1935 Labour Party leadership election

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26 November – 3 December 1935 (1935-11-26 – 1935-12-03)

1955 →


Candidate	Clement Attlee	Herbert Morrison	Arthur Greenwood
First ballot	58 (43.0%)	44 (32.6%)	33 (24.4%)
Second ballot	88 (64.7%)	48 (35.3%)	Eliminated

Leader before election

Clement Attlee (interim)

Elected Leader

Clement Attlee

This article is part of
a series aboutClement Attlee

Labour Leader

Prime Minister

Post-Prime Minister

1955 general election

The 1935 Labour Party leadership election took place on 26 November 1935 when Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood challenged Clement Attlee, the incumbent party leader of only one month and one day. Attlee, previously Deputy Leader, had been appointed as an interim leader the previous month when George Lansbury resigned and the general election was looming.

With the Labour Party now having roughly three times as many MPs as in the 1931-5 Parliament, both Morrison and Greenwood stood in the annual election for leader, feeling that Attlee's appointment had only been intended as an interim measure. Morrison had not been an MP at the time of the October appointment, whilst Greenwood had declined to offer himself as a candidate then because he was strongly associated with trade union leaders such as Ernest Bevin, who were widely regarded as the reasons for forcing Lansbury to resign, a move that the vast majority of Labour MPs opposed.

Candidates

Clement Attlee, incumbent interim Leader of the Labour Party, Member of Parliament for Limehouse
Arthur Greenwood, former Minister of Health, Member of Parliament for Wakefield
Herbert Morrison, Leader of the London County Council, Member of Parliament for Hackney South

Results

The first round of the contest took place on 26 November 1935:

Name	Votes	%
Clement Attlee	58	43.0
Herbert Morrison	44	32.6
Arthur Greenwood N	33	24.4

As the lowest-placed candidate, Greenwood was eliminated from the race.

The second contest took place on 3 December:

Name	Votes	%
Clement Attlee Y	88	64.7
Herbert Morrison	48	35.3

With a clear majority, Attlee retained the party leadership.

Herbert Morrison later claimed that he was denied the leadership of the Labour Party in the 1935 election by the votes of Labour MPs who were members of New Welcome Lodge. Morrison's backer Hugh Dalton made similar claims, and went further than Morrison by claiming to have been shown the summons for the meeting at which the voting was decided. Dalton believed that the members of New Welcome Lodge backed Arthur Greenwood, who was a member of the lodge, and then backed Clement Attlee in order to block Morrison. Greenwood was elected to replace Attlee as Deputy Leader.

References

"Leaders of the Labour Party". Election.demon.co.uk. Archived from the original on 24 April 2018. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
John Hamill and Andrew Prescott, 'The Masons' Candidate: New Welcome Lodge No. 5139 and the Parliamentary Labour Party' Archived 2012-10-14 at the Wayback Machine, Labour History Review, Volume 71, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 9–41(33), citing H. Morrison, Herbert Morrison: An Autobiography (London, Odhams, 1960), p. 164
Hugh Dalton, Ben Pimlott, The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1918–40, 1945–60 (London School of Economics and Political Science, ISBN 0-224-01912-0), p.224.
Hamill and Prescott, pp. 9–41(33), citing H. Dalton, The Fateful Years, (London: Frederick Muller Ltd., 1957), p. 82

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Internal elections and selections

Leadership elections	1922 Ramsay MacDonald 1931 Arthur Henderson 1932 George Lansbury 1935 Clement Attlee 1955 Hugh Gaitskell 1960 1961 1963 Harold Wilson 1976 James Callaghan 1980 Michael Foot 1983 Neil Kinnock 1988 1992 John Smith 1994 Tony Blair 2007 Gordon Brown 2010 Ed Miliband 2015 Jeremy Corbyn 2016 2020 Keir Starmer
Deputy Leadership elections	1952 Herbert Morrison 1953 1956 Jim Griffiths 1959 Aneurin Bevan 1960 George Brown 1961 1962 1970 Roy Jenkins 1971 1972 Edward Short 1976 Michael Foot 1980 Denis Healey 1981 1983 Roy Hattersley 1988 1992 Margaret Beckett 1994 John Prescott 2007 Harriet Harman 2015 Tom Watson 2020 Angela Rayner
Shadow Cabinet elections and reshuffles	Sep 1931 (Henderson) Nov 1931 1932 (Lansbury) 1933 1934 1935 (Attlee) 1936 1937 1938 1939 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 (Gaitskell) 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 (Wilson) 1970 1971 1972 1973 1979 (Callaghan) 1980 (Foot) 1981 1982 1983 (Kinnock) 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 (Smith) 1993 1994 (Blair) 1995 1996 2010 (Miliband) June 2016 (Corbyn) May 2021 (Starmer) November 2021 2023

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v t e 1935 Labour Party leadership election
Interim Leader: Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee Arthur Greenwood Herbert Morrison

v t e Clement Attlee
Premiership	Attlee ministry
General elections	1935 1945 1950 1951 1955
Constituencies	Limehouse Walthamstow West
Career	Simon Commission 1935 party leadership election Norway Debate Wartime coalition government 1940 War cabinet crisis Potsdam Conference Gen 75 Committee Operation Hurricane National Insurance Act 1946 National Health Service Act 1946 Anglo-American loan Partition of India Tanganyika groundnut scheme Agriculture Act 1947 Transport Act 1947 Iron and Steel Corporation of Great Britain
Family	Violet Attlee (wife) Martin Attlee (son)
Cultural depictions	The Gathering Storm (TV, 1974) Edward & Mrs. Simpson (TV, 1978) Goodnight Sweetheart (TV, 1999) Bertie and Elizabeth (TV, 2002) Dunkirk (TV, 2004) Into the Storm (TV, 2009) The Crown (TV, 2016) Darkest Hour (Film, 2017) Red Joan (Film, 2018)
Related articles	Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Earl Attlee Honours Toynbee Hall 1950 Dissolution Honours 1951 Prime Minister's Resignation Honours
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