On This Day

December 20, 1919

Polling takes place in the Spen Valley by-election

The election was caused by the death of the sitting Coalition Liberal MP Thomas Palmer Whittaker. The local Liberal Association selected Sir John Simon a former Home Secretary and leading opponent of the Lloyd George coalition government. Faced with this rebuff, Lloyd George put forward his own Coalition Liberal candidate Colonel Bryan Fairfax. The two candidates fought an increasingly acrimonious campaign and although Simon comfortably beat Fairfax both finished behind the Labour victor Tom Myers. The Times described the result as a ‘political event of great significance…a humiliation which cannot be explained away.’