Winston Churchill versus E. D. Morel, Dundee, 1922, and the Split in the Liberal Party

Abstract

In the November 1922 general election in the two-member seat of Dundee, Winston Churchill, Liberal member of Parliament for the city since 1908, lost his seat to Edwin Scrymgeour (Prohibitionist) and E. D. Morel (Labour). Before 1914, Morel, like Churchill, had been a member of the Liberal Party, and this article compares the political trajectory of Churchill and Morel across the war period in order to understand how their positions had diverged. While still a Liberal in party affiliation in 1922, Churchill was en route back to the Conservative Party, while Morel had become a prominent figure in the Labour Party. In examining this divergence, the aim is to shed light on one of the key issues of British politics in early twentieth-century Britain: the divisions in the Liberal party that undermined its place as one of the two leading political parties. The purpose is not to displace arguments about long-run socioeconomic change undermining the Liberals, nor of the severe impact of total war on Liberal thinking about the scope of state action; rather, it is to use this example to also stress the significance for the party of sharp divergences over war and peace, and more broadly, the conduct of foreign policy.