The Whitechapel and St George's by-election, 1930 was a parliamentary by-election held on 3 December 1930 for the British House of Commons constituency of Whitechapel and St George's in the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney.
Contents |
The seat had become vacant on when the constituency's Labour Member of Parliament (MP), Harry Gosling, had died on 24 October 1930. He had been MP for the seat since a 1923 by-election.
The Labour candidate was James Henry Hall, who was contesting his first parliamentary election. He was 53.
He faced a Liberal opponent Barnett Janner, who was 38 and had been Liberal candidate for Cardiff Central at the 1929 election, where he had finished third.
The Conservative Party candidate was Loel Guinness. He was 24 years old and had contested this seat for the Conservatives in the 1929 general election.
The Communist candidate was Harry Pollitt, the Party's General Secretary. He had stood against the Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, at Seaham in the 1929 general election.
Hall held the seat on a much reduced majority. He would hold the seat until losing it at the 1931 election, regaining it at the 1935 election and serving as MP until his death, which precipitated another by-election in 1942.
Janner took the seat for the Liberals at the 1931 election. After losing in 1935, he would go on to be elected Labour MP for Leicester West at the 1945 election.
Guinness was elected MP for Bath in the following year.
| Whitechapel and St. George’s by-election, 1930 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
| Labour | James Henry Hall | 8,544 | 39.2 | -24.0 | |
| Liberal | Barnett Janner | 7,445 | 34.1 | +13.3 | |
| Conservative | Loel Guinness | 3,735 | 17.1 | +1.1 | |
| Communist | Harry Pollitt | 2,106 | 9.6 | N/A | |
| Majority | |||||
| Turnout | |||||
| Labour hold | Swing | -18.7 | |||
|
||||||||||||||