William Wiggins - Member of Parliament and The Oldham By-election, 1925

Member of Parliament and The Oldham By-election, 1925

Wiggins entered Parliament at a by-election in 1925 at Oldham. The election was occasioned by the appointment of the sitting Liberal MP, Edward Grigg (a former private secretary to David Lloyd George) to the governorship of Kenya. Oldham was a two member seat at the time. Wiggins had fought beside Grigg at the 1923 general election but the second seat had been retained by William Tout the Labour candidate and MP since 1922 and private secretary to the Minister of Labour. In the 1924 general election Tout lost his seat to the Tory candidate Duff Cooper.

Wiggins, described as a staunch free-trader and robust Radical was selected as Liberal candidate and Tout was invited to stand again by the Oldham Trades and Labour Council. The Tories were in a difficult spot concerning a possible candidate for the by-election. Oldham Liberals had decided not to put up a second candidate at the 1924 general election, ensuring Duff Cooper was elected on the back of Liberal votes. The local parties also had a written agreement not to engage in three-cornered fights at municipal elections and putting up a by-election candidate put these arrangements at risk. In addition, Wiggins proposed to make the Budget, free-trade and the question of duties on silk products the principal issue of the election. He was expected to receive support from many Conservative supporters of free-trade who were also opposed to silk and artificial silk duties. In the event the Tories chose not to put up a candidate but Wiggins emphatically denied that any pact had been arranged between the parties. It just seems that the Conservatives did not wish to risk handing the seat back to Labour and ruining their local government arrangements with the Liberals. The Liberals played to this with Conservative minded voters in the campaign, with Lloyd George declaring at a speech in Oldham that the issue was about socialism and raising the spectre of Tout’s record of supporting the state ownership of many industries. The free-trade issue was also a continuing feature of the election with Sir Alfred Mond, still at that time a Liberal but to defect to the Tories in 1926, delivering a speech on the subject and on 13 June in the Committee on the Finance Bill, the silk duties were carried, providing ammunition for Wiggins’ campaign.

Wiggins won the by-election with a majority of 4,623 over Tout in a poll where turnout was 66% and in his acceptance speech freely acknowledged the wholehearted support of Liberals and Conservatives against Socialism.