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1922 United Kingdom general election

← 1918 15 November 1922 1923 →
← outgoing memberselected members →
All 615 seats in the House of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	73.0% (15.8 pp)
First party Second party   Leader Bonar Law J. R. Clynes Party Conservative Labour Leader since 23 October 1922 14 February 1921 Leader's seat Glasgow Central Manchester Platting Last election 379 seats, 38.4% 57 seats, 21.5% Seats won 344 142 Seat change 35 85 Popular vote 5,294,465 4,076,665 Percentage 38.5% 29.7% Swing 0.1 pp 8.9 pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader H. H. Asquith David Lloyd George Party Liberal National Liberal Leader since 30 April 1908 7 December 1916 Leader's seat Paisley Caernarvon Boroughs Last election 36 seats, 13.3% 127 seats, 12.6% Seats won 62 53 Seat change 26 74 Popular vote 2,601,486 1,355,366 Percentage 18.9% 9.9% Swing 5.9 pp 2.7 pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in § Results
Composition of the House of Commons following the 1922 general election
Prime Minister before election Bonar Law Conservative Prime Minister after election Bonar Law Conservative

The 1922 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 15 November 1922. It was won by the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, which gained an overall majority over the Labour Party, led by J. R. Clynes, and a divided Liberal Party.

This election is considered one of political realignment, with the Liberal Party falling to third-party status. The Conservative Party went on to spend all but eight of the next forty-two years as the largest party in Parliament, and Labour emerged as the main competition to the Conservatives.

The election was the first not to be held in Southern Ireland, due to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, under which Southern Ireland was to secede from the United Kingdom as a Dominion – the Irish Free State – on 6 December 1922. This reduced the size of the House of Commons by nearly one hundred seats when compared to the previous election.

Background

The Liberal Party had divided into two factions following the ousting of H. H. Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916. From then until October 1922 the Conservatives had been in coalition with a Liberal faction (which later became the "National Liberals") led by David Lloyd George. Following the Carlton Club meeting, Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister and Bonar Law formed a Conservative majority government.

Although still leader of the Liberal Party and a frequent public speaker, former Prime Minister Asquith was no longer a particularly influential figure in the national political debate, and he had played no part in the downfall of the Lloyd George coalition. Most attention was focused on Law and Lloyd George. Asquith's daughter Violet Bonham-Carter, a prominent Liberal Party campaigner, likened the election to a contest between a man with sleeping sickness (Bonar Law) and a man with St Vitus Dance (Lloyd George).

Some of Lloyd George's National Liberals were not opposed by Conservative candidates (e.g. Winston Churchill, who was defeated at Dundee nonetheless), while many leading Conservatives (e.g. former parliamentary leaders Arthur Balfour and Sir Austen Chamberlain, and former Lord Chancellor Lord Birkenhead) were not members of Bonar Law's government, and hoped to hold the balance of power after the election (comparisons were made with the Peelite group—the ousted Conservative front bench of the late 1840s and 1850s); this was not to be, as Bonar Law won an overall majority.

It was the first election at which Labour surpassed the combined strength of both Liberal parties in votes and seats. The election was also notable for Labour in that it saw future Prime Minister Clement Attlee elected as MP for Limehouse.

Some Liberal candidates stood calling for a reunited Liberal Party, while others appear to have backed both Asquith and Lloyd George. Few sources are able to agree on exact numbers, and even in contemporary records held by the two groups, some MPs were claimed for both sides. By one estimate, there were 29 seats where Liberals stood against one another. This is thought to have cost them at least 14 seats, 10 of them to Labour, so in theory a reunited Liberal Party would have been much closer to, and perhaps even ahead of, Labour in terms of seats. However, in reality the two factions were on poor terms, and Lloyd George was still hoping for a renewed coalition with the Conservatives.

Neither of the leaders of the two main parties succeeded in enjoying their achievement in the election for very long; within less than a month of the election, Clynes was defeated in a leadership challenge by former Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald, while Bonar Law would only last a little over seven months as Prime Minister before being forced to step down due to a terminal illness, resulting in Stanley Baldwin succeeding him as both party leader and Prime Minister. As a result, Bonar Law was the shortest-serving UK Prime Minister of the twentieth century. Parliament was dissolved on 26 October; Bonar Law died four days later.

Party platforms

The Conservative Party offered continuity to the electorate. Bonar Law's election address stated:

The crying need of the nation have this moment ... Is that we should have tranquility and stability both at home and abroad so that the free scope should be given to the initiative and enterprise of our own citizens, for it is in that way, far more than by any action of the Government that we can hope to recover from the economic and social results of the war.

The Labour Party proposed to nationalise the mines and railways, to impose a levy on financial capital, and to revise the peace treaties. It promised a higher standard of living for workers, higher wages, and better housing.

Results

Votes summary

Seats summary

Transfers of seats

• All comparisons are with the 1918 election.
  • In some cases the change is due to the MP defecting to the gaining party. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
  • In other circumstances the change is due to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1922. Such circumstances are marked with a †.

† MP elected as an Anti-Waste League candidate at a 1921 by-election, but moved to the Conservatives for the 1922 election

See also

• List of MPs elected in the 1922 United Kingdom general election
• 1922 United Kingdom general election in Scotland
• 1922 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland

Notes

1. Including Conservatives not elected under the Coalition Coupon.
2. As Coalition Liberals.
3. All parties shown. Conservatives include Ulster Unionists. National Liberals were party formed by Lloyd George's Coalition Liberals after leaving the government. Their net seat change is compared with the Coalition Liberals' number of seats after the 1918 election.

1. The seat and vote count figures for the Liberals given here include the Speaker of the House of Commons

References

1. Jenkins 1964, p. 495.
2. Koss 1985, p. 257–258.
3. "Parliamentary Election Timetables" (PDF) (3rd ed.). House of Commons Library. 25 March 1997. Retrieved 3 July 2022.
4. Craig 1970, p. 10.
5. Somervell 1936, p. 303; Craig 1970, pp. 9–17.
6. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 July 2014. Retrieved 23 May 2014.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

Sources

• Craig, F. W. S., ed. (1970), British General Election Manifestos, 1900–1966, , pp. 9–17
• Craig, F. W. S., ed. (1989), British Electoral Facts: 1832–1987, Dartmouth: Gower, ISBN 0900178302
• Jenkins, Roy (1964), Asquith (first ed.), London: Collins, OCLC 243906913
• Koss, Stephen (1985), Asquith, London: Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 978-0-231-06155-1
• Somervell, D. C. (1936), The Reign of King George V, Faber and Faber Limited, p. 303

External links

• United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979 Archived 8 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine

Manifestos

• 1922 Conservative manifesto
• 1922 Labour manifesto
• 1922 Liberal manifesto

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See also Elections in England Northern Ireland Scotland Wales Great Britain

v t e Bonar Law
Premiership	1922-1923
General elections	1918 1922
Constituencies	Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown Dulwich Bootle Glasgow Central
Family	Richard Law (son) Frederick Sykes (son-in-law)
Career	Buckingham Palace Conference Shell Crisis of 1915 Imperial War Cabinet Maurice Debate Carlton Club meeting Irish Free State (Consequential Provisions) Act 1922
See also	1911 Bootle by-election Bonarlaw, Ontario Bonar Law Memorial High School William Jacks

• 1922 United Kingdom general election
• 1922 elections in the United Kingdom
• 1922 in British politics
• General elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom
• November 1922 events in Europe
• David Lloyd George
• Bonar Law
• H. H. Asquith