British General Election 1900

← 1895General election
19001906 →

(in %)

 %

60

50

40

30th

20th

10

0

50.2

45.0

1.8

1.3

1.7

Tories

Liberals

IP

Labor

Otherwise.

Gains and losses

compared to 1895

 % p

   2

   0

  -2

  -4

+1.0

-0.5

-0.8

+1.3

-1.0

Tories

Liberals

IP

Labor

Otherwise.

2

183

77

6th

402

2 183 77 6th 402 

A total of 670 seats

• Labor : 2
• Liberals : 183
• IP : 77
• Otherwise: 6
• Tories : 402

The British general election in 1900 took place from September 23 to October 24, 1900. It ended with a Conservative victory . It was the first of the khaki elections as it was shaped by the Second Boer War and the mood that went with it. Khaki was the relatively new color of British soldiers' uniforms.

background

Since the 1895 election , Prime Minister Lord Salisbury's Conservatives had a majority in the House of Commons. The Second Boer War created both a patriotic, government-supportive mood and a split in the Liberal Party. Part of the party around the former Prime Minister Lord Rosebery , Herbert Henry Asquith , Edward Gray and Richard Burdon Haldane , the so-called liberal imperialists, support the war course while the pro-Boer faction around David Lloyd George strictly opposed it.

Electoral system and parties

Voting was based on the majority voting system, there was no threshold clause . A total of 1,102 candidates ran, of which 243 were unopposed. Most of them, 163, ran for the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, 57 for the Irish Parliamentary Party , 22 candidates for the Liberals and one candidate for the Timothy Michael Healy movement . Of the 670 seats, only 427 were contested. The Labor Representation Committee , the forerunner of today's Labor Party, ran for the first time with 15 candidates.

Results

Although the Tories were only 5.6% ahead of the Liberals, majority voting allowed them to win more than twice as many seats. The Conservatives got 402 and the Liberals 183 seats. Two prominent figures moved into the House of Commons for the Labor Representation Committee: the socialist Keir Hardie and the trade unionist Richard Bell .

After the elections, the government under Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury , was able to assert itself and continue its conservative-aristocratic policy with the orientation of a strong empire. Winston Churchill , who had previously made an adventurous escape from a prison in South Africa and achieved great fame, was elected to the House of Commons for the first time.

Election result

A total of 6,730,935 people were eligible to vote; the turnout was 75.1%.

Political party		be right			Seats
		number	%	+/-	number	+/-
	Conservative Party and Liberal Unionists	1,637,683	50.2	+1.0	402	−9
	Liberal party	1,469,500	45.0	−0.5	183	+6
	Irish Parliamentary Party	57,576	1.8	−0.8	77	+7
	Labor Representation Committee	41,900	1.3		2
	Independent Healyite Irish Nationalist	20,064	0.6		4th
	Independent conservatives	13,713	0.4		0
	Independent liberals	6,423	0.2	+0.1	1	+1
	Independent	4,800	0.2	+0.2	0	± 0
	Independent nationalists	3,642	0.1	± 0.0	1	+1
	Scottish Workers' Representation Committee	3,107	0.1		0
	Independent Liberal Unionists	1,855	0.1		0
	Independent Labor	433	0.0		0
	total	3,262,696	100.0		670
Source:

See also

• Reichstag election 1907
• Jingoism
• Mafficking

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} General Election Results 1885-1979 United Kingdom Election Results (English)