The

Oswestry Oswestry ( ; ) is a market town, civil parish and historic railway town in Shropshire, England, close to the Welsh border. It is at the junction of the A5, A483 and A495 roads. The town was the administrative headquarters of the Borough of ...

by-election was a Parliamentary by-election held on 26 July 1904. The constituency returned one

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) to the

House of Commons of the United Kingdom The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 me ...

, elected by the

first past the post In a first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP or FPP), formally called single-member plurality voting (SMP) when used in single-member districts or informally choose-one voting in contrast to ranked voting, or score voting, voters cast their ...

voting system.

Vacancy

George Ormsby-Gore had been Conservative MP for the seat of

since the 1901 Oswestry by-election. On 26 June 1904 he succeeded his father as third Baron Harlech and entered the

House of Lords The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the ...

Electoral history

The seat had been Conservative since it was created in 1885. They easily held the seat at the last election, with an increased majority:

Candidates

The local Conservative Association selected 39-year-old William Bridgeman as their candidate to defend the seat. He was a prominent

Municipal Reform The Municipal Reform Party was a local party allied to the parliamentary Conservative Party in the County of London. The party contested elections to both the London County Council and metropolitan borough councils of the county from 1906 to 1945 ...

Party member of the

London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...

and had no link with the town's area, although his country home, Leigh Manor,

Worthen Worthen is a village in Shropshire, England approximately 13 miles west of Shrewsbury. The village forms part of the Worthen with Shelve civil parish, which includes the hamlet of Little Worthen immediately to the north-east and the villages o ...

, was then in the same constituency. He was assistant private secretary to Henry Holland, the Colonial Secretary (1889–1892), and then to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the

Chancellor of the Exchequer The chancellor of the Exchequer, often abbreviated to chancellor, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom, and head of His Majesty's Treasury. As one of the four Great Offices of State, the Chancellor is ...

from 1895 to 1897. In 1897 he became a member of the

London School Board The School Board for London, commonly known as the London School Board (LSB), was an institution of local government and the first directly elected body covering the whole of London. The Elementary Education Act 1870 was the first to provide for ...

, and in 1904 he was elected to the

.Who Was Who The local Liberal Association selected 42-year-old

Allan Heywood Bright Allan Heywood Bright (24 May 1862 – 3 August 1941) was a British Liberal politician. Early life He was the son of Henry Arthur Bright JP of Ashfield, Knotty Ash, Liverpool and his wife Mary Elizabeth née Thompson of nearby Thingwall Hall. Fo ...

as their candidate to gain the seat. He had been the Liberal candidate at the previous by-election in 1901. Previously he had contested

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

in 1899 and 1900. He had a residence at

Weston Rhyn Weston Rhyn is a large village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It lies between the towns of Chirk, in Wales, and Oswestry, in England. The civil parish, which also includes Bronygarth, Pentre-Newydd and a number of small hamlets, had ...

near Oswestry. ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' noted that he had ''"nursed the constituency assiduously of late"''.

Campaign

Polling Day was fixed for 26 July 1904, 30 days after the previous MP went to the House of Lords. During the campaign, where

tariff reform The Tariff Reform League (TRL) was a protectionist British pressure group formed in 1903 to protest against what they considered to be unfair foreign imports and to advocate Imperial Preference to protect British industry from foreign competition. ...

and

free trade Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. It can also be understood as the free market idea applied to international trade. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold econo ...

were topical issues,

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...

, then M.P. for

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

made eve-of-poll speeches at public meetings organised by the

Free Trade Union The Free Trade Union, later known as the Free Trade League, was a British trade organisation extant between July 1903 and the 1970s. It was founded in opposition to the campaign for Imperial Preference which had been launched by Board of Trade chai ...

in Ellesmere and Oswestry in support of Bright. He had

crossed the floor Crossed may refer to: * ''Crossed'' (comics), a 2008 comic book series by Garth Ennis * ''Crossed'' (novel), a 2010 young adult novel by Ally Condie * "Crossed" (''The Walking Dead''), an episode of the television series ''The Walking Dead'' S ...

of the Commons from the Conservative benches to the Liberals on 31 May, so was reportedly heckled with "turn-coat" taunts.

Result

The count was conducted the following morning and the result declared at lunch-time. Crowds filled the Bailey Head in Oswestry – so much so that it was thought advisable to announce the result in private to prevent trouble. The Liberals gained the seat from the Conservatives: The result was ''"a great surprise for both Conservatives and Liberals alike"''. Bright believed that the electorate had rejected the government, and that ''"the whole of Shropshire politics had been simply a policy of Tory bluff and the people seemed to have got tired of it"''.

Aftermath

The same two candidates met again at the following General Election, the result was: