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Wednesday, April 02, 2014
Rutland and Stamford by-election, 1933
This photograph shows Arnold Gray, the Labour candidate in the 1933 Rutland and Stamford by-election, talking to shoppers.
The by-election took place on 21 November and Gray did surprisingly. The victorious Conservative Lord Willoughby de Eresby polled 14,605 votes to his 12,818 and became the youngest MP in the Commons.
I cannot find anything about Arnold Gray on the net, but there was an account of a speech on rural poverty by his wife in the Catholic Herald in 1937 (scroll down). It suggests that Gray was a farmer from the constituency.
Later. Labour History Group has sent me a link to some notes about Arnold Gray on a family history site. See also the comment from David Boothroyd below.
Arnold Gray was a poultry farmer from Ingleby Hall, Saxilby. His father was a Liberal Alderman from Gainsborough; he had originally been a Conservative before joining the Labour Party.
ReplyDelete(With no Liberal candidate, it seems most local Liberals supported Gray; the Liberal Party had only just moved over to the Opposition benches in Parliament)
His wife Mary was adopted as Labour candidate for Cirencester and Tewkesbury in 1938, in preparation for the expected 1939/40 election, but did not in the end stand in 1945. Arnold Gray stood in 1950 in Beverley constituency.