Chapter 12 The day of the election and the hours after

Lloyd George, accompanied by Megan Lloyd George, travelled to Bedford on the 9.25 a.m. to make a last-ditch speech for Frederick Kellaway,¹ who was facing a four-cornered fight in Bedford. Facing 3,000 voters, his speech betrayed a certain nervousness as he attacked the Independent Liberal candidate for splitting local Liberal forces.² Arriving back at St Pancras station at 1.25 p.m. he was whisked away by car to vote at Caxton Hall. This was part of what the Daily Mirror described as a ‘busy day’ for the ex-prime minister.³

The weather for election day in Scotland was particularly favourable, mild and ‘almost windless’, although the morning started out foggy in Glasgow and the day remained rather grey. Commentators considered that the lack of rain would lead to a good turnout amongst female voters.⁴ Party activists made a final push for votes, in some cases using cars adorned with placards. In those areas where schools were being used as polling stations, throngs of children given the day off as a result added to the sense of excitement and occasion. Outside the polls women voluntary workers for the parties ticked off the electoral roll as voters arrived at the polling station. In some cases they minded children and the babies of women voters who preferred to leave them outside. Report after report for constituencies in Edinburgh and Glasgow emphasised the presence of women voters. For Edinburgh South a commentator for The Scotsman wrote: ‘The women were in a great many instances accompanied by their family, and possibly never before have so many children been in the polling booths’.⁵

While comment was almost universally appreciative of women voters, in some cases commentators preferred to treat it as a matter for comedy. One London hack later wrote of his experiences on election day:

‘How are you going to vote, Mrs. Brown?’ I asked the family charwoman this morning. She answered, ‘I don’t know yet, sir: my husband hasn’t made his mind up yet.’ Whether many London women were content as she was to leave the decision to a husband, I do not pretend to know, but I have noticed to-day a large number of married couples entering the polling booths together. In fact, when I myself was voting I saw a young husband and wife rebuked by the returning officer because, after they had gone to adjoining desks, she filled up her paper and pushed it round the screen to her husband, loudly asking, ‘Is this right?’⁶

In some constituencies the job of voting had been massively eased by the process of seat re-distribution and an increase in the number of polling stations. For example, at Saffron Walden the geographical area covered by the constituency had halved and there were eighty-five polling stations as opposed to nineteen in 1910.⁷ In the more compact Southend constituency, by contrast, there were thirty-six polling stations. Of course, in very rural areas the distances that needed to be traversed by some voters remained considerable and in parts of rural Scotland there were suggestions that the unseasonal fine weather, and crofters’ desire to make the most of it instead of taking half a day to get to and from the poll, had suppressed the vote.

In the Gorbals on the day of the election John Maclean, the Communist candidate, had the services of a band in fancy dress, while in Manchester (Platting) the campaign of J. R. Clynes, the Labour leader, was supported by an unofficial junior percussion band of children wearing sashes and armed with dustbin lids as cymbals.⁸ Elsewhere in Glasgow a group of around 250 of the unemployed paraded in central areas with the banner ‘1914 on War Service; 1922 Starving’.⁹ In Islington a group of children paraded with a banner saying ‘Tax Wealth, Not Health’.¹⁰ There was a carnivalesque element to proceedings in several other constituencies.

Cars were in evidence in many constituencies. Their number was surprisingly high with, for example, almost 200 being used at Colchester by the Conservatives in support of Sir Laming Worthington-Evans.¹¹ At Southend the Conservative candidate had one hundred cars at his disposal and the Liberals thirty. In the Buckrose constituency of the East Riding, the Conservatives deployed one car at each of the 120 rural polling stations, and around eighteen in each of the towns. The Asquith Liberal candidate meanwhile had just twenty-five: a differential which he later described as the principal cause of his defeat.¹² Unfortunately for Winston Churchill in Dundee, one of the cars being used to take Liberal voters to the polls knocked over and killed a black cat, which was taken as an ill omen of his fortunes.¹³

After the polls closed the first results began to come in just after 10 p.m. on 15 November as the Conservatives retained Wakefield, Wallasey and Bury. Soon after came news that Yarmouth, held since 1906 by veteran Conservative Sir Arthur Fell, had fallen to the Asquith Liberals. In these four seats special dispensation had been given for the polls to close at 8 p.m., hence they were first to issue returns.¹⁴ Beaverbrook, at home with his family and a couple of guests, became nervous after hearing the result from Oxford, where the Liberal candidate had beaten the Conservative in a seat which they had held since 1880. Concerned at the result, and at the slow pace of the declarations, only slightly offset by the fact that it was clear that Coalition Liberal candidates were not doing well, he set off for the Daily Express offices where he found the staff ‘gloomy and depressed’ as the results were chalked up on blackboards.¹⁵ In the boroughs Labour was performing much better than expected. As they put the first edition to bed for the morning’s newsstands the headlines in the Daily Express reflected the mood: ‘Heavy Conservative Losses’.¹⁶ It was going to be a long night but it was clear which way the tide was flowing.

The same sense of foreboding was evident in Downing Street where Bonar Law sat with some of his closest political associates monitoring events. By 11 p.m. ten results had come in, including news that the Coalition Liberal seat of Barnsley had fallen to Labour. Bonar Law was deeply troubled at the prospect of his own defeat in Glasgow Central. The city with over half a million voters (301,586 male and 206,061 female), spread across fifteen seats, contested by forty candidates (ten Conservative, six National Liberal, ten Asquith Liberal, twelve Labour and two Communist) had seen some of the bitterest political fighting in the run up to the poll.¹⁷ The election was to transform the political landscape of the city and, as Bonar Law waited on the national results, the performance of the Conservatives in Glasgow and across the country was less than encouraging. By 12 p.m. more than fifty results were in across the country and several features of the results were evident: a high turnout compared to 1918, a strong performance from Labour and a poor night for the Lloyd George Liberals, who had lost five seats in the early returns. The anti-socialist pact to shut Labour out of Westminster seats appeared to be performing poorly. It wasn’t until 2 a.m. that the result in Glasgow Central came in: Bonar Law had retained his seat with a majority of 2,514 (a majority that had reduced by over 10,000 since 1918). Relieved and disappointed by his own result, Bonar Law went home to Onslow Gardens troubled by the possibility that the county results yet to come would not yield him a majority, even with the tacit support of the Coalition Liberals.

Bonar Law’s mood was matched by that of Lloyd George, Birkenhead and some of the Conservative ex-ministers who had gathered at Sir Philip Sassoon’s house in London to have dinner and wait for the results.¹⁸ A ticker tape machine had been installed in Sassoon’s dining room and as it beat out the results a sense of gloom filled the room. Early results suggested that the anti-socialists had not done enough to keep Labour away from breaking through in borough seats.

Across the country the public mood was more party-like. In London special election late-night/early-morning trains, buses and trams were laid on and posters made commuters and potential revellers aware of the routes and where they might see the results come through.¹⁹ Trains would run from central locations until 2 a.m.²⁰ and trams and buses (from Charing Cross, Oxford Circus, Picadilly Circus and the Strand) every fifteen minutes until 2 a.m.²¹ The underground would operate on the same basis.²² At Trafalgar Square as many as 50,000 people watched as the election results came in. The crowds spilled out along the Strand, Picadilly and Regent Street where the results were projected onto screens as they were relayed by Marconi wireless. This was a real innovation, as broadcasting in the UK, bar some test broadcasts, had begun only the day before the election.²³ In London, news of victories and defeats around the country, relayed by wireless and telephone, were treated with cheers and boos. Newsreel cameramen for Pathé and at least one other company caught the atmosphere, with the crowd illuminated by searchlights occasionally picking out some of the women in the crowd, or the throwing of a streamer or handfuls of confetti in response to the latest news.²⁴ Street hawkers descended on the crowd to sell false noses and paper beards and other articles for celebration, such as sparklers and fireworks. As the fog slowly rose bonfires were lit in Trafalgar Square. Results no longer seemed to matter as the spontaneous public party took on a mood that correspondents later described as ‘bedlam’, ‘pandemonium’ and ‘a beanfeast’.²⁵ Some of the larger hotels (Metropole), restaurants (Criterion and Trocadero) and clubs also found means to relay results to their diners, members and guests, and results were announced following the closure of the evening performances in nine theatres/picture houses, including the Hackney Empire and Leicester Palace.²⁶ With the results still coming in during the next day, some of the larger West End stores (Harrods, Barkers, Selfridges, Whiteley’s)²⁷ used their public address systems to announce the continuing flow of results. Results were also available in other locations, including Fleet Street and Picadilly Circus.

In other parts of the country too, wireless or telephone was the means by which national election news was received and publicly relayed at local newspaper offices or at certain other business premises. In Leamington Spa the local newspaper took its results via telephone line from the Press Agency before projecting them onto a screen in Bedford Street.²⁸ Waiting for the first results, images of the different party leaders were projected onto the screen. Likewise, in Reading the Reading Observer received poll news via wireless and displayed it outside its offices.²⁹ In Chelmsford in Essex election news was broadcast from the windows of the Saracen’s Head Hotel through a loudspeaker hooked up to a radio, and in Surrey two radio retailers used Marconi sets hooked up to loudspeakers to demonstrate their wares to the public in Reigate and Redhill.³⁰

For those members of the middle class who had a wireless receiver, and were within 180 miles of one of the broadcast stations, it was possible to sit at home and listen as the results were broadcast from London, Manchester and Birmingham. Given the technology of the day, only one or two people at a time could listen to the results at home through a single earpiece.³¹

In Portsmouth a slightly different arrangement was used with results displayed on a screen at the top of the town hall steps. Results would be relayed to the town hall via one of the local newspaper offices by Post Office telegraph set up in the building. During breaks in the flow of results, images of the king, local candidates and local views would be projected to entertain the crowds.³² Although a crowd of several thousand people had assembled to watch the results they were very quiet, certainly when compared to the scenes in London.