Horace Crawfurd

Horace Evelyn Crawfurd (13 January 1881 – 14 March 1958) was a Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom.

He was a lecturer at Liverpool University.

In 1913 he was adopted as Liberal candidate for Southport for a General Election expected to take place in 1914 or 1915. However, the election was postponed due to the war. He became a Flight Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Air Services and was stationed in the Far East. He continued to nurse the Southport constituency while on leave in anticipation of being candidate when the election finally came. However, the Conservative MP for Southport, received endorsement from the Coalition Prime Minister Lloyd George, so the Southport Liberals decided not to run a candidate against him.^[1]

He unsuccessfully contested the Walthamstow West constituency at the general elections in 1922 and 1923, before winning the seat at the 1924 general election, narrowly defeating the Labour MP Valentine McEntee. During the 1924-29 parliament which was dominated by a Unionist majority, Crawfurd worked closely with a group of radical Liberal MPs that included William Wedgwood Benn, Percy Harris, Joseph Kenworthy and Frank Briant to provide opposition to the government.^[2]

However, McEntee regained the seat at the 1929 general election.

He stood again at the Islington East by-election in February 1931, where he finished fourth. His last candidacy was at the 1935 general election, when he was placed third of the three candidates in Leicester West.

In 1930, Elinor Glyn Ltd employed Crawfurd to undertake the publicity campaign for two movies: Knowing Men (1930), which experimented with a new colour process, and The Price of Things (1931). Crawfurd also worked with the author Elinor Glyn on her own personal publicity.^[3]

References

1. Southport Liberal Association - The First 100 Years by Michael Braham
2. Forty Years in and out of Parliament by Sir Percy Harris
3. University of Reading Archive: Elinor Glyn papers

• Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918-1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Horace Crawfurd