The 1929 Bath by-election was a parliamentary

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

held on 21 March 1929 for the constituency of Bath in

Somerset ( en, All The People of Somerset) , locator_map = , coordinates = , region = South West England , established_date = Ancient , established_by = , preceded_by = , origin = , lord_lieutenant_office =Lord Lieutenant of Somerset , lord_ ...

Vacancy

The by-election was caused by the death of the sitting MP, the Unionist

Charles Foxcroft Captain Charles Talbot Foxcroft (25 November 1868 – 11 February 1929) Obituary in ''Bath Chronicle and Herald'', 16 February 1929, p. 9 was a British Conservative Party politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Bath from 1918 to 1923, ...

on 11 February 1929. He had been the MP since the December 1918 general election, apart from 1923-24 following his defeat to the Liberals.

History

Before 1918, Bath was a two-member seat that had regularly changed hands between Unioinsts and Liberals. Since 1918, the Unionists had won on every occasion apart from the 1923 general election, when the Liberal,

Frank Raffety Frank Walter Raffety OBE (1875 – 8 September 1946) was a British barrister and Liberal Party politician. He was the son of Charles Walter Raffety, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and attended the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe. In 1898 ...

won, thanks to the absence of a Labour candidate. Raffety was defeated by Foxcroft at the last General Election when Labour intervened;

Candidates

The Unionist candidate was the Honorable Charles Baillie-Hamilton, younger brother of the

Earl of Haddington Earl of Haddington is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created in 1627 for the noted Scottish lawyer and judge Thomas Hamilton, 1st Earl of Melrose. He was Lord President of the Court of Session from 1616 to 1625. Hamilton had alread ...

. The Liberal candidate was a recently retired Indian civil servant, 56-year-old Sidney Daniels, rather than the previous Liberal MP, Frank Raffety who had been selected to contest

Cheltenham Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...

at the pending General Election. Daniels had spent 33 years in India before returning to England to practice law in 1928. This was his first parliamentary election. The Labour candidate was a barrister and journalist, George Gilbert Desmond.

Campaign

Polling Day was fixed for 21 March 1929, just 38 days after the death of the former MP. This left little time for campaigning. Since a general election was due in May and the Liberal and Labour parties were not strong in the constituency, little effort was put into the campaign.'The Bath Contest', ''The Times'', 15 March 1929. On 1 March, nationally, Liberal leader, David Lloyd George launched the Liberal programme for the upcoming General election, titled ''We Can Conquer Unemployment''.

Result

On polling day, news came through of a Liberal by-election victory at Eddisbury the day before, however this news came too late to influence the campaign. The Unionists held the seat with a reduced majority;

Aftermath

All three fought the seat in the general election in May with a similar outcome;

References

{{By-elections to the 34th UK Parliament 1929 in England 1929 elections in the United Kingdom Politics of Bath, Somerset By-elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in Somerset constituencies 20th century in Somerset