The1918 United Kingdom general election was called immediately after theArmistice with Germany which ended theFirst World War, and was held on Saturday, 14 December 1918. The governing coalition, under Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George, sent letters of endorsement to candidates who supportedthe coalition government. These were nicknamed "Coalition Coupons", and led to the election being known as the "coupon election". The result was a massivelandslide in favour of the coalition, comprising primarily theConservatives and CoalitionLiberals, with massive losses for Liberals who were not endorsed.[2] Nearly all the Liberal MPs without coupons were defeated, including party leader H. H. Asquith.[3]
It was the first general election to be held after enactment of theRepresentation of the People Act 1918. It was thus the first election in which women over the age of 30 (with some property qualifications), and all men over the age of 21, could vote. Previously, all women and many poor men had been excluded from voting. Women generally supported the coalition candidates.[4][5]
Simultaneously, it was the first parliamentary election in which women were able to stand as candidates, following theParliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918, believed to be one of the shortest Acts of Parliament ever given Royal Assent. The Act was passed shortly before Parliament was dissolved. It followed a report by Law Officers that the Great Reform Act 1832 had specified parliamentary candidates had to be male, and that the Representation of the People Act passed earlier in the year did not change that. One woman,Nina Boyle, had already presented herself for a by-election earlier in the year in Keighley, but had been turned down by the returning officer on technical grounds.[6]
It was also the first general election to include on a single day all eligible voters of the United Kingdom, although the vote count was delayed until 28 December so that the ballots cast by soldiers serving overseas could be included in the tallies.[7] Prior to this election theuniversity constituency seats were re-allocated. Several seats were filled in multi-seat constituencies using STV.[8]
The election resulted in a landslide victory for thecoalition government of David Lloyd George, who had replacedH. H. Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916. They were both Liberals, and continued to battle for control of the party, which was rapidly losing popular support, and never regained power.[9]
Lloyd George's coalition government was supported by a minority (majority after the election) of theLiberals andBonar Law'sConservatives. However, the election saw a split in the Liberal Party between those who were aligned with Lloyd George and the government and those who were aligned withAsquith, the party's official leader.
On 14 November it was announced that Parliament, which had been sitting since 1910 and had been extended by emergency wartime action, would dissolve on 25 November, with elections on 14 December.[10]
Following confidential negotiations over the summer of 1918, it was agreed that certain candidates were to be offered the support of the Prime Minister and the leader of the Conservative Party at the next general election. To these candidates a letter, known as theCoalition Coupon, was sent, indicating the government's endorsement of their candidacy. 159 Liberal, 364 Conservative, 20National Democratic and Labour, and 2Coalition Labour candidates received the coupon. For this reason, the election is often called theCoupon Election.[11]
80 Conservative candidates stood without a coupon. Of these, 35 candidates were Irish Unionists. Of the other non-couponed Conservative candidates, only 23 stood against a Coalition candidate; the remaining 22 candidates stood in areas where there were no coupons, or refused the offer of a coupon.[12]
TheLabour Party, led byWilliam Adamson, fought the election independently, as did those Liberals who did not receive a coupon.
The election was not chiefly fought over what peace to make with Germany, although those issues played a role. More important was the voters' evaluation of Lloyd George in terms of what he had accomplished so far and what he promised for the future. His supporters emphasised that he had won the Great War. Against his strong record in social legislation, he called for making "a country fit for heroes to live in".[13]
This election was also known as akhaki election, due to the immediate postwar setting and the role of the demobilised soldiers.
The coalition won the election easily, with the Conservatives the big winners. They were the largest party in the governing majority. Lloyd George remained Prime Minister, despite the Conservatives outnumbering his pro-coalition Liberals and having a majority in their own right. The Conservatives welcomed his leadership on foreign policy as the Paris Peace talks began a few weeks after the election.[14]
An additional 47 Conservatives, 23 of whom were Irish Unionists, won without the coupon but did not act as a separate block or oppose the government except on the issue of Irish independence.
While most of the pro-coalition Liberals were re-elected, theIndependent Liberal faction was reduced to a handful of MPs, not all of whom were opponents of the coalition. Asquith and the other leaders lost their seats, and only three with junior ministerial experience were elected.[15] According to Trevor Wilson's book,The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 136 couponed Liberals were elected, whereas only 29 who did not receive the coupon were returned to Parliament, but as 8 Independent Liberals received the coupon and 10 Lloyd George Liberals did not, the actual number of the Asquith faction was 27.[16] Another historian puts the Asquith faction at 36 seats, of whom nine of these MPs subsequently joined the Coalition Liberal group. The remainder became bitter enemies of Lloyd George.[17] Asquith's biographerStephen Koss accepts that, although accounts differ as to the exact numbers, around 29 uncouponed Liberals had been elected. On 3 February 1919, 23 non-coalition Liberals formed themselves into a "Free Liberal" group (soon known as the "Wee Frees" after aScottish religious sect of that name); they accepted Asquith's appointment ofSir Donald Maclean as chairman in his absence. After a brief attempt to set up a joint committee with the Coalition Liberal MPs, the "Wee Frees" resigned the government whip on 4 April, although some Liberal MPs still remained of uncertain allegiance. Maclean served asLeader of the Opposition until Asquith returned ata by-election in February 1920.[15]
TheLabour Party greatly increased its vote share and surpassed the total votes of either faction of the Liberal party, but they lacked an official leader. Labour could only slightly increase their number of seats, however, from 42 to 57 and some of their earlier leaders includingRamsay MacDonald andArthur Henderson lost their seats. Labour won the most seats in Wales (which had previously been dominated by the Liberals) for the first time, a feat it has continued to the present day.[18]
The Conservative MPs included record numbers of corporate directors, bankers and businessmen, while Labour MPs were mostly from the working class. Bonar Law himself symbolised the change in the type of a Conservative MP as he was a Presbyterian Canadian-born Scottish businessman who became, in the words of his biographer Robert Blake, the leader of "the Party of Old England, the Party of the Anglican Church and the country squire, the party of broad acres and hereditary titles".[19] Bonar Law's ascent as leader of the Conservatives marked a shift in Conservative leaders from the aristocrats who generally led the party in the 19th century to a more middle class leadership who usually led the party in the 20th century.[19]
Many young veterans reacted against the harsh tone of the campaign and became disillusioned with politics.[20]
InIreland, theIrish Parliamentary Party, which favoured Home Rule within the United Kingdom, lost almost all their seats, most of which were won bySinn Féin underÉamon de Valera, which called for independence. The executions of many of the leaders of the Easter uprising of 1916, the force-feeding of those imprisoned in connection with the uprising who had gone on a hunger strike in 1917, and theConscription Crisis of 1918 all served to alienate Irish Catholic opinion from the United Kingdom.[21] The Sinn Féin candidates had promised on the campaign trail to win an Irish republic "by any means necessary", which was a code-word for violence, though it is not entirely clear if all Irish voters understood what the phrase meant.[22] The 73 Sinn Féin elected membersdeclined to take their seats in theBritish House of Commons, sitting instead in the Irish revolutionary assembly, theDáil Éireann. On 17 May 1918 almost the entire leadership of Sinn Féin, including de Valera andArthur Griffith, had been arrested. In total 47 of the Sinn Féin MPs were elected from jail. The Dáil first convened on 21 January 1919, which marks the beginning of theIrish War of Independence.
In the six Ulster counties that became Northern Ireland, Unionists consolidated their position by winning 23 out of the 30 seats. CardinalMichael Logue brokered a pact in eight seats (one,East Donegal, not in the six counties), after nominations closed, where Catholic voters were instructed to vote for one particular nationalist party. Split evenly, the Irish Parliamentary Party won four of those seats and Sinn Féin three. (The pact failed inEast Down).Joseph Devlin, memorably, also wonBelfast (Falls) for the Irish Parliamentary Party in a straight fight with Éamon de Valera of Sinn Féin.
Constance Markievicz became the first woman elected to Parliament and also to the Dáil Éireann. She was a Sinn Féin member elected forDublin St Patrick's, and like the other Sinn Féin MPs, did not take her seat at Westminster.
Results in Ireland. The Sinn Féin MPs did not take their seats in the House of Commons, and instead formed theDáil Éireann (English:Assembly of Ireland).
All comparisons are with the December 1910 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 1918. Such circumstances are marked with a †.
^Given that Sinn Féinmembers of Parliament (MPs) practisedabstentionism and did not take their seats, while the Speaker and deputies did not vote, the number of MPs needed for a majority was in practice slightly lower.[1] Sinn Féin won 73 seats, meaning a practical majority required 318 MPs.
^The Sinn Féin MPs did not take their seats in the House of Commons, and instead formed theDáil Éireann.
^The Conservative total includes 47 Conservative candidates elected without theCoalition Coupon, of whom 23 were Irish Unionists. Historians do not agree about the exact split between Asquith and Lloyd George Liberals – see above.
^Thackeray, David (2010). "Home and politics: women and Conservative activism in early twentieth-century Britain".Journal of British Studies.49 (4):826–848, esp. p. 836.doi:10.1086/654913.PMID20941876.
Turner, John (1992),British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915–1918, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 317–333,391–436,ISBN0300050461, covers the campaign as well as a statistical analysis of the vote{{citation}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
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