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The Merthyr Tydfil by-election, 1915 was a parliamentary by-election held on 25 November 1915 for the British House of Commons constituency of Merthyr Tydfil in Glamorganshire, Wales. The seat had become vacant when the constituency's Labour Member of Parliament (MP), Keir Hardie, died on 26 September 1915, aged 59. He had held the seat since the 1900 general election, when he was elected as one of the first two Labour MPs. == Candidates == In May 1915 the Liberals, the Conservatives and Labour had formed a Coalition Government, although the majority of the Labour Party had stayed outside the Government. Furthermore, from August 1914 until June 1918, a war-time electoral truce existed between the three parties; the party holding a seat would not be opposed by the other two at a by-election. The Conservatives and Liberals therefore did not contest the by-election. Merthyr Tydfil was a miners’ seat, and power within the local Labour Party lay within the locally dominant trade union, the South Wales Miners' Federation. The SWMF balloted their members to determine the Labour candidate. The selection procedure quickly became a battle between competing factions of the Independent Labour Party, played out within the administrative structures of the SWMF. The two principal candidates were James Winstone, the President of the Federation, and Charles Stanton, a Miners’ Agent in the constituency. Winstone was anti-conscriptionist and pro-Union of Democratic Control. Stanton, on the other hand, was Vice-President of the British Workers League, a 'patriotic labour' group which was anti-socialist and pro-war. Stanton had fought East Glamorganshire as a Labour candidate in December 1910. The SWMF conducted three successive ballots after which Winstone was narrowly selected. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Merthyr Tydfil by-election, 1915」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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