Walsall by-election, 1938
Encyclopedia
The Walsall by-election, 1938 was a parliamentary by-election
held for the British House of Commons
constituency of Walsall
on 16 November 1938.
Member of Parliament, Joseph Leckie
.
. Schuster was something of a renaissance man
. He had qualified as a barrister
and had already had successful careers in business, colonial government and economics. He came from a wealthy family with banking and cotton interests. As a representative of the National Government Schuster was not opposed by the Conservatives
, although they were apparently disappointed the Liberal Nationals exercised their right to find their own successor to Leckie and did not cede the National nomination to the local Conservatives. Schuster later went on to spend 22 years on Oxfordshire County Council
and achieve success in the field of further education as Chairman of the Board of Governors of Atlantic College
from 1963-1973. He died in 1982 aged 101 years.
candidate, George Jeger
, a journalist from London and a local councillor in Shoreditch
, of which he was Mayor
in 1938. Jeger had been Labour candidate in Bethnal Green South West
at the United Kingdom general election, 1935
. He went on to represent Winchester (1945–1950) and Goole
(1950–1971) in Parliament
.
Neville Chamberlain
. The great issue of the day was the worsening of international relations with the rise of Adolf Hitler
in Germany, Benito Mussolini
in Italy and Japanese expansionism in the Far East
. Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing
these dissatisfied powers, in the immediate glow of what was thought to be Chamberlain’s success in getting the Munich Agreement
signed at the end of September, was the one that Schuster, and those in the government supporting him, chose to emphasise. He also attacked the Labour Party for its support of economic planning
and state regulation
at the expense of small business and local enterprise and for its allegation that the government planned further cuts in social welfare provision. However, the main issue was for the electors of Walsall
to show their approval or rejection of the Munich Agreement.
For Labour, George Jeger attacked the government’s record on international and domestic policy. He was reported in the local press as saying that the National Government was not firm enough in its stand for peace and had failed the League of Nations
but he also criticised the government’s re-armament
policy as taking funds away from essential social services. Jeger attacked Chamberlain’s efforts at Munich saying that forcing Czechoslovakia
to hand over the Sudetenland
merely encouraged further aggression by Hitler and sacrificed a democratic country in the face of Nazi blackmail. The Times
headline over its by-election coverage of 14 November summed it up –‘Walsall Contest – Foreign Policy the Main Issue'.
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
held for the British House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
constituency of Walsall
Walsall (UK Parliament constituency)
Walsall was a borough constituency centred on the town of Walsall in the West Midlands of England. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system....
on 16 November 1938.
Vacancy
The by-election was caused by the death of the sitting Liberal NationalNational Liberal Party (UK, 1931)
The National Liberal Party, known until 1948 as the Liberal National Party, was a liberal political party in the United Kingdom from 1931 to 1968...
Member of Parliament, Joseph Leckie
Joseph Leckie
Joseph Alexander Leckie was a British Liberal, later Liberal National politician and leather manufacturer.-Education and business life:...
.
Liberal National
The Liberal Nationals selected Sir George Ernest SchusterGeorge Ernest Schuster
Sir George Ernest Schuster, KCSI, KCMG, CBE, MC was a British barrister, financier, colonial administrator and Liberal politician....
. Schuster was something of a renaissance man
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
. He had qualified as a barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
and had already had successful careers in business, colonial government and economics. He came from a wealthy family with banking and cotton interests. As a representative of the National Government Schuster was not opposed by the Conservatives
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
, although they were apparently disappointed the Liberal Nationals exercised their right to find their own successor to Leckie and did not cede the National nomination to the local Conservatives. Schuster later went on to spend 22 years on Oxfordshire County Council
Oxfordshire County Council
Oxfordshire County Council, established in 1889, is the county council, or upper-tier local authority, for the non-metropolitan county of Oxfordshire, in the South East of England, an elected body responsible for the most strategic local government services in the county.-History:County Councils...
and achieve success in the field of further education as Chairman of the Board of Governors of Atlantic College
Atlantic College
The United World College of the Atlantic, also known as Atlantic College, is an international IB Diploma Programme boarding school in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1962, the school was the first of the United World Colleges and was among the first schools in the world to follow an international...
from 1963-1973. He died in 1982 aged 101 years.
Labour
Schuster was therefore opposed only by the Labour PartyLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
candidate, George Jeger
George Jeger
George Jeger was a British Labour Party politician. He was Member of Parliament for Winchester from 1945 to 1950, and for Goole from 1950 until his death in 1971.-References:...
, a journalist from London and a local councillor in Shoreditch
Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch
The Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch was a Metropolitan borough of the County of London between 1900 and 1965, when it was merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Stoke Newington and the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney to form the London Borough of Hackney....
, of which he was Mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
in 1938. Jeger had been Labour candidate in Bethnal Green South West
Bethnal Green South West (UK Parliament constituency)
Bethnal Green South West was a constituency in London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
at the United Kingdom general election, 1935
United Kingdom general election, 1935
The United Kingdom general election held on 14 November 1935 resulted in a large, though reduced, majority for the National Government now led by Conservative Stanley Baldwin. The greatest number of MPs, as before, were Conservative, while the National Liberal vote held steady...
. He went on to represent Winchester (1945–1950) and Goole
Goole (UK Parliament constituency)
Goole was a parliamentary constituency centred on the town of Goole in the West Riding of Yorkshire which returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first-past-the-post voting system....
(1950–1971) in Parliament
Parliament
A parliament is a legislature, especially in those countries whose system of government is based on the Westminster system modeled after that of the United Kingdom. The name is derived from the French , the action of parler : a parlement is a discussion. The term came to mean a meeting at which...
.
Issues
As the National candidate, Schuster sought to defend the record of the National Government and in particular the foreign policy associated with Prime MinisterPrime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
. The great issue of the day was the worsening of international relations with the rise of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in Germany, Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
in Italy and Japanese expansionism in the Far East
Far East
The Far East is an English term mostly describing East Asia and Southeast Asia, with South Asia sometimes also included for economic and cultural reasons.The term came into use in European geopolitical discourse in the 19th century,...
. Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing
Appeasement
The term appeasement is commonly understood to refer to a diplomatic policy aimed at avoiding war by making concessions to another power. Historian Paul Kennedy defines it as "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and...
these dissatisfied powers, in the immediate glow of what was thought to be Chamberlain’s success in getting the Munich Agreement
Munich Agreement
The Munich Pact was an agreement permitting the Nazi German annexation of Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. The Sudetenland were areas along Czech borders, mainly inhabited by ethnic Germans. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich, Germany, among the major powers of Europe without...
signed at the end of September, was the one that Schuster, and those in the government supporting him, chose to emphasise. He also attacked the Labour Party for its support of economic planning
Economic interventionism
Economic interventionism is an action taken by a government in a market economy or market-oriented mixed economy, beyond the basic regulation of fraud and enforcement of contracts, in an effort to affect its own economy...
and state regulation
Regulatory economics
Regulatory economics is the economics of regulation, in the sense of the application of law by government that is used for various purposes, such as centrally-planning an economy, remedying market failure, enriching well-connected firms, or benefiting politicians...
at the expense of small business and local enterprise and for its allegation that the government planned further cuts in social welfare provision. However, the main issue was for the electors of Walsall
Walsall
Walsall is a large industrial town in the West Midlands of England. It is located northwest of Birmingham and east of Wolverhampton. Historically a part of Staffordshire, Walsall is a component area of the West Midlands conurbation and part of the Black Country.Walsall is the administrative...
to show their approval or rejection of the Munich Agreement.
For Labour, George Jeger attacked the government’s record on international and domestic policy. He was reported in the local press as saying that the National Government was not firm enough in its stand for peace and had failed the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
but he also criticised the government’s re-armament
Re-armament
In British history, Re-armament refers to the period between 1934 and 1939, when a substantial programme of re-arming the nation was undertaken to meet the threat posed by Hitler's Nazi Germany....
policy as taking funds away from essential social services. Jeger attacked Chamberlain’s efforts at Munich saying that forcing Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
to hand over the Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
merely encouraged further aggression by Hitler and sacrificed a democratic country in the face of Nazi blackmail. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
headline over its by-election coverage of 14 November summed it up –‘Walsall Contest – Foreign Policy the Main Issue'.
The votes
See also
- List of United Kingdom by-elections
- United Kingdom by-election recordsUnited Kingdom by-election recordsUK by-election records is an annotated list of notable records from UK Parliamentary by-elections. A by-election occurs when a Member of Parliament resigns, dies, or is disqualified or expelled, and an election is held to fill the vacant seat...