1922 United Kingdom general election

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All615 seats in theHouse of Commons 308 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	13,748,300 73.0% (15.8pp)
First party Second party   Leader Bonar Law J. R. Clynes Party Conservative Labour Leader since 23 October 1922 14 February 1921 Leader's seat Glasgow Central Manchester Platting Last election 379 seats, 38.4%[a] 57 seats, 20.8% Seats won 344 142 Seat change 35 85 Popular vote 5,294,465 4,076,665 Percentage 38.5% 29.7% Swing 0.1pp 8.9pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader H. H. Asquith David Lloyd George Party Liberal National Liberal Leader since 30 April 1908 7 December 1916 Leader's seat Paisley Caernarvon Boroughs Last election 36 seats, 13.0% 127 seats, 13.4%[b] Seats won 62[note 1] 53 Seat change 26 74 Popular vote 2,601,486 1,355,366 Percentage 18.9% 9.9% Swing 5.9pp 3.5pp
Colours denote the winning party—as shown in§ Results
Composition of the House of Commons following the 1922 general election
Prime Minister before election Bonar Law Conservative Prime Minister after election Bonar Law Conservative

The1922 United Kingdom general election was held on Wednesday 15 November 1922. It was won by theConservative Party, led by Prime MinisterBonar Law, which gained an overall majority over theLabour Party, led byJ. R. Clynes, and a dividedLiberal Party.

This election is considered one ofpolitical realignment, with the Liberal Party falling to third-party status. The Conservative Party went on to spend all but eight of the next forty-two years as the largest party in Parliament, and Labour emerged as the main competition to the Conservatives.

The election was the first not to be held inSouthern Ireland, due to the signing of theAnglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December 1921, under which Southern Ireland was to secede from the United Kingdom as aDominion – theIrish Free State – on 6 December 1922. This reduced the size of the House of Commons by nearly one hundred seats when compared to the previous election.

The Liberal Party had divided into two factions following the ousting ofH. H. Asquith as prime minister in December 1916. From then until October 1922 the Conservatives had been in coalition with a Liberal faction (which later became the "National Liberals") led byDavid Lloyd George. Following theCarlton Club meeting, Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister and Bonar Law formed a Conservative majority government.

Although still leader of the Liberal Party and a frequent public speaker, former prime minister Asquith was no longer a particularly influential figure in the national political debate, and he had played no part in the downfall of the Lloyd George coalition. Most attention was focused on Law and Lloyd George. Asquith's daughterViolet Bonham-Carter, a prominent Liberal Party campaigner, likened the election to a contest between a man withsleeping sickness (Bonar Law) and a man withSt Vitus Dance (Lloyd George).^[1]

Some of Lloyd George's National Liberals were not opposed by Conservative candidates (e.g.Winston Churchill, who wasdefeated at Dundee nonetheless), while many leading Conservatives (e.g. former parliamentary leadersArthur Balfour and SirAusten Chamberlain, and former Lord ChancellorLord Birkenhead) were not members of Bonar Law's government, and hoped to hold the balance of power after the election (comparisons were made with thePeelite group—the ousted Conservative front bench of the late 1840s and 1850s); this was not to be, as Bonar Law won an overall majority.

It was the first election at which Labour surpassed the combined strength of both Liberal parties in votes and seats. The election was also notable for Labour in that it saw futureprime ministerClement Attlee elected as MP forLimehouse.

Some Liberal candidates stood calling for a reunited Liberal Party, while others appear to have backed both Asquith and Lloyd George. Few sources are able to agree on exact numbers, and even in contemporary records held by the two groups, some MPs were claimed for both sides. By one estimate, there were 29 seats where Liberals stood against one another. This is thought to have cost them at least 14 seats, 10 of them to Labour, so in theory a reunited Liberal Party would have been much closer to, and perhaps even ahead of, Labour in terms of seats. However, in reality the two factions were on poor terms, and Lloyd George was still hoping for a renewed coalition with the Conservatives.^[2]

Neither of the leaders of the two main parties succeeded in enjoying their achievement in the election for very long; within less than a month of the election, Clynes was defeated in a leadership challenge by former Labour leaderRamsay MacDonald, while Bonar Law would only last a little over seven months as prime minister before being forced to step down due to a terminal illness, resulting inStanley Baldwin succeeding him as both party leader and prime minister. As a result, Bonar Law was the shortest-serving UK prime minister of the twentieth century. Parliament was dissolved on 26 October; Bonar Law died four days later.^[3]

The Conservative Party offered continuity to the electorate. Bonar Law's election address stated:

The crying need of the nation have this moment ... Is that we should have tranquility and stability both at home and abroad so that the free scope should be given to the initiative and enterprise of our own citizens, for it is in that way, far more than by any action of the Government that we can hope to recover from the economic and social results of the war.^[4]

The Labour Party proposed to nationalise the mines and railways, to impose a levy on financial capital, and to revise the peace treaties. It promised a higher standard of living for workers, higher wages, and better housing.^[5]

• All comparisons are with the 1918 election.
  • In some cases the change is due to the MP defecting to the gaining party. Such circumstances are marked with a *.
  • In other circumstances the change is due to the seat having been won by the gaining party in a by-election in the intervening years, and then retained in 1922. Such circumstances are marked with a †.

• List of MPs elected in the 1922 United Kingdom general election
• 1922 United Kingdom general election in Scotland
• 1922 United Kingdom general election in Northern Ireland

• United Kingdom election results—summary results 1885–1979Archived 8 October 2020 at theWayback Machine

• 1922 Conservative manifesto
• 1922 Labour manifesto
• 1922 Liberal manifesto

• 1922 United Kingdom general election
• 1922 elections in the United Kingdom
• 1922 in British politics
• General elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom
• November 1922 in the United Kingdom
• David Lloyd George
• Bonar Law
• H. H. Asquith

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