William Nathaniel Jones - Parliamentary Candidate

Parliamentary Candidate

In 1926, Sir Alfred Mond the Liberal MP for Carmarthen defected to the Conservatives over the issue of land policy and the proposal by David Lloyd George that some agricultural land be nationalised. The policy had been set out in the publication Land and the Nation or the Green Book in October 1925 but it caused great debate in the Liberal Party and another MP, Hilton Young, who sat for Norwich also left the party for the Tories along with a couple of former MPs. Mond decided not to resign and fight a by-election but there was an election to choose a successor to him to stand as a Liberal at the next election. This was initially contested by six candidates but four withdrew and the choice was between Jones and Richard Thomas Evans of Cardiff. Jones won in a close contest by 149 votes to 147, having made clear he was an opponent of the Green Book land policy whereas Evans, who had worked closely with Lloyd George on other Liberal policies, was in favour. Evans however was later become MP for Carmarthen, sitting from 1931-35. At the time of the by-election, and in other sources referring to him in 1882, Jones was described variously as Lieutenant-Colonel or Colonel Jones but no indication of his army history is available in those sources.