The 1942 Wallasey by-election was a parliamentary by-election 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 of

Wallasey Wallasey () is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England; until 1974, it was part of the historic county of Cheshire. It is situated at the mouth of the River Mersey, at the north-eastern corner of the Wirral Pe ...

on 29 April 1942.

Vacancy

The by-election was caused by the resignation of the sitting Unionist MP, and Government Minister, John Moore-Brabazon in April 1942. He was forced to resign for expressing the hope that Germany and the Soviet Union, then engaged in the

Battle of Stalingrad The Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 19422 February 1943) was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II where Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (later re ...

, would destroy each other. Since the Soviet Union was fighting the war on the same side as Britain, the hope that it should be destroyed, though common in the Conservative Party, was unacceptable to the war effort. He had been MP here since winning the seat in 1931.

Election history

Wallasey had been Conservative since it was created in 1918. The result at the last general election was:

Candidates

Local Conservatives were keen to have a local candidate and feared that the Wallasey Conservative Association would have an outsider foisted on them. They persuaded local Councillor and former Mayor, George Reakes to put his name forward, which he did, as an Independent. Reakes had been a member of the Labour Party but had left it when the mainstream parliamentary Labour party failed to call for rearmament, to face Nazi Germany. Though not an appeaser, he had publicly backed Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement.By-Elections in British Politics by Cook and Ramsden However some backing from local Conservatives may have benefited the eventual Conservative candidate, local alderman, J Pennington. On the eve of war, with an election expect to follow no later than May 1940, the Liberal Party had already selected a candidate, Robert Forster, however the Labour Party had not decided upon one at that stage. In the event both parties were officially bound by the wartime electoral truce to publicly support the Conservative candidate (see Churchill war ministry) and did so. A third candidate entered the field, in the form of the Independent, Major Leonard Cripps. Cripps was the younger brother of Sir

Stafford Cripps Sir Richard Stafford Cripps (24 April 1889 – 21 April 1952) was a British Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat. A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a by-election in 1931, and was one of a handful of La ...

, a well-known Labour frontbencher. Cripps had retired from military service and owned a shipbuilders in Liverpool, however, he did not have the support of his brother nor any of the activists in the local parties.

Main Issues and Campaign

Result

Aftermath

The result at the following General election;

References

*F W S Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1918–1949; Political Reference Publications, Glasgow 1949 *Who's Who: www.ukwhoswho.com *Trial By Ballot by Ivor RM Davies *By-Elections in British Politics by Cook and Ramsden