The 1922 General Election Reconsidered, livre ebook

The General Election of 15 November 1922 was a pivotal election in British political history. As parties adjusted to peacetime conditions and an electoral system changed forever by the enfranchisement of women and working-class men, the 1922 election stood as the first real test of party performance and engagement with voter priorities in a Britain fundamentally altered by the First World War. The result was a general election that would set national polling culture for the next century, and mark a significant step towards the decline of the Liberal Party and the emergence of a Conservative-Labour duopoly.

This book examines the way the 1922 election was fought, the performance of the parties and the operation of a semi-official, but undeclared, party pact between the Conservative and Coalition Liberal Parties to manage the outcome, as they emerged from the Lloyd George Coalition and attempted to shut the Labour Party out of power. Capturing the high and the low politics of the election, and making use of newly available archival collections and digitised resources, this concise and accessible volume shows how the 1922 election marked the birth of the modern British general election as we know it today.

• Introduction
• 1 The Party Political Outlook in October 1918
• 2 The Position of the Four Main Parties
• 3 Locally Arranged Pacts
• 4 “There is no Pact – But”
• 5 “Co-operation” in the Constituencies
• 6 Impact of the Local Elections and Nomination Day
• 7 Defining Coalition Liberal Strategy
• 8 Trying to Broker a Deal with the Conservatives
• 9 Exchanges Between the Parties After 4 November
• 10 Methods and Tone
• 11 Final Positions
• 12 The Day of the Election and the Hours After
• 13 Results
• 14 Repercussions of the 1922 Election
• Conclusion
• Afterword – Considerations for British Politics