sub!
Well, it was never technically dead! This AAR can be hell to write for on occasion, but I'm so madly in love with the whole project that I could never bear to kill it.
Why do you hate them so? Clegg won't be born for another fifty years!
You know, I never had you marked down as an Asquithian, Densley. Then again, I do suppose it's rather hard to like a radical liberal pacifist turned warmongering right-wing despot.
Similarly naturally, I am most pleased to see this make a return to the reading schedule. Now that you are back to working on this (for now), I trust that my GCSEs won't have ended before the prologue finally reaches a conclusion?
I would be somewhat more careful in what I'd place my trust in.
Don't you mean your Cambridge degree in Engineering?
Oh, good heavens no! His degree in architecture more like it.
With any luck, I'll have the next update in about a week's time or less, once I finish messing with Texas.
I'm not especially. If anything, I'm more Lloyd Georgian (for obvious reasons, one imagines) save for his Conservative cavorting and exacerbating of Liberal disunity. And as you note, you've made LG pretty hard to like in this instance.
Oh, good heavens no! His degree in architecture more like it.
That does give you plenty of time – though I'd like to think that even I would have finished writing an AAR by then!
Where's all the love for Balfour? :sad:
Also, I've finally identified Densely as David Mitchell - just less funny.
I'll cast my vote for Labour...
...wait a minute.
Good update. You have made Lloyd George exceedingly unlikeable, which makes me slightly sad because I might be slightly inclined to back him if he wasn't a tyrannical warmonger, would repeal conscription and have a slightly more liberal Irish policy. Of course, this being Kaiserreich, we know where we're ending up in 5 years regardless, so let's see precisely whose head ends up against the wall.
...wait a minute.
Good update. You have made Lloyd George exceedingly unlikeable, which makes me slightly sad because I might be slightly inclined to back him if he wasn't a tyrannical warmonger, would repeal conscription and have a slightly more liberal Irish policy. Of course, this being Kaiserreich, we know where we're ending up in 5 years regardless, so let's see precisely whose head ends up against the wall.
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I see you've taken Densley's approach of laying out General Elections like a four course meal - very enjoyable though such rigour is part of the reason I prefer writing about dictatorships :closedeyes:
I wrote on Mosley's political career at Uni, its really shows how far British politics has come that in 1918 a twenty-something shit fighter pilot could become a Conservative candidate while wearing a red rosette and calling himself a 'socialist-imperialist' - and win.
I wrote on Mosley's political career at Uni, its really shows how far British politics has come that in 1918 a twenty-something shit fighter pilot could become a Conservative candidate while wearing a red rosette and calling himself a 'socialist-imperialist' - and win.
1921: The Campaign
The 1921 General Election was truly a watershed moment in Britain's long and distinguished, yet sadly not uninterrupted democratic tradition. For the first time ever, all Britons aged over thirty, and all male Britons over the age of twenty-one, could have a say in determining who would form Her Majesty's next government. As one might expect, public interest in the election was intense: not only could workingmen and workingwomen vote for the first time, but in the shape of the Labour Leader, Ramsay MacDonald, they had (also for the first time) a fellow proletarian candidate for the Prime Ministership with whom they themselves could identify with. The wartime popularity of “Martyr MacDonald” had carried over into the election campaign: in 1910 the Labour Party had only polled around 7% of the total vote, but by 1919 the party's support had more than quadrupled according to those newfangled barometers of public opinion, the opinion poll – a recent import from elections across the Atlantic that was enthusiastically adopted by the British press. By mid-1920 some polls were predicting a Labour vote as high as 47% – more than either of the major parties had achieved at the last General Election in 1910, and MacDonald consistently outpolled David Lloyd George, Andrew Bonar Law and Herbert Henry Asquith as the public's choice for preferred Prime Minister (another innovation adopted from America's more Presidential political tradition.) Even if one does take into account the significant proletarianisation of the British electorate due to the expansion of the franchise, to move from a moribund party, crippled and at times actively suppressed by the war, and racked by internal division, to a potential party of government in the space of only a decade was still an incredible achievement on MacDonald's part.
Despite the fact that many people, voters and politicians alike, chose to disbelieve or dispute the poll findings, there is no doubt that opinion polling had a profound effect on the three establishment parties. Labour now had to be taken seriously by its opponents, and fear of a possible Labour government, compounded with horror stories of Syndicalist rule in the Commune of France and reports of Red atrocities in Bolshevik Russia galvanised supporters and activists of the Conservative and (both) Liberal parties into action. Activists signed up concerned members of all social classes as party members and activists, while politicians and journalists attacked Labour in the Commons and in the press, aided and abetted by sympathetic media barons like Max Aitken of The Daily Express. Even Britain's clergymen got involved on the action: accurate reports of religious oppression in Bolshevik Russia, and not-so-accurate reports of the same across the channel fuelled working class opposition to the Labour Party, among Anglicans in particular, who felt that even the “rigorous application of lacité” as practised by the Commune of France was too much for their moralist palate. The two Liberal parties meanwhile fought like starving dogs over scraps of food for their traditional Nonconformist vote, which was nevertheless just as opposed to atheism, syndicalism and Bolshevism as their High Church counterparts. The establishment's sustained barrage was beginning to have an effect on public opinion, and by early 1921 the Coalition parties had caught up to, and would soon surpass, Labour.
Labour's pre-campaign success had had a particularly profound effect on Asquith and the Liberal Party, hitherto Britain's major left-of-centre political force. Unlike the right-wing voter, who really had nowhere else to go politically apart from the Coalition, the British Left was split between Lloyd Georgians and national liberals on one side and socialists and pseudo-syndicalists on the other. Already a spent force due to the tearing away of the Lloyd Georgians, Labour's runaway success in the polls put the very survival of the Liberal Party as a major political force in Britain at stake. Cometh the hour, cometh the man, and unlike in 1914, Herbert Henry Asquith was very much the man in form. Re-positioning the party as the “sensible alternative to Tory Jingoism and Labour Bolshevism” (one will note that throughout the campaign the Liberals relished any opportunity to tar their former comrade with the Tory brush) Asquith campaigned heavily on both the peace and syndicalist issues in key marginal well before the official campaign actually kicked off. Granted a sympathetic ear by the right-wing press, who as recent as half a decade ago would not have given “Old Squiffy” the time of day, let alone reams of favourable news coverage, Asquith’s pre-election campaign proved surprisingly effective, to the shock of many news commentators and the dismay of those on the radical left. By the time the official campaign commenced, only polling by the Manchester Guardian had Labour ahead of the Liberals, and even then only marginally.
1921: The Press
As befitting the most polarising British General Election in recent memory, (and by any objective account, there was some stiff competition indeed for that particular title) Britain’s newspapers were about as divided on the question of who should govern Britain for the next five years as the people were.
The Tory press may have indeed granted a sympathetic ear to the non-Coalition Liberals before the campaign, (Asquith was still very much persona non grata as far as the staunchly Lloyd Georgian Daily Chronicle and Western Mail were concerned.) but the journalists of the Mail and Express were nowhere to be seen on the hustings come campaign day. The two tabloids, along with the rabidly reactionary Daily Telegraph and the Morning Post declared early, and declared often, for Bonar Law and the Coalition without much of an afterthought. Britain’s Newspaper of Record – The Times – was more sympathetic, but followed suit shortly after, while London’s Evening Standard was another quick declarer for the Coalition. Among the eventual Coalition declarers, only the Financial Times showed any real attempt to fairly present the Asquithian case, but even so was forced, with noted reluctance, to back the Coalition as the grouping best-placed to defeat Labour.
If there was one newspaper in Britain that historically could be counted upon to support the Liberal Party, it would be the Manchester Guardian. To the shock and consternation of many, the paper broke with its 100-year tradition of heartily endorsing the Liberal Party (or its predecessors) and pushed its considerable weight behind Ramsay MacDonald. The endorsement of a major, national newspaper was a significant coup to what hitherto had been a fledgling party devoid of any significant media support.
A second media coup for Labour emerged when about a week-and-a-half in to the campaign, staff of the Daily Mirror, then owned by Lord Rothermere and a sister tabloid to the better-known Daily Mail, broke with the enforced view of its owner in true Syndicalist fashion and declared for Labour. Rothermere was said to be outraged, and threatened to sack the entire editorial staff unless the Mirror recanted its view. The journalists responded by going on strike in the name of free speech, with the active support of paperboys, newsagents and other left-wing journalists across the country. True to form, MacDonald and Labour defended the staff of the Mirror while the Coalition defended Rothermere and Asquith remained agnostic – though popular opinion strongly favoured the strikers. In the end, Lord Rothermere was forced to back down in the face of an organised boycott against his other papers by large swathes of the British urban public, many of whom no doubt went on to vote against the Labour Party at the polls. The strike nevertheless helped to give Labour some much-needed momentum, and propelled the party back to first place in the polls.
In Scotland, the media, tabloid and broadsheet alike, were firmly in MacDonald’s corner, with only the Tory Scotsman dissenting. Along with Ben Tillett’s Daily Herald – the “Worker’s Daily” – support from these papers ensured that support for Labour remained buoyant in its proletarian, industrial heartlands. The Labour Party went on to receive some unexpected, if not entirely wholehearted, support from the weekly Nation[1] traditionally a Liberal publication which nevertheless became the only publication to back a Lib-Lab coalition. Of Britain’s remaining left-of-centre press, only the Daily News resisted the temptation to back either Labour or Lloyd George, instead plunking for Asquith.
In Ireland, the media notably chose to defy the polls, with both the unionist Irish Times and the less establishment Irish Independent both choosing to endorse the established Irish parties (the Irish Unionists and the IPP respectively) over the up and coming Sinn Fein.
Newspaper Endorsements for the 1921 British General Election. Endorsements for either the Coalition Conservatives or the Coalition Liberals should be treated as an endorsement for the entire Coalition, with the listed party indicating said paper’s personal political preference.
1921: Seats to Watch
As befitting one of the most controversial and tightly-contested election campaigns in British political history, the 1921 General Election saw a record number of political parties formed and registered candidates standing for parliamentary office. Familiar groups, such as the (Coalition) Conservatives and (non-Coalition) Liberals were joined by young upstarts like the Communist and National parties, representatives of the radical left and right respectively. 1921 was also the first election to see a significant number of women candidates standing for parliament, though their numbers were few and still of course far fewer than they would be in the TUC under Syndicalist rule or in the “bourgeois” General Elections to follow, and only a tiny handful were selected for what could be termed “winnable” seats. Nevertheless, they existed, and both their presence and the number of collective votes they received should be seen as a massive step forward for a nation which did not even have female suffrage as recently as a decade prior.
The two most prominent female candidates were arguably Countess Constance Marcievicz, the wife of a Polish Count and artist standing for Sinn Fein, and Christabel Pankhurst, LLB, daughter of Emmeline and arguably one of the famous women in Britain of that time, excepting royalty. Christabel, like so many of her family, achieved notoriety before the Great War as a vigourous campaigner for women’s suffrage, before transforming into an equally vigourous campaigner for the war effort come mid-1914. Disillusioned by the more pacifistic, pro-syndicalist road the suffragette movement appeared to be taking and equally appreciative of Lloyd George’s key role in establishing women’s suffrage in Britain, Christabel and her mother Emmeline founded the short-lived Women’s Party out of the ashes of the right-wing of the old WSPU, while the left would go on to join the Labour Party, and eventually evolve into the Congregationalist faction of the post-revolution TUC. Christabel, as the party’s leader and by far most prominent candidate, won a notable concession from the government by achieving the Coalition nomination for the new seat of Smethwick. The local Tories were eager to challenge the seat and were considerably unhappy to have a candidate with Christabel’s history and temperament (and possibly gender also) fielded in their stead. Only the personal intervention of David Lloyd George, who was said to have threatened to field one of his own Coalition Liberals against Bonar Law if he relented, was said to have kept the Conservatives in Smethwick onside.
Countess Constance Markievicz (centre, dressed in white) campaigns for Sinn Fein leader Eamon De Valera in the seat of East Clare. Constance herself was standing for Sinn Fein in the seat of Dublin St. Patrick’s, while Eamon De Valera chose to contest both East Clare, which he took from the IPP in a wartime by-election, and the IPP leader’s seat in East Mayo.
Although some Conservatives might have found the prospect of a female Conservative candidate standing for their constituency abhorrent in 1921, there was no such bias among Tories in Plymouth Sutton, who had their own star female candidate in the form of Nancy Astor. A fiery campaigner with an equally fierce wit, she was a match for Christabel on the hustings but with impeccable conservative and society credentials and a husband in the Lords. Of all the female candidates in 1921, she was arguably the most electable by far.
Lady Astor would prove to be just the first of many prominent parliamentary candidates produced by the Astor family, with almost all (there would be only one exception) standing for the Conservative Party. The Astors would prove to be one of the most prominent and persistent dynasties in Atlantic politics, more often than not the Tory standard-bearer locked in electoral battle for Britain and Canada’s seaborne cities against their Janner arch-rivals, the radical Foots.
Labour too had its own contingent of suffragette candidates, most prominent among them perhaps being Charlotte Despard, another WSPU alumnus who instead sided with the pacifist left-wing and joined the Labour Party, despite being the sister of Great War General Sir John French. A regular correspondent with the future Bhartiya Commune revolutionary Mohandas K. Gandhi, Despard was a passionate supporter of both Indian and Irish independence, her support of the latter cause on the hustings was vociferous enough to inspire a pro-Irish Unionist candidate to stand against her – in socialist Battersea of all places! Despite her noted Syndicalist and Indian sympathies, she was nevertheless also opposed by a candidate from the newly formed Communist Party of Great Britain, Shapurji Saklatvala, himself of Indian extraction, who according to recent opinion polls in the constituency, was expected to poll very well indeed.
As if Charlotte Despard was not scandalous a candidate enough for the Labour Party in 1921, in the normally blue-ribbon Tory country of Warwick and Leamington the party opted to field Countess Daisy Greville, despite her title best known for her youthful exploits in the bedroom, as the mistress to several of Britain’s most powerful men, (including none other than the late King Edward VII) and her more mature exploits in the courtroom, defending charges of extortion levied against her by none other than King George V! The popular and fiery anti-establishmentarian added a much needed dash of glamour and celebrity to the overtly proletarian tone of MacDonald’s workingman campaign, and in absence of a Liberal or non-Coalition candidate opponent, was tipped by many papers to prove to be the surprise package of the 1921 election campaign, in spite of her constituency’s tenacious Tory tendencies (the retiring former MP was elected unopposed last time round.)
Due to the controversial nature surrounding the election, a significant slice of Britain’s political establishment, hitherto buttressed securely in “seats for life,” were at risk of facing the chop. Most prominent of all being the Liberal leader and former Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith. Despite having turned the corner somewhat in the unpopularity stakes since his wartime downfall and ultimate overthrow in a palace coup by David Lloyd George, the demands and rigours required to save his divided party from nationwide oblivion demanded that he sacrifice campaigning in his own, by now marginal, seat of East Fife in favour of campaigning for colleagues at risk elsewhere. Despite the unpopularity of the Great War in Scotland, the seat remains a protectionist stronghold in an otherwise Free Trade country (be it advocated by Highland Liberals on its merits or Glaswegian Socialists worried by rising food prices) and has been since the Chamberlainite era. According to contemporary journalists at The Scotsman, East Fife was the Conservative’s prime “target” seat, and the party had invested considerable effort and manpower in its attempt to take it.
Meanwhile in the nearby City of Dundee, a very different Liberal candidate was also facing the potential humiliation of being awarded the British electorate’s “Order of the Boot.” By the age of 47 Winston Churchill truly had had an extraordinary life and career, both in and out of parliamentary office. In the words of at least one future biographer Churchill had “the most interesting early life of any British Prime Minister, in or out of exile, with the sole exception of the Duke of Wellington.” Churchill’s early career as a wartime correspondent in both of the Empire’s recent African wars, Sudanese and Boer, helped catapult him to nationwide fame, and a parliamentary victory in Oldham, standing as a Conservative candidate and pipping the Liberal and future President of the Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, at the post by a slender margin of around 200 votes. Winston’s staunch free trade instincts were well out of step in the Liberal Unionist dominated protectionist Tory class of 1906, and Winston ultimately crossed the floor and joined the Liberals. Winston soon marked himself as a staunch friend and ally of David Lloyd George, an alliance which won him a Liberal nomination for a “seat for life” in radical Dundee and which persisted well after the conclusion of the Great War, when Winston changed party affiliation once again to stand for Lloyd George’s Coalition Liberals.
The multi-member seat of Dundee was perhaps the most fascinating electoral contest of the 1921 election. The sitting Labour member[2] Alexander Wilkie, was a staunch figure on the right of the party. A shipbuilder and trade unionist by trade, he not only supported the war from day one, but remained Labour’s staunchest advocate for naval armament and rearmament during his tenure in the house, even for long after the rise of MacDonald made such views most unfashionable in left-wing circles. In spite of his right-wing views, Wilkie refused to do as his fellow Dundonian George Nicoll Barnes (standing for the seat of Glasgow Gorbals) had and relinquish his Labour Party allegiance in exchange for a Coalition coupon. Nevertheless, his candidature received tacit, unofficial support from the Coalition, who declined to field a second candidate and advised their supporters to cast their extra vote for Wilkie.
Wilkie nonetheless faced some opposition from Dundee’s Left in the form of William Gallacher, standing on behalf of the Communist Party in protest of the sitting member’s insufficiently socialist views. Gallacher too campaigned for Labour “surplus” votes, advising Labour voters to cast their votes for both him and the second Labour candidate, in protest of Wilkie’s “closet trade union Toryism.” The Liberal candidate positioned himself as the “sensible alternative” for voters who couldn’t stomach the jingoism of either of the Dundee MPs, nor the Syndicalism or pseudo-Syndicalism of Labour and the Communists, while perennial Prohibition Party candidate Edwin Scrymgeour positioned himself as an alternative, full stop, campaigning on an eclectic hotchpotch of Christian right-wing and non-syndicalist left-wing issues. Though Scrymgeour has had little luck as a candidate in his past four attempts to take Dundee, working class disillusionment with both the anti-trade union policies of Winston Churchill and the apparent Godlessness of a Labour Party which appeared, to some in Scotland at least, to be at least flirting with Syndicalism and Bolshevism may well work in his favour.
Labour was tipped to do especially well in the North of England and in Scotland, and Dundee was far from the only potential gain. Former Labour Leader George Nicol Barnes was contesting for re-election under the Coalition Labour label in Glasgow Gorbals, where MacDonald’wartime ally George Maclean stood on behalf of official Labour. In nearby Glasgow Bridgeton, Jimmy Maxton, another of Labour’s burgeoning “Syndie set,” was hoping to take the last “Liberal” stronghold in the Clydeside city, his opponent having taken the coupon. The Tories were defending several seats in Glasgow, the most prominent MP no doubt being their leader, Andrew Bonar Law, in Glasgow Central.
The Asquithian Liberals’ best hopes remained in holding a smattering of hitherto safe but now marginal seats. Apart from Asquith himself in East Fife, the previously secure seat of Caithness and Sutherland had developed into a bitter all-liberal contest, with the Asquithian and Lloyd Georgian candidates joined by a popular “Independent Liberal.” Contemporary field work undertaken by The Scotsman’s pollsters suggested a close, three-way race with no clear winner. In Cleveland and Leith, rising stars Herbert Samuel and William Wedgwood-Benn both faced a close battle from the challenging Conservatives to retain their seats, while in the south-west Liberal patriarch Isaac Foot appeared only a fraction ahead of the Tories in the seat of Bodmin. In the aftermath of their bitter and in some ways tragic split from the Lloyd Georgians, the Asquithian Liberals could hope for little in the way of gains, and instead put their best hope in a form of electoral trench warfare, retaining as many seats as they could from mostly Tory challengers. One such exception was in the naval seat of Plymouth Devonport, where the Liberal challenger was polling only a few points behind the Conservative incumbent in what should have been a safe Tory hold.
A final note should perhaps be spared for some of the young, up-and-coming men of the Conservative Party, many of whom were young officers or fighting men who had only just survived the horrors of the Great War, only to confront a rather different kind of horror in the immediate years to come. Some coped better than others, others lost their lives, and many who did not fled to the far-flung outposts of Empire. One candidate who did neither of those things, and who coped with the turmoil far better than anyone, was the Conservative candidate in Harrow, Sir Oswald Mosley. Decked out immaculately in a black top hat and tails with a red carnation in his buttonhole and an even redder rosette pinned to his right lapel, the young baronet fought an energetic campaign and charmed the voters of Harrow with his Imperial-Socialist snake oil. Not to be outdone in the political glamour stakes, his buff-waistcoated energetic young Liberal opponent fought with equal vim and vigour, campaigning strongly on free trade and other traditional Whiggish issues. In a good year, an energetic Liberal candidate may well have a chance at capturing Harrow, but 1921 was far from a good year for the Liberals, and without an official Labour candidate opposing him, the nominally conservative Mosley was expected to take a fair slice of the left-wing vote.
1921: Polls
What was seen by many as being a foremost conclusion as recently as a few months ago was now shaping up to be the closest general election since the time of Gladstone and Disraeli. Fear of a Syndicalist Britain had helped to reenergise Coalition support somewhat from its post-war low, but David Lloyd George and his government nonetheless remained widely unpopular, a fact which no doubt immunised both Labour and the Liberals from Lloyd George and Bonar Law’s “red scare.”
Polls in the Manchester Guardian had consistently shown the highest Labour average of any newspaper, it thus came as something of a shock when the daily put the Coalition just ahead of Labour in the final days of the campaign. The paper’s editorial staff rallied, and for the next four days the paper offered Labour extra pages of free advertising, in addition to a relentless bombardment of barracking and “unofficial advertising” on the part of its journalists. The campaign appeared to have a rallying effect on the voters too, and by polling day the Manchester Guardian exit poll had the party at only one point behind the Coalition.
Manchester Guardian Exit Poll:
Coalition: 31% ~ 281 Seats
Labour: 30% ~ 278 Seats
Liberal: 21% ~ 38 Seats
Sinn Fein: 5% ~ 77 Seats
Irish Unionist: 2% ~ 20 Seats
IPP: 2% ~ 0 Seats
Other: 8% ~ 13 Seats
Hung Parliament
Polling conducted by the Manchester Guardian for the 1921 British General Election.
The staunchly Lloyd Georgian Daily Chronicle had some more welcome news for the Coalition, predicting an incisive Coalition breakaway in the final days of the campaign. Nevertheless, any overly-optimistic Coalition dreams of an overall majority were all but shattered by the Chronicle’s exit poll.
Daily Chronicle Exit Poll:
Coalition: 34% ~ 314 Seats
Labour: 27% ~ 221 Seats
Liberal: 24% ~ 62 Seats
Sinn Fein: 5% ~ 75 Seats
Irish Unionist: 2% ~ 21 Seats
IPP: 2% ~ 1 Seat
Other: 6% ~ 13 Seats
Hung Parliament
Polling conducted by the Daily Chronicle for the 1921 British General Election.
The Times offered less good news for supporters of the Coalition, predicting a fall, not rise in Coalition support in the final days of the campaign, in favour of the Labour and Liberal parties. In spite of this, Britain’s newspaper of record nonetheless put the Coalition merely one point behind the Daily Chronicle figures in its exit poll.
The Times Exit Poll:
Coalition: 33% ~ 308 Seats
Labour: 28% ~ 226 Seats
Liberal: 23% ~ 66 Seats
Sinn Fein: 5% ~ 70 Seats
Irish Unionist: 3% ~ 26 Seats
IPP: 1% ~ 0 Seats
Other: 7% ~ 11 Seats
Hung Parliament
Polling conducted by The Times for the 1921 British General Election.
Finally, the solidly blue Telegraph distinguished itself from its other fellow polling papers by tipping an outright Coalition government, albeit a noticeably more slender one than the paper had boasted of at the very start of the campaign.
The Telegraph Exit Poll:
Coalition: 35% ~ 358 Seats
Labour: 26% ~ 215 Seats
Liberal: 21% ~ 24 Seats
Sinn Fein: 4% ~ 68 Seats
Irish Unionist: 3% ~ 26 Seats
IPP: 1% ~ 0 Seats
Other: 9% ~ 16 Seats
Polling conducted by The Times for the 1921 British General Election.
Finally, the solidly blue Telegraph distinguished itself from its other fellow polling papers by tipping an outright Coalition government, albeit a noticeably more slender one than the paper had boasted of at the very start of the campaign.
The Telegraph Exit Poll:
Coalition: 35% ~ 358 Seats
Labour: 26% ~ 215 Seats
Liberal: 21% ~ 24 Seats
Sinn Fein: 4% ~ 68 Seats
Irish Unionist: 3% ~ 26 Seats
IPP: 1% ~ 0 Seats
Other: 9% ~ 16 Seats
Coalition majority of 4 over all other parties.
Polling conducted by The Telegraph for the 1921 British General Election.
***
Notes:
[1] The future New Statesman.
[2] The seat of Dundee was a multi-member constituency which elected two MPs to parliament, so voters in Dundee therefore had two separate votes to cast for two separate candidates. Thus, both Wilkie and Churchill were the incumbent MPs in 1921.
Polling conducted by The Telegraph for the 1921 British General Election.
***
Notes:
[1] The future New Statesman.
[2] The seat of Dundee was a multi-member constituency which elected two MPs to parliament, so voters in Dundee therefore had two separate votes to cast for two separate candidates. Thus, both Wilkie and Churchill were the incumbent MPs in 1921.
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No. Way.
Okay, gonna go read the update now - just wanted to be the first to express my shock at this revival.
Also - Yay!
Okay, gonna go read the update now - just wanted to be the first to express my shock at this revival
. Also - Yay!
Oy vey, who is this author and what have you done to Tanzhang?
What are all these polls? ;oh wait, your election system was horrible back then and is horrible still today.
What are all these polls? ;oh wait, your election system was horrible back then and is horrible still today.
I love election updates and this one didn't disappoint. The newspapers, the polls and interesting constituencies - brilliant!
But by far my favourite part was the featuring of Edwin Scrymgeour. A few months back I wrote a 5,000 word essay on Scrymgeour and the Scottish Prohibitionist Party (and got my best ever Uni grade) and have a mild to severe obsession with the man.
I'll leave you with my favourite Scrym quote coming from the 1931 General Election campaign "you might find stupid people Mr MacDonald, but you won't find any in Dundee!"
Vote Prohibitionist!
Do it Dundee, DO IT!
But by far my favourite part was the featuring of Edwin Scrymgeour. A few months back I wrote a 5,000 word essay on Scrymgeour and the Scottish Prohibitionist Party (and got my best ever Uni grade) and have a mild to severe obsession with the man.
I'll leave you with my favourite Scrym quote coming from the 1931 General Election campaign "you might find stupid people Mr MacDonald, but you won't find any in Dundee!"
Vote Prohibitionist!
Do it Dundee, DO IT!
How Dare you come back! I just accepted your death! Do you know how much emotional trauma you're putting me through!
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Like Watson before a resurrected Holmes, I faint at the reappearance of this AAR! I'm still kind of sad about the loss of your Chinese Charecters though. They were quite unique.
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