Abstract
The Oxford and Bridgwater by-elections pose problems of interpretation in many ways similar to those at East Fulham five years earlier. The British electorate is notoriously uninterested in, and uninformed about, foreign policy issues; yet here are three by-elections which, in the eyes of the candidates and of most commentators, were won and lost on foreign policy. The results were almost universally regarded as the voters’ verdicts on the foreign policy issues of the day. Baldwin thought that East Fulham had been fought and lost ‘on no issue but the pacifist’, and that the voters’ verdict made it impossible to present the country with a rearmament programme. In October and November 1938 Oxford and Bridgwater were taken to be the voters’ commentary on Munich, though there was some dispute as to what the voters were saying.
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Notes
Dawson’s diary, as quoted in F. R. Gannon, The British Press and Germany, 1936–39 (Oxford, 1971) p. 73.
A. Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget (1953) p. 251.
For the rumbustious electioneering of Frank Gray, Liberal MP for Oxford from 1922 until his unseating on petition in 1924, see C. Fenby, The Other Oxford (1970).
Picture Post, 5 Nov 1938; reproduced in T. Hopkinson (ed.), Picture Post, 1938–50 (1970) pp. 24–30.
C. V. O. Bartlett, Nazi Germany Explained (1933) pp. 243, 267.
D. Scott, A. D. Lindsay (Oxford, 1971) p. 254.
R. Eatwell, ‘Munich, Public Opinion and the Popular Front’, Journal of Contemporary History, vi 4 (1971) esp. p. 139.
S. F. Rae, ‘The Oxford By-election: A Study in the Straw-Vote Method’, Political Quarterly, x 2 (1939) 268–79. The quotation is from p. 277.
J. Harvey (ed.), The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey (1970) p. 234.
Robert Rhodes James, Churchill: A Study in Failure (1970) p. 340.
See especially G. A. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton, 1963);
P. Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in D. Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York, 1964).
T. Harrisson and C. Madge (eds.), Britain, by Mass-Observation (1939) p. 103.
APPENDIX II: A NOTE ON SOURCES For Oxford
I. Davies, ‘How Hogg Won Oxford’, New Outlook (Oct 1963).
R. Eatwell, ‘Munich, Public Opinion and the Popular Front’, Journal of Contemporary History, vi 4 (1971).
S. F. Rae, ‘The Oxford Bye-Election: A Study in the Straw-Vote Method’, Political Quarterly, x 2 (1939).
S. F. Rae, ‘The Concept of Public Opinion and its Measurement’, Ph.D. thesis (London, 1939).
D. Scott, A. D. Lindsay (Oxford, 1971).
For Bridgwater
C. V. O. Bartlett, And Now, Tomorrow (1960).
For public opinion generally
T. Harrisson and C. Madge (eds.), Britain, by Mass-Observation (1939).
Old newspapers, both national and local, are necessarily a staple for any article such as this. To save footnotes, quotations from the Oxford Mail and the Bridgwater Mercury have not been individually identified.
Useful source material can also be found in the Local History Collection, Oxford Central Public Library, and in the Mass-Observation Archives in
Sussex University Library. I am most grateful to Tom Harrisson, Director of the Mass-Observation Archives, for giving me permission to see them and to quote from them. I am also very grateful to Alan Knight for lending me his unpublished essay on the Oxford by-election, and to those participants who answered my inquiries.
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© 1973 Iain McLean
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McLean, I. (1973). Oxford and Bridgwater. In: Cook, C., Ramsden, J. (eds) By-Elections in British Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01707-2_6
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