The 1930 Bromley by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 2 September 1930 for the

British House of Commons 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 mem ...

constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger State (polity), state (a country, administrative region, ...

of Bromley in north-west Kent.

Vacancy

The seat had become vacant when the constituency's Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), the Honourable

Cuthbert James Lieutenant-Colonel Cuthbert James (29 February 1872 – 21 July 1930) was a British soldier and Conservative politician. James was born in London, the second son of Walter James, 2nd Baron Northbourne, and his wife Edith Emmeline Mary (''née'' ...

, died on 21 July 1930, aged 58. He had held the seat since winning a by-election in December 1919.

Electoral history

Candidates

The Conservative candidate was Edward Campbell, a 51-year-old former diplomat. Campbell had been Member of Parliament for Camberwell North West from

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...

until his defeat in

1929 This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...

. The Liberal Party ran 27 year-old Wilfred Gurney Fordham of Mill Vale, Bromley. Fordham was a barrister, called by the Inner Temple in 1929. He was educated at

St George's School, Harpenden (Aim Higher) , established = 1907 , type = AcademyDay and boarding school , religious_affiliation = Christian , head_label = Headteacher , head = Helen Barton , r_head_label = , r_head = Stephen Warner ...

, and

Magdalene College, Cambridge Magdalene College ( ) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel, in time coming to be known as Buckingham College, before being refounded in 1542 as the College of St Mary ...

. He had been the Liberal candidate here at the 1929 general election. The

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

candidate was Albert Edwin Ashworth, who had also stood in 1929 and had come last of three. The fourth candidate, V.C. Redwood, stood for the United Empire Party, which sought to make the British Empire a free trade bloc. This party was the creature of

Lord Beaverbrook William Maxwell Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (25 May 1879 – 9 June 1964), generally known as Lord Beaverbrook, was a Canadian-British newspaper publisher and backstage politician who was an influential figure in British media and politics o ...

and

Lord Rothermere Viscount Rothermere, of Hemsted in the county of Kent, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1919 for the press lord Harold Harmsworth, 1st Baron Harmsworth. He had already been created a baronet, of Horsey in th ...

, respectively proprietors of the

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...

and

Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper and news websitePeter Wilb"Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail: The man who hates liberal Britain", ''New Statesman'', 19 December 2013 (online version: 2 January 2014) publish ...

. The Empire Crusade and their newspapers had been pressing the leader of the Conservative Party,

Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, ...

, to adopt a more protectionist position. Their newspapers and platform were much more popular with the

middle-class The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Comm ...

, commuter towns, in the Home Counties and London suburbs than elsewhere, and in safe Conservative seats; Bromley fitted these criteria perfectly.

Result

On a much-reduced turnout, Campbell held the seat for the Conservatives with a majority of 1,606 votes. Redwood came third with 24.1% of the votes, a setback for the Empire Crusade which also failed to win the Westminster St George's by-election the following March. Ironically for a campaign that sought to turn the Conservative Party to the right, the split vote almost allowed a Liberal victory. Fordham came second with 11,176 votes.

Aftermath

Following the formation of the National Government, the Liberals in chose not to run a candidate at the 1931 general election, Campbell would hold the seat with a majority over Labour of over 37,000 (67%). The United Empire Party by this time had become defunct. Campbell would serve until his death in office in 1945. Fordham did not contest another parliamentary election for 29 years when he ran as the Labour Party candidate at WycombeThe Times House of Commons, 1959

References