1906 Huddersfield by-election


The Huddersfield by-election was a Parliamentary by-election. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post voting system.

Vacancy

had been Liberal MP here since the 1895 General Election. He resigned upon his appointment as the Rail and Canal Traffic Commissioner.

Electoral history

The seat had been Liberal since Woodhouse re-gained it in 1895. It had been a marginal seat but Woodhouse had won with a bit to spare in 1895 and 1900. They narrowly held the seat at the last election, following the intervention of a labour candidate;

Candidates

The local Liberal Association selected 43 year-old temperance campaigner Arthur Sherwell to defend the seat.
The Conservatives retained 38 year old journalist John Foster Fraser as their candidate. 37 year old Thomas Russell Williams who had stood as a candidate of the Labour Representation Committee at the general election also re-stood, but this time as the candidate of the Labour Party. Although Huddesfield raised, he worked as a Mill manager in Keighley.

Campaign

Polling Day was fixed for the 28 November 1906. The Conservative and Labour challengers started with an advantage as their names were known from having contested the constituency nine months earlier. The Liberals had received a setback, losing Cockermouth to the Conservatives in a by-election three months earlier. Liberal candidates in other by-elections had also seen their vote share fall from its general election high-point. In Huddersfield, since the general election, the Liberal association had undergone re-organisation and had substantially increased its membership. Williams the Labour candidate was regarded as a quasi-Marxist socialist and struggled to relate his stances to local trade unionists who wanted firm policy commitments from him. Sherwell, the Liberal candidate supported giving women the vote. Despite this, the Women's Social and Political Union set up a local campaign office to campaign against him.

Result

The Liberals held the seat with a slightly reduced majority;

Aftermath

The Labour party decided that after two contests, Williams was not a good candidate, so changed him for another for the next election, only to see their share of the vote drop further. The Huddersfield Liberals were able stifle the growth of the Labour Party up to the First World War.