United Kingdom general election, 1931
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| 1929 election |
| 1931 election |
| 1935 election |
The UK general election on Tuesday 27 October 1931 was the last in the United Kingdom not held on a Thursday.
The election was held in the middle of the Great Depression. Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government had reached deadlock over a response to the crisis. In August 1931 MacDonald quit the government to form the the multi-party National Government.
The decision of MacDonald to join the National Government with the Conservatives had lead the Labour Party to expell him from the party, which split into two groups (The Labour Party and the National Labour Party)
Due to this, and the previous Labour government's failure to tackle the economic crisis, the Labour vote fell sharply, and the Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin won a huge majority, although the prime minister of the resulting National Government was still Ramsay MacDonald.
The Liberals lacked the funds to contest their usual number of seats, but won almost as many as Labour, who nonetheless polled 38% of the votes cast.
| Party | Votes | Seats | Loss/Gain | Share of Vote (%) |
| Conservative | 11,377,022 | 473 | + 210 | 55.0 |
| Labour | 6,339,306 | 52 | - 225 | 38.0 |
| Liberal | 1,346,571 | 32 | - 27 | 6.5 |
| National Liberals | 761,705 | 35 | + 35 | 3.7 |
| National Labour | 316,741 | 13 | + 13 | 1.5 |
| Independent Liberal | 103,528 | 4 | + 4 | 0.5 |
| "National" | 100,193 | 4 | + 4 | 0.5 |
| Irish Nationalist | 72,530 | 2 | - 1 | 0.4 |
| Communist Party | 69,692 | 0 | 0.3 | |
| New | 36,377 | 0 | 0.2 | |
| National Independent | 33,468 | 2 | + 2 | 0.2 |
| National (Scotland) | 20,954 | 0 | 0.1 | |
| Independent Labour | 18,200 | 0 | 0.1 | |
| Scottish Prohibition | 16,114 | 0 | - 1 | 0.1 |
| Independent | 10,789 | 1 | - 3 | 0.0 |
| Liverpool Protestant | 7,834 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Agriculturalist | 6,993 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Independent Nationalist | 3,134 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Independent Liberal | 2,578 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Plaid Cymru | 2,050 | 0 | 0.0 | |
| Common Wealth Land | 1,347 | 0 | 0.0 |
External links
- 1931 Conservative manifesto (http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1931/1931-conservative-manifesto.shtml)
- 1931 Labour manifesto (http://www.labour-party.org.uk/manifestos/1931/1931-labour-manifesto.shtml)
- 1931 Liberal manifesto (http://www.libdemmanifesto.com/1931/1931-liberal-manifesto.shtml)