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Famous Historical Elections: The Flapper Election of 1929
11 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, Ethan Reuter speaks with David Redvaldsen of the University of Agder in Norway about the 1929 general election—Britain's first truly universal suffrage election. After the 1928 Representation of the People Act finally granted women the vote on equal terms with men, millions of young women, the so-called flappers, went to the polls for the first time alongside a fully enfranchised working class.
The conversation explores how this three-party contest became a battle of economic visions amid rising unemployment. Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives offered "Safety First"—no experiments, no risks. Lloyd George's revitalised Liberals promoted bold Keynesian proposals to conquer unemployment through public works and borrowing. Ramsay MacDonald's Labour Party positioned itself as a respectable alternative, though without the flashy policies of their rivals.
Despite Lloyd George's war chest, charisma, and imaginative proposals, the Liberals won just 59 seats while Labour became the largest party for the first time—though without a majority. Dr. Redvaldsen explains how this apparent Labour triumph became a poisoned chalice when the Great Depression struck months later, leading to the devastating split of 1931 and the end of the Liberals as a major force. From broccoli jokes to the collapse of three-party politics, this is the election that shaped Britain's two-party system—and destroyed the party that tried hardest to win it.
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Transcript
Introduction to Observations Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Observations podcast brought to you by Democracy Volunteers. My name is Ethan Reuter and in today's episode we'll be talking about the 1929 general election. 1929 set the scene for the flappers right to vote and brought broccoli to the centre stage.
Guest Introduction: David Ravalsen
00:00:26
Speaker
I'm excited to be joined here today by David Ravalsen of the University of Agda in Norway. Welcome to the show and thank you for being here. ah Well thank you for having me on.
00:00:38
Speaker
very Very kind of you. I'd like to start off today by looking at the starting context and how did the political world set the scene for 1929 going into the election?
1920s Elections and Baldwin's Dominance
00:00:55
Speaker
Well, there um in the 1920s there had been a number of elections, um summer so much so that the
00:01:05
Speaker
One occasionally talks about almost yearly elections, given that there was one in 1922, one in 1923, and then third 1924. one in nine twentyth threee and then third in there nineteen twenty four But the Baldwin government,
00:01:21
Speaker
which was elected um and a landslide and nineteen twenty had been going for five years in nineteen twenty nine And boom due to the size of the majority in 1924, Conservative MPs making up two thirds of the House of Commons.
00:01:42
Speaker
um I so suppose people thought that the Baldwin government would be able to continue.
00:01:52
Speaker
that there was just the yeah the cloud of higher unemployment. that could possibly prevent them. And also that the Liberals were under reinvigorated leadership of Lloyd George after 1926, and he had some interesting proposals.
00:02:17
Speaker
And and how you've you've briefly touched there on the Conservative and the Liberal Party, but how did the main parties stand going into the election?
Party Standings and Public Perception
00:02:30
Speaker
um Do you mean in terms of their prior position in the House of Commons? ah Their prior position and how were they viewed in the eyes of the public? Right.
00:02:42
Speaker
um So like I mentioned, ah the Conservatives had about two thirds of um the MPs in the House of Commons, so umm i' more than 400.
00:02:58
Speaker
And ah the Liberals had been reduced to rump in 1924. So their party group consisted of about 40 MPs.
00:03:12
Speaker
and And the Labour Party had, I think, something like 150.
00:03:18
Speaker
In terms of um how they were perceived by the public, um the Conservatives were... um um I suppose, the natural party of government.
00:03:32
Speaker
um The Liberals, they had been strong in the past, but were clearly fading. And the Labour Party were the the newcomers.
00:03:43
Speaker
um They tried very hard to appear respectable, ah wanted to show the public that they were able to govern. So they yeah they were them actually, yeah they had been surprisingly um orthodox when they'd previously been in government for nine months in 1924.
00:04:08
Speaker
I suppose that was the situation.
Economic Issues and Party Policies
00:04:10
Speaker
And what structural problems were facing Britain and how long had they been developing, especially from an economic context?
00:04:21
Speaker
Hmm, structural problems.
00:04:26
Speaker
Well, um the imaginative proposals that I mentioned and just now on the part of the Liberals, um was that there had been a um yellow book published in 1928 called Britain's Industrial Future.
00:04:51
Speaker
And on the basis of um ah that particular book, um Lloyd George had published a policy proposal called We Can Conquer Unemployment in, I think, March 1929. And reviving his party's fortunes.
00:05:16
Speaker
method of reviving his part' fortunes
00:05:22
Speaker
and And obviously yeah working class people were um ah greatly affected by unemployment. and And so the Labour Party was interested in curing unemployment as well. Although they didn't have um um very cogent ah proposals for what they were going to be doing.
00:05:46
Speaker
and And the Conservatives as the governing party were thinking of things like yeah extending markets abroad. um
00:05:59
Speaker
They were um interested in getting industry to hire more workers.
00:06:09
Speaker
um so the way um There was also the question of safeguarding. um This was controversial within the the Conservative Party because Baldwin had been wanting to bring in um tariffs in 1923, which caused him to lose the election.
00:06:35
Speaker
But a certain amount of limited um ah protectionism, safeguarding of particular industries, was in force. And the question was whether to extend it or whether to um try more free trade proposals.
00:06:54
Speaker
And the um the Liberals and the Labour Party were on whether to free trade.
00:07:02
Speaker
And they used arguments like the untaxed breakfast table And um they they were a man they're committed to um ah continuing with free trade.
00:07:18
Speaker
So those were important issues in 1929.
Political Impact of General Strike and Universal Suffrage
00:07:26
Speaker
and And finally, on the question of the general strike that had happened in in the years preceding, how did that event affect the political climate going into 1929?
00:07:42
Speaker
Well, and there the yeah the the general strike was soon over. It lasted just over a week. But it did lead to increasing bitterness um between the labour movement on the one hand and the general public on the other.
00:08:00
Speaker
And there had been... ah political effects of this as well. ah Most particularly the 1927 Trade Union um and Trade Disputes Act, which ah made it necessary for trade the unions to actively opt in to pay the um ah political levy or
00:08:34
Speaker
ah to become affiliated to the Labour Party. And this meant that the Labour Party lost a lot of income and um they they were uncertain about how to proceed. So they set up um something called balance of... What was it called? um
00:08:58
Speaker
Bid bitd to power fund, sorry. and was but that was the That was the um ah replacement, but they'd lost something like, well, um more more than a million and trade unionists from this legislation, so they they were affected badly by it.
00:09:23
Speaker
And I would be remiss to talk about in the 1929 election without bringing up perhaps the most controversial aspects of it at the time, which is the flappers and the representation of the People Act 1928. What it inspired the change in the law and what specifically were the provisions of this bill?
00:09:47
Speaker
Well, the provisions um ah were that women and they gained the right to vote
00:09:58
Speaker
um on the same terms as men, meaning that they didn't have to be 30 years of age as in 1918.
00:10:08
Speaker
And um there were also there were also a number of men who were enfranchised by ah by this act. I'm not sure about the exact details, but um but it's an important point that the 1929 election is the first election in Britain ever ever to have been fought on my a universal franchise.
00:10:33
Speaker
I think there was some i think there was some a degree of unanimity about this. um I don't think, I mean, on a popular level, you would obviously have certain people stating that these so-called flappers, meaning young women, wouldn't be exercising their democratic right in a correct way. mean, there was some people saying that she's the best looking candidate and that most sort of thing.
00:11:04
Speaker
um But um I think there was so quite a lot of support for man ah universal a universal franchise at that point.
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, certainly. The property qualification was removed that allowed everyone to vote on equal terms for once. And how does such a monumental act that is to do with universal suffrage and to do with elections, how does this fit into the development of feminism?
00:11:41
Speaker
um Well, you didn't necessarily have to be a yeah feminist ah to exercise the right to vote.
00:11:52
Speaker
um You might not have been um incredibly interested in in in that particular right or whatever, but um now once you had the opportunity, it was a kind of natural now oh to make use of it.
00:12:09
Speaker
And the um the the Labour Party, i know for sure, didn't didn't necessarily um appeal to women in what we would recognise as a feminist way.
00:12:24
Speaker
um Instead, there was i kind of um general policies like wanting to reduce maternal mortality and and giving housewives greater opportunities perhaps.
00:12:41
Speaker
um it wasn't even though that I wouldn't say the feminism was at the forefront of the agenda.
Leadership Styles and Election Influence
00:12:48
Speaker
And i want to shift gears here slightly and go more into the leaders, as who they were as candidates, and particularly looking at Stanley Baldwin and the Conservative Party leader. How did his leadership style come across to the public and how did this affect the election results?
00:13:08
Speaker
Well, I think that the Conservatives were um oh very very dependent on the personality of a Baldwin there in the election because as Philip Williamson argues, they didn't really have um um particularly flashy policies or anything, but their rep appeal was the personality of Baldwin that he wouldn't experiment in the way that the liberals might, he wouldn't bring in socialism.
00:13:42
Speaker
ah He was just, you a typical Englishman who could steer the ship of state in a logical and measured manner.
00:13:55
Speaker
um i think I think he was successful in projecting his views onto the population in terms of being um a trustworthy sort of person.
00:14:12
Speaker
and And in response, how did Ramsay MacDonald as Labour leader compare?
00:14:19
Speaker
Ramsay MacDonald was also trying to appear as a respectable politician, that um everything the Labour Party stood for was measured.
00:14:33
Speaker
in the in the in the language of today, we would we would say it was costed. um um he was He was the man who who'd kind of built the Labour Party and he waste he'd always been a moderate sort of politician.
00:14:53
Speaker
um When he succeeded in the being elected to the House of Commons, he um took a leave out of the of established politicians and would approach matters in in the same way.
00:15:10
Speaker
um he wouldn't he wouldn't come across as particularly radical changing the way things were done in Parliament or appearing as a demagogue.
00:15:24
Speaker
um so none ah he was So he was of um completely different origins to to Baldwin. ah he was um He was the son of an unmarried agricultural worker.
00:15:42
Speaker
um But he was some someone who was trying to improve himself, who tended... um the courses at Birkbeck.
00:15:55
Speaker
And um ah he was so he had and some personal appeal. um he was an intelligent sort of person.
00:16:09
Speaker
So I wouldn't say there was so i there was ah there was a huge difference in in terms of origins, but um they came across in ah in a similar manner, if you like.
00:16:22
Speaker
And finally, as ah as a slightly more fleshier candidate, who was David Lloyd George as the third party, as one of the few elections in Britain that we've ever had as a third three-party election? Yes.
00:16:35
Speaker
Well, he was a great personality. um one of the great down British prime ministers. um He'd become a prime minister during the the the First World War.
00:16:50
Speaker
And um throughout the 1920s, there
00:16:56
Speaker
was rivalry with Asquith, whom he had replaced as prime minister.
00:17:06
Speaker
And um he was a little bit unpredictable. um He was a womanizer.
00:17:16
Speaker
He um um ah he he he' is a Welshman.
00:17:23
Speaker
ah he had He had improved himself greatly, although his his origins were not ah quite as humble as he he himself liked to portray.
00:17:37
Speaker
um And he actually had a personal political fund. um I'm assuming ah and that this personal political fund derived from selling ah titles of nobility when he'd been our prime minister, which he was on until 1922.
00:18:02
Speaker
So an unpredictable, energetic, but perhaps also flawed person.
Campaign Strategies and Media Narratives
00:18:11
Speaker
And compared to the unpredictable and moving into the campaign, Baldwin presented a message known by his slogan as safety first.
00:18:24
Speaker
We've already touched slightly on his personality, but what specifically would that represent? Safety first meant and there no no experiments. So the yeah the proposals that Lloyd George was putting before the public i consisted of Keynesian economics.
00:18:47
Speaker
and This was the first appearance of Keynesian economics in British election.
00:18:54
Speaker
um and And the idea was that um one could reduce unemployment to a yeah normal level ah through public care borrowing and employing the ah are the people who are out of work um to do things like yeah building houses and roads.
00:19:18
Speaker
And it it went against the economic orthodoxy ah because one should always have a balanced budget and and so on. um And that is something that the the Labour leadership, Ramsey MacDonald and Philip Snowden, were in total agreement about.
00:19:40
Speaker
um It's possible that so and this was just... a method of um bringing the bringing the liberals back into contention um and um making sure there so that there was some focus on that um the liberals as well trying to trying to um hold the balance of power after that um after the election and maybe bringing in proportional representation, which would have allowed um the Liberals said to continue as a force in British politics.
00:20:29
Speaker
um
00:20:32
Speaker
ah yeah i think I think that was the the the meaning of it. Of course, cas Keynes had been working on these proposals. He was a liberal. So he had had contributed greatly.
00:20:47
Speaker
And in response to the Conservatives attempting to almost block out the Liberals, what does it mean when we say wrecking candidates were used in the election?
00:21:03
Speaker
Yes, I mean, I suppose that would be um primarily a conservative argument. And the idea is that the um the conservatives had um got such a large majority in 1924 on the basis that they had supplanted the liberals And um a lot of um liberal voters had switched to the Conservatives because they feared socialism or whatever, or they didn't think that their party had a, their own party had a future.
00:21:42
Speaker
um So um it might have been seen by Conservatives in 1929 as a kind of a wrecking ah tactic that the um the Liberal Party were also fielding more than 500 candidates.
00:22:05
Speaker
And that obviously meant more three-cornered contests. And um because the Conservatives did not end up with the largest number of seats,
00:22:20
Speaker
they may have seen the the liberal intervention, the liberal revival as a kind of a wrecking ah tactic, um which I think is unfair, though. You've got to you got to take every every party on it on its own terms.
00:22:37
Speaker
And you you mentioned that all three parties fielded seats. It is one of the most fielded, from candidates perspective, elections that we see.
00:22:48
Speaker
How did the presence of three fully organized parties affect tactical voting and strategies amongst the public?
00:22:59
Speaker
Well, it seems that the Liberal Party gained seats in the countryside, and it is possible that they were becoming more and more of an agricultural, rural,
00:23:17
Speaker
um peripheral type of party, but they certainly improved their their their standing in and in terms of votes and gained, think, which is very respectable showing.
00:23:33
Speaker
which is a very respectable showing i I think there's a chance that um people who wanted something different and who wanted active engagement with unemployment ah might have um might have decided between the Liberals who had these proposals and and the Labour Party which had been in in opposition the last five years, and
00:24:07
Speaker
my um
00:24:11
Speaker
you might have ideas as well. um i mean, certainly it it is the case that if something isn't working for you, if a particular government has been in power the last five years and haven't done that much about unemployment or perceived as not having done a lot, then you sort of switch over to a different side.
00:24:31
Speaker
And it's possible that Labour ah benefited to some extent from from that. And in the vein of the impressionable young flappers, this election was dominated frequently by notes on women and media narratives around votes for women.
00:24:51
Speaker
What were the campaign narratives that you see come out of the focus on the votes for women?
00:25:02
Speaker
i'm ah I'm not sure if I have a yeah a very satisfactory and answer to that question. um I do know that the Labour Party um um appealed to where ah to women in women in 1929,
00:25:20
Speaker
and nineteen twenty nine tried to appeal to women and nineteen twenty nine more than they did in 1924. So the ah the fact that more women were voting naturally led to greater focus on them.
00:25:35
Speaker
ah But I think the arguments were more or less the same as they had been in previous campaigns, that a the Labour Party had something to offer the housewife and Occasionally, I suppose it was mentioned that the Labour Party had always been in favour of votes for women.
00:25:59
Speaker
um But i'm not I'm not sure if it affected the dynamics of the election that much. Okay. And finally, I have a um strategically placed piece of broccoli fastened to my suit.
00:26:17
Speaker
What is the significance of broccoli within this election? Yeah, that was ah that was kind of a little bit of a joke. And ah it's to do with...
00:26:29
Speaker
um agriculture and gaining new markets and so on. And um I think it's the case that ah Stanley Baldwin had mentioned broccoli
00:26:44
Speaker
as a potential export or an export in which ah Britain now was gaining ground or whatever. ah ah So i think yeah I think that became a little bit of a joke among the electorate.
00:27:01
Speaker
And it it may have been one that and that he wasn't um averse to. ah It's quite funny to have something lighthearted to focus on. And sort of made the point for him that that he was a stolid um ah commonsensical sort of politician and I suppose there are health benefits to to eating broccoli.
Election Outcome and Political Implications
00:27:31
Speaker
And moving from the campaign onto the specific results that we see, it is a three-party election and how did that translate into both vote share and seats?
00:27:46
Speaker
Yes, I mean, the the ah the great disappointment for the Liberals was that um they only added, I think, 19 seats to their total tally.
00:27:58
Speaker
ah So they merged with 59 seats, in spite of um gaining a larger share of the vote. And, you know, um this is the election that they had really been concentrating on to a great extent.
00:28:16
Speaker
ah and They had this political fund that I mentioned at an earlier stage. They fielded far more candidates than they had 1924. And the fact that they didn't make more progress than they did,
00:28:34
Speaker
the yeah that they didn't make more progress than they did ah kind of meant that it was becoming obvious that and they wouldn't um be the political force in the future that they once had been.
00:28:55
Speaker
But on the other hand, they yeah they did hold ah the balance of power um after the election. Labour got the most seats, but not enough to form a majority government.
00:29:08
Speaker
So there are the eyes historians who think that the the Liberals should have pressed that to their advantage. um I'm thinking of someone like ah Robert Skidelsky,
00:29:25
Speaker
ah ah who wanted the who wanted these economic proposals to be implemented and saw this as the perfect opportunity. And why did, we've already spoken about Lloyd George as a flamboyant character and the Liberals with a large war chest and a bold plan comparatively to the other parties.
00:29:45
Speaker
Why did the Liberals' bold plan fail to gain them actual security and power?
00:29:53
Speaker
um
00:29:56
Speaker
Well, they... um
00:29:59
Speaker
I think that and they would have liked um greater representation in the in the House of Commons. They would have liked the situation whereby they were seen to win all sorts of seats, because the the ah the appeal of the Liberals is that they um the yeah They are a kind of a a generalist party in the sense that they attract organized labor to some extent.
00:30:35
Speaker
They attract Whigs, so um aristocratic and then families to to some extent. And obviously, ah they um or appealing to ah ah business people in favor of free trade and that kind of thing. so they their voters came from, or should have come from, ah lots of different sectors of the population.
00:31:01
Speaker
And it wasn't quite happening. um They did hold a balance of power. um I suppose they they could have pressed home their advantage to to ah to a greater extent.
00:31:17
Speaker
I suppose that Stanley Baldwin, to some extent, spiked their guns in this, because he here as soon as the results were clear, hu he resigned immediately rather than facing ah parliament and forcing the Liberals to choose between um his party, the Conservatives, or Labour.
00:31:39
Speaker
So I suppose there's a disappointment and then for for for the Liberals and um disappointment for the Conservatives because um the majority of cabinet ministers and so on had been thinking that um they would get back in, albeit with a reduced majority.
00:32:02
Speaker
And um as far as the Labour Party is concerned, This was the first time ever that they were the largest like became the largest party and in the House of Commons.
00:32:16
Speaker
They didn't quite get as many votes as the Conservatives. That is a um that is a ah facet of the and British system of first-past-the-post.
00:32:28
Speaker
ah So it wasn't like an overwhelming... um
00:32:36
Speaker
overwhelming sanction from the electorate in terms of ah Labour being in the party of the future or anything like that. But, um you know, you've got to start from somewhere. This was the first time ever that ah um they had become the largest party in the House of Commons.
00:32:55
Speaker
And so some stalwarts of the the Labour movement were saying things like that it's a new dawn or whatever. um
00:33:07
Speaker
so But others were more careful and they did realise that without a majority um and being dependent on that um the Liberals, they couldn't really yeah implement the sort of policies that they wanted.
00:33:24
Speaker
And finally, how did votes for women and flappers actually affect the results? In what way did women vote differently to men?
Labour's Challenges and National Government Formation
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, this this is a very interesting question and it's kind of um undecided to some extent because um at an earlier stage, one had this idea that ah that women were more conservative than men.
00:33:52
Speaker
ah But it's it's actually based on on a fallacy. um Because what happened was that sophologists and historians were looking at their constituencies which had the the greatest proportion of fair women and finding that these were, ah generally speaking, ah conservative um constituencies.
00:34:20
Speaker
ah But in actual fact, and um ah the yeah the um the link between gender and conservative voting is not as clear as as it seems from this, because ah you've got to remember that um the constituencies that have the most household servants are likely to be ah conservative voting.
00:34:46
Speaker
And since the majority of of servants would be maids, ah that is what actually ah explains why um wow female dominated constituencies, if you like, and that tended to go with the conservatives.
00:35:01
Speaker
But I think there is still but was still ah there is still a kind of a consensus that and then the women didn't take chances or or whatever.
00:35:12
Speaker
And um I would imagine that a great many of middle-class women would have voted for for the Conservatives.
00:35:23
Speaker
um And I imagine that um a lot of working-class women would have voted for Labour. just from from being in the household or whatever. whatever Being in the household with but someone who was probably voting Labour anyway.
00:35:44
Speaker
And how did the 1929 general election change Great Britain as we know it
00:35:53
Speaker
Well, um the really interesting thing about 1929 is that was a bit of a poison chalice for the for the Labour Party to um um win it and to be asked to form a government.
00:36:08
Speaker
I mean, they were very much in favour of that. ah they yeah They wanted to show their respectability and prove their power to govern, that sort of thing.
00:36:20
Speaker
But obviously with unemployment already rising and then the Great Depression starting in 1929, which wasn't known on the 30th of 1929 when the election was held.
00:36:32
Speaker
which wasn't known on the thirtieth of may nineteen twenty nine when the election was held um um it was a complete disaster for for for the Labour Party and obviously led to um the formation of the national government in 1931 because no one party seemed to have the capability of dealing with very high unemployment indeed, like
00:37:05
Speaker
um maybe close to 20% whatever. and And it was such a disaster in the form that Ramsey MacDonald, Philip Snowden and Jimmy Thomas, who were all kind of labor moderates,
00:37:27
Speaker
they continued in the national government with... um um a severing of their links to the Labour Party. And um the fact that Labour seemed to be unable to deal with an incredibly difficult situation, the fact that the the Liberals and the Conservatives ah came together again in the national government with the supplement of these ah these three politicians and and a few backbenchers meant that there was an absolute landslide for for the national government in 1931.
00:38:07
Speaker
Labour was reduced to um around 50 seats. And um although they they continued to garner more than 30% of the votes, there was an actual question about whether Labour would survive um serious force in British politics.
00:38:29
Speaker
So an absolute disaster for ah for for the Labour Party that they should end up in the way that they did in 1929.
Liberal Party's Decline and Impact
00:38:38
Speaker
And how did 1929 create the two-party system that we see today?
00:38:46
Speaker
um
00:38:49
Speaker
Well, we've already been talking about how the Liberals were disappointed with the with how things panned out for them and that they knew that they couldn't replicate this again.
00:39:03
Speaker
um They had bold, imaginative proposals. They had the candidates, they had the funds. that was There was focus on them and they're due to the charisma of Lloyd George and that kind of thing.
00:39:18
Speaker
um As well as the proposals, of course. And um I would say that it was even more the fact that that the Liberals entered the the national government in in the way that they did, which ah destroyed them as a political force.
00:39:40
Speaker
But it's also true that the relatively
00:39:47
Speaker
unimpressive performance in the 1929 election, at least in terms of seats, didn't help them. And then also, like we've been discussing, um and the fact that they didn't manage to do so much with the opportunity they've been handed as being, that holding the balance of power and after the election, kind of spelled the N for for the Liberals, I would say.
00:40:19
Speaker
No
Podcast Conclusion and Credits
00:40:20
Speaker
worries. Thank you for joining me. It has been a pleasure to have you on the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please do follow us for more. We're also available on YouTube at The Observations Podcast, where you can see in honour of the 1929 election, the sprig of broccoli that I have attached to my suit.
00:40:37
Speaker
And if you're already watching there, please do like, comment and subscribe. It helps us greatly. Thank you for listening to The Observations Podcast and thank you, David, for joining us. Thank you very much. there was a pleasure to be able to discuss these issues with someone who's interested.
00:41:04
Speaker
The Observations podcast is being brought to you by Democracy Volunteers, the UK's leading election observation group. Democracy Volunteers is non-partisan and does not necessarily share the opinions of participants in the podcast.
00:41:17
Speaker
It brings the podcast to you to improve knowledge of elections, both national and international.