Westbury by-election, 1911

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

Vacancy

The sitting Liberal Member for Westbury, Sir John Fuller, resigned his seat in the House of Commons on his appointment as Governor of Victoria. He had represented the constituency since 1900, when he gained it from the Conservatives.

Electoral history

General Election December 1910: Westbury^[1] Electorate 10,411

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Liberal	Sir John Michael Fleetwood Fuller	5,041	54.8
	Conservative	George Llewellen Palmer	4,152	45.2
Majority			889	9.6
Turnout				88.3
	Liberal hold		Swing

Candidates

• The new Liberal candidate was Geoffrey Howard, who had previously been the member for Eskdale in Cumberland. He had been defeated at the last general election in December 1910. Since then he had served as a Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith.^[2]
• The Conservatives re-selected local man George Llewellen Palmer, their defeated candidate from the last election. He had been High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1903 and since 1910 had been a Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry.^[3]

Result

On an increased turnout, the Liberal Party held the seat with only a 1.8% swing against them.

Geoffrey Howard

Westbury by-election, 1911^[4] Electorate 10,612

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Liberal	Hon. Geoffrey William Algernon Howard	5,073	53.0	-1.8
	Conservative	George Llewellen Palmer	4,492	47.0	+1.8
Majority				6.0	-3.6
Turnout				90.1	+1.8
	Liberal hold		Swing	-1.8

Aftermath

A General Election was due to take place by the end of 1915, and by the autumn of 1914, the following candidates had been adopted to contest it at Westbury.

• Liberal Party: Hon. Geoffrey Howard
• Unionist Party:George Llewellen Palmer

However, due to the outbreak of war, there was no general election until 1918. At the 1918 General Election, a former Liberal member of parliament, who had joined the Labour Party in 1916, intervened in the contest, handing the seat to the Unionists.

General Election 14 December 1918: Westbury^[5] Electorate 29,208

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Unionist	Brig-Gen. George Llewellen Palmer	9,261	49.1
	Liberal	Capt. Hon. Geoffrey William Algernon Howard	6,064	32.1
	Labour	Capt. Ernest Nathaniel Bennett	3,537	18.8
Majority			3,197	17.0
Turnout				64.6
	Unionist gain from Liberal		Swing

• Candidate endorsed by the Coalition Government.

References

1. British parliamentary election results 1885-1918, Craig, F. W. S. (1974)
2. ‘HOWARD, Hon. Geoffrey (William Algernon)’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 12 Dec 2013
3. ‘PALMER, Brig.-General George Llewellen’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 12 Dec 2013
4. British parliamentary election results 1885-1918, Craig, F. W. S. (1974)
5. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949, Craig, F. W. S. (1974)