Edwin Scrymgeour
Edwin Scrymgeour, was a Member of Parliament for Dundee, Scotland. He is the only person elected to the House of Commons on a prohibitionist ticket, as the candidate of the Scottish Prohibition Party. A native of Dundee, he was educated at West End Academy, he was a pioneer of the Scottish temperance movement and established his party in 1901 to further this aim. He served on Dundee City Council and began contesting elections in the 1908 Dundee by election which saw Winston Churchill first elected for Dundee and continued to fight at every election thereafter, increasing his vote. In part this was because of his popularity, general left-wing sympathies and history with the labour movement. Churchill's stance against suffragettes may have had an impact in a city where many women were breadwinners, while many men were "kettle-boilers". In the 1922 election and Labour candidate E. D. Morel jointly ousted Winston Churchill, who had represented the city as a Liberal. Scrymgeour remained an M. P. for Dundee until the 1931 general election, when he was ousted by Florence Horsbrugh.
Out of Parliament Scrymgeour worked as an evangelical Chaplain at East House and Maryfield Hospital in Dundee. Scrymgeour was a leader of the unsuccessful opposition to disbanding the Scottish Prohibition Party in 1935. Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Edwin Scrymgeour Three Dundonians: James Carmichael, Charles W Boase and Edwin Scrymgeour by SGE Lythe, JT Ward and DG Southgate
Chancellor of the Exchequer
The Chancellor and Under-Treasurer of Her Majesty's Exchequer known as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Chancellor, is a senior official within the Government of the United Kingdom and head of Her Majesty's Treasury. The office is a British Cabinet-level position; the chancellor is responsible for all economic and financial matters, equivalent to the role of finance minister in other nations. The position is considered one of the four Great Offices of State, in recent times has come to be the most powerful office in British politics after the prime minister; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now always Second Lord of the Treasury as one of the Lords Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Treasurer. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was common for the prime minister to serve as Chancellor of the Exchequer if he sat in the Commons. In cases when the chancellorship was vacant, the Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench would act as Chancellor pro tempore; the last Lord Chief Justice to serve in this way was Lord Denman in 1834.
The chancellor is the third-oldest major state office in British history. The earliest surviving records which are the results of the exchequer's audit, date from 1129–30 under King Henry I and show continuity from previous years; the chancellor controlled monetary policy as well as fiscal policy until 1997, when the Bank of England was granted independent control of its interest rates. The chancellor has oversight of public spending across Government departments; the holder of the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer is ex officio Second Lord of the Treasury as a member of the commission exercising the ancient office of Lord High Treasurer. As the Second Lord, his official residence is 11 Downing Street in London, next door to the residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, who resides in 10 Downing Street. While in the past both houses were private residences, today they serve as interlinked offices, with the occupant living in an apartment made from attic rooms resided in by servants. Since 1827, the chancellor has always held the office of Second Lord of the Treasury when that person has not been the prime minister.
A previous chancellor, Robert Lowe, described the office in the following terms in the House of Commons, on 11 April 1870: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as as he can." The chancellor has considerable control over other departments as it is the Treasury which sets Departmental Expenditure Limits. The amount of power this gives to an individual chancellor depends on his personal forcefulness, his status within his party and his relationship with the prime minister. Gordon Brown, who became chancellor when Labour came into Government in 1997, had a large personal power base in the party; as a result, Tony Blair chose to keep him in the same position throughout his ten years as prime minister. This has strengthened a pre-existing trend towards the Chancellor occupying a clear second position among government ministers, elevated above his traditional peers, the Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.
One part of the Chancellor's key roles involves the framing of the annual year budget. As of 2017, the first is the Autumn Budget known as Budget Day which forecasts government spending in the next financial year and announces new financial measures; the second is a Spring Statement known as a "mini-Budget". Britain's tax year has retained the old Julian end of year: 24 March / 5 April. From 1993, the Budget was in spring, preceded by an annual autumn statement; this was called Pre-Budget Report. The Autumn Statement took place in November or December; the 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012 and 2016 budgets were all delivered on a Wednesday, summarised in a speech to the House of Commons. The budget is a state secret. Hugh Dalton, on his way to giving the budget speech in 1947, inadvertently blurted out key details to a newspaper reporter, they appeared in print before he made his speech. Dalton was forced to resign. Although the Bank of England is responsible for setting interest rates, the chancellor plays an important part in the monetary policy structure.
He sets the inflation target. Under the Bank of England Act 1998 the chancellor has the power of appointment of four out of nine members of the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee – the so-called'external' members, he has a high level of influence over the appointment of the Bank's Governor and Deputy Governors, has the right of consultation over the appointment of the two remaining MPC members from within the Bank. The Act provides that the Government has the power to give instructions to the Bank on interest rates for a limited period in extreme circumstances; this power has never been used. At HM Treasury the chancellor is supported by a political team of four junior ministers and by permanent civil servants; the most important junior minister is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, a member of the Cabinet
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, was a British Conservative Party statesman who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as Prime Minister on three occasions. Born to a prosperous family in Bewdley, Baldwin was educated at Hawtreys, Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he joined the family iron and steel making business and entered the House of Commons in 1908 as the Member of Parliament for Bewdley, succeeding his father Alfred. He served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury and President of the Board of Trade in the coalition ministry of David Lloyd George and rose rapidly: in 1922, Baldwin was one of the prime movers in the withdrawal of Conservative support from Lloyd George. Upon Bonar Law's resignation due to health reasons in May 1923, Baldwin became Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party, he called an election in December 1923 on the issue of tariffs and lost the Conservatives' parliamentary majority, after which Ramsay MacDonald formed a minority Labour government.
After winning the 1924 general election Baldwin formed his second government, which saw important tenures of office by Sir Austen Chamberlain, Winston Churchill and Neville Chamberlain. The latter two ministers strengthened Conservative appeal by reforms in areas associated with the Liberal Party, they included industrial conciliation, unemployment insurance, a more extensive old-age pension system, slum clearance, more private housing and expansion of maternal and childcare. However, continuing sluggish economic growth and declines in mining and heavy industry weakened Baldwin's base of support and his government saw the General Strike in 1926 and the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 to curb the powers of trade unions. Baldwin narrowly lost the 1929 general election and his continued leadership of the party was subject to extensive criticism by the press barons Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook. In 1931, with the onset of the Great Depression Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald formed a National Government, most of whose ministers were Conservatives, which won an enormous majority at the 1931 general election.
As Lord President of the Council, one of four Conservatives among the small ten-member Cabinet, Baldwin took over many of the Prime Minister's duties due to MacDonald's failing health. This government saw an Act delivering increased self-government for India, a measure opposed by Churchill and by many rank-and-file Conservatives; the Statute of Westminster 1931 gave Dominion status to Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, while establishing the first step towards the Commonwealth of Nations. As party leader, Baldwin made many striking innovations, such as clever use of radio and film, that made him visible to the public and strengthened Conservative appeal. In 1935, Baldwin replaced MacDonald as Prime Minister of the National Government, won the 1935 general election with another large majority. During this time, he oversaw the beginning of the rearmament process of the British military, as well as the abdication crisis of King Edward VIII. Baldwin's third government saw a number of crises in foreign affairs, including the public uproar over the Hoare–Laval Pact, the Remilitarisation of the Rhineland and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Baldwin was succeeded by Neville Chamberlain. At that time, Baldwin was regarded as a popular and successful Prime Minister, but for the final decade of his life, for many years afterwards, he was vilified for having presided over high unemployment in the 1930s and as one of the "Guilty Men" who had tried to appease Adolf Hitler and who had – – not rearmed sufficiently to prepare for the Second World War. Today, modern scholars rank him in the upper half of British prime ministers. Baldwin was born at Lower Park House, Lower Park, Bewdley in Worcestershire, England to Alfred and Louisa Baldwin, through his Scottish mother was a first cousin of the writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, with whom he was close for their entire lives; the family was prosperous, owned the eponymous iron and steel making business that in years became part of Richard Thomas and Baldwins. Baldwin's schools were St Michael's School, at the time located in Slough, followed by Harrow School, he wrote that "all the king's horses and all the king's men would have failed to have drawn me into the company of school masters, in relation to them I once had every qualification as a passive resister."
Baldwin went on to the University of Cambridge, where he studied history at Trinity College. His time at university was blighted by the presence, as Master of Trinity, of Montagu Butler, his former headmaster who had punished him at Harrow for writing a piece of schoolboy smut, he was asked to resign from the Magpie & Stump for never speaking, after receiving a third-class degree in history, he went into the family business of iron manufacturing. His father sent him to Mason College for one session of technical training in metallurgy as preparation; as a young man he served as a Second Lieutenant in the Artillery Volunteers at Malvern, in 1897 became a JP for the county of Worcestershire. Baldwin married Lucy Ridsdale on 12 September 1892; the couple had six children. One child, was injured by shrapnel in March 1941 as a result of a bombing raid which destroyed the Café de Paris nightclub she was attending and decapitated the famous bandleader Ke
Albert Inkpin
Albert Samuel Inkpin was a British communist and the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain. He served several terms in prison for political offences. In 1929 he was replaced as head of the CPGB and made head of the party's Friends of Soviet Russia organisation, a position he retained until his death. Albert Inkpin was born on 16 June 1884 in an area of London, he was employed as a clerk and joined the National Union of Clerks, becoming its assistant secretary in 1907. In 1904, he joined the Marxist Social Democratic Federation, became one of its an Assistant Secretaries in 1907, he followed the SDF into the new British Socialist Party in 1911, continuing in an Assistant Secretary capacity in that new organization. In 1913 Inkpin was elected General Secretary of the BSP, he was a committed internationalist and anti-militarist, an opponent of World War I, a delegate to the Zimmerwald Conference. This placed him at odds with former SDF leader H. M. Hyndman's support of British participation in the conflict.
This tension between the Left and Right the BSP ended in 1916 with Hyndman and his co-thinkers departing the group. Inkpin assumed editorship of The Call, at this time. Inkpin's application in 1917 as a conscientious objector for exemption from military service was rejected by the Hornsey military service tribunal and the Middlesex Appeal Tribunal, but he was temporarily exempted as he was a leading figure in a political party and did not serve. Inkpin and the more radical elements were thus in a position of firm control of the BSP organisation after 1916, he represented the organisation at the foundation of the Hands Off Russia movement, in 1919. He supported the unity discussions which led to the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain, in 1920. Albert Inkpin was Secretary of the Joint Provisional Committee of the Communist Party, the group of representatives of member organisations who set the agenda for the upcoming founding congress; this convention was held in London over the weekend 31 July to 1 August 1920 and was attended by 160 delegates, presenting 211 mandates.
These delegates included his wife and brother, Harry. Inkpin delivered the keynote address to the gathering and was elected to the governing Central Committee of the new political organisation, becoming General Secretary. Inkpin was named a member of the honorary presidium of the 3rd World Congress of the Communist International, held in Moscow during the summer of 1921, he eturned from Soviet Russia to face more legal difficulties with British authorities. He was charged and convicted for printing and circulating Communist literature, serving a six-month term from January to June 1922. While in prison Inkpin stood as a candidate for London County Council. Inkpin emerged from jail to become the CPGB's National Organiser, but reverted to being General Secretary the following year; as was the case with top leaders of the early American Communist movement, such as C. E. Ruthenberg and Charles Dirba, Inkpin's background in clerical work no doubt served him well in many of the administrative tasks necessary to run a political organization on a day-to-day basis.
In 1925 Inkpin was again imprisoned, this time as one of 12 prominent Communists charged under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797. He was sentenced to six months in prison and remained inside until just prior to the eruption of the British General Strike of May 1926. Inkpin stood down as General Secretary in 1929, to be replaced by Harry Pollitt, following his opposition to the "class against class" policy, criticism of his leadership from internal opponents and the Comintern, he was dropped from the party's secretariat, sent to Birmingham as an organiser. While the Comintern sought to end his employment, Pollitt made the case for retaining Inkpin, in particular because of his knowledge of the party's secrets. Early in 1930, he was appointed as secretary of the CPGB offshoot, the Friends of the Soviet Union, based in Berlin from 1933 in Amsterdam, he remained loyal to the Soviet Union, during the early stages of World War II became a popular speaker on the possibility of British-Soviet collaboration.
In September 1942, Inkpin became ill with cancer, although he continued working and remained secretary of the British offshoot of the Friends of the Soviet Union, the Russia Today Society, he did not recover, died in March 1944. "Re-Establishing" the Second International: The Communist Party of Great Britain Replies to a Letter of Appeal Signed by Arthur Henderson, J. H. Thomas and Harry Gosling, J. Ramsay MacDonald. London: Communist Party of Great Britain, n.d.. The Glory of Stalingrad. London: Russia Today Society, 1942. Friends of the USSR: The Story of the Russia Today Society. London: Russia Today Society, n.d.. Inkpin Archive, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org. Graham Stevenson, "Albert Inkpin", Compendium of Communist Biography. Steve Reynolds, "The Early Years of the Communist Party of Great Britain - 1922-1925", In Defense of Marxism website, www.marxist.com
Dundee (UK Parliament constituency)
Dundee was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1950, when it was split into Dundee East and Dundee West. From 1832 to 1868 it elected one Member of Parliament using the first-past-the-post voting system, from 1868 until its abolition for the 1950 general election it elected two MPs using the bloc vote system. Winston Churchill became Member of Parliament for Dundee in a by-election of 1908 soon after losing his Manchester North West seat and retained the seat until 1922. In 1906, the explorer Ernest Shackleton unsuccessfully ran as a candidate for the Liberal Unionist Party. From its creation in 1832 the seat did not return a Conservative member until 1931 when Florence Horsbrugh was elected. A Liberal stronghold, the seat was one of the first in Scotland to return a Labour candidate, Alexander Wilkie, elected in 1906. At the 1918 general election both Churchill, still a Liberal, Wilkie were supported by the local Unionists, as well as their own party organisations.
From 1923 onwards the Conservatives/Unionists and Liberals each ran only one candidate in the constituancy. This was part of an unofficial agreement between the two parties at a local level, with the understanding being that their supporters would give their other vote to the other party's candidate; the boundaries of the constituency, as set out in the Representation of the People Act 1832, were- "From the Point, on the East of the Town, at which the Shore of the Firth of Tay would be cut by a straight Line to be drawn from the Tower of Mr. Dalgleish of Scotscraig to the Point at which the Stobsmuir Road is joined by the old Road by Stobsmuir and Clepington and the old Craigie Road, in a straight Line to the said Point at which the Stobsmuir Road is joined by the old Road by Stobsmuir and Clepington and the old Craigie Road. Seat increased to two members. Lacita's resignation caused a by-election. Firth's death caused a by-election. Robertson is appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty. In 1918 Wilkie and Churchill were supported by the Dundee Unionist Party Association in addition to their own party organisations.
F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832 - 1885 F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1918 - 1949 Debrett's House of Commons and the Judicial Bench 1889 Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "D"
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom. The governing party since 2010, it is the largest in the House of Commons, with 313 Members of Parliament, has 249 members of the House of Lords, 18 members of the European Parliament, 31 Members of the Scottish Parliament, 12 members of the Welsh Assembly, eight members of the London Assembly and 8,916 local councillors; the Conservative Party was founded in 1834 from the Tory Party—the Conservatives' colloquial name is "Tories"—and was one of two dominant political parties in the nineteenth century, along with the Liberal Party. Under Benjamin Disraeli it played a preeminent role in politics at the height of the British Empire. In 1912, the Liberal Unionist Party merged with the party to form the Conservative and Unionist Party. In the 1920s, the Labour Party surpassed the Liberals as the Conservatives' main rivals. Conservative Prime Ministers — notably Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher — led governments for 57 years of the twentieth century.
Positioned on the centre-right of British politics, the Conservative Party is ideologically conservative. Different factions have dominated the party at different times, including One Nation Conservatives and liberal conservatives, while its views and policies have changed throughout its history; the party has adopted liberal economic policies—favouring free market economics, limiting state regulation, pursuing privatisation—although in the past has supported protectionism. The party is British unionist, opposing both Irish reunification and Welsh and Scottish independence, supported the maintenance of the British Empire; the party includes those with differing views on the European Union, with Eurosceptic and pro-European wings. In foreign policy, it is for a strong national defence; the Conservatives are a member of the International Democrat Union and the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe and sit with the European Conservatives and Reformists parliamentary group. The Scottish, Northern Irish and Gibraltan branches of the party are semi-autonomous.
Its support base consists of middle-class voters in rural areas of England, its domination of British politics throughout the twentieth century has led to it being referred to as one of the most successful political parties in the Western world. The Conservative Party was founded in the 1830s. However, some writers trace its origins to the reign of Charles II in the 1670s Exclusion Crisis. Other historians point to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party, that coalesced around William Pitt the Younger in the 1780s, they were known as "Independent Whigs", "Friends of Mr Pitt", or "Pittites" and never used terms such as "Tory" or "Conservative". Pitt died in 1806. From about 1812 on the name "Tory" was used for a new party that, according to historian Robert Blake, "are the ancestors of Conservatism". Blake adds that Pitt's successors after 1812 "were not in any sense standard-bearer's of true Toryism"; the term "Conservative" was suggested as a title for the party by a magazine article by J. Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830.
The name caught on and was adopted under the aegis of Sir Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto; the term "Conservative Party" rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845. The widening of the electoral franchise in the nineteenth century forced the Conservative Party to popularise its approach under Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, who carried through their own expansion of the franchise with the Reform Act of 1867. In 1886, the party formed an alliance with Spencer Compton Cavendish, Lord Hartington and Joseph Chamberlain's new Liberal Unionist Party and, under the statesmen Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, held power for all but three of the following twenty years before suffering a heavy defeat in 1906 when it split over the issue of free trade. Young Winston Churchill denounced Chamberlain's attack on free trade, helped organize the opposition inside the Unionist/Conservative Party.
Balfour, as party leader, followed Chamberlain's policy introduced protectionist legislation. The high tariff element called itself "Tariff Reformers" and in a major speech in Manchester on May 13, 1904, Churchill warned their takeover of the Unionist/Conservative party would permanently brand it as: A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation. Two weeks Churchill crossed the floor and formally joined the Liberal Party. )He rejoined the Conservatives in 1925.) In December, Balfour lost control of his party, as the defections multiplied. He was replaced by Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman who called an election in January 1906, which produced a massive Liberal victory with a gain of 214 seats. Liberal Prime Minister H. H. Asquith enacted a great deal of reform legislation, but the Unionists worked hard at grassroots organizing. Two general elections were held in one in January and one in December; the two main parties were now dead equal in seats.
The Unionists had more popular votes but the Liberals kept control with a coalition with the Irish Parliamentary Party. In 1912, the Liberal Unionis
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom, described as an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The party's platform emphasises greater state intervention, social justice and strengthening workers' rights; the Labour Party was founded in 1900, having grown out of the trade union movement and socialist parties of the nineteenth century. It overtook the Liberal Party to become the main opposition to the Conservative Party in the early 1920s, forming two minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in the 1920s and early 1930s. Labour served in the wartime coalition of 1940-1945, after which Clement Attlee's Labour government established the National Health Service and expanded the welfare state from 1945 to 1951. Under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, Labour again governed from 1964 to 1970 and 1974 to 1979. In the 1990s Tony Blair took Labour closer to the centre as part of his "New Labour" project, which governed the UK under Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010.
After Corbyn took over in 2015, the party has moved leftward. Labour is the Official Opposition in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, having won the second-largest number of seats in the 2017 general election; the Labour Party is the largest party in the Welsh Assembly, forming the main party in the current Welsh government. The party is the third largest in the Scottish Parliament. Labour is a member of the Party of European Socialists and Progressive Alliance, holds observer status in the Socialist International, sits with the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament; the party includes semi-autonomous Scottish and Welsh branches and supports the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland. As of 2017, Labour had the largest membership of any party in Western Europe; the Labour Party originated in the late 19th century, meeting the demand for a new political party to represent the interests and needs of the urban working class, a demographic which had increased in number, many of whom only gained suffrage with the passage of the Representation of the People Act 1884.
Some members of the trades union movement became interested in moving into the political field, after further extensions of the voting franchise in 1867 and 1885, the Liberal Party endorsed some trade-union sponsored candidates. The first Lib–Lab candidate to stand was George Odger in the Southwark by-election of 1870. In addition, several small socialist groups had formed around this time, with the intention of linking the movement to political policies. Among these were the Independent Labour Party, the intellectual and middle-class Fabian Society, the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party. At the 1895 general election, the Independent Labour Party put up 28 candidates but won only 44,325 votes. Keir Hardie, the leader of the party, believed that to obtain success in parliamentary elections, it would be necessary to join with other left-wing groups. Hardie's roots as a lay preacher contributed to an ethos in the party which led to the comment by 1950s General Secretary Morgan Phillips that "Socialism in Britain owed more to Methodism than Marx".
In 1899, a Doncaster member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Thomas R. Steels, proposed in his union branch that the Trade Union Congress call a special conference to bring together all left-wing organisations and form them into a single body that would sponsor Parliamentary candidates; the motion was passed at all stages by the TUC, the proposed conference was held at the Memorial Hall on Farringdon Street on 26 and 27 February 1900. The meeting was attended by a broad spectrum of working-class and left-wing organisations—trades unions represented about one third of the membership of the TUC delegates. After a debate, the 129 delegates passed Hardie's motion to establish "a distinct Labour group in Parliament, who shall have their own whips, agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour." This created an association called the Labour Representation Committee, meant to co-ordinate attempts to support MPs sponsored by trade unions and represent the working-class population.
It had no single leader, in the absence of one, the Independent Labour Party nominee Ramsay MacDonald was elected as Secretary. He had the difficult task of keeping the various strands of opinions in the LRC united; the October 1900 "Khaki election" came too soon for the new party to campaign effectively. Only 15 candidatures were sponsored. Support for the LRC was boosted by the 1901 Taff Vale Case, a dispute between strikers and a railway company that ended with the union being ordered to pay £23,000 damages for a strike; the judgement made strikes illegal since employers could recoup the cost of lost business from the unions. The apparent acquiescence of the Conservative Government of Arthur Balfour to industrial and business interests intensified support for the LRC against a government that appeared to have little concern for the industrial proletariat and its problems. In the 1906 election, the LRC won 29 seats—helped by a secret 1903 pact between Ramsay MacDonald and Liberal Chief Whip Herbert Gladstone that aimed to avoid splitting the opposition vote between Labour and Liberal candidates in the interest of removing the Conservatives from office.
In their first meeting after the election the group's Members of Parliament decided to adop
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