Today -100: October 31, 1924: My party is up against a maximum reactionary movement

British elections: the Tories win a super-strong majority of 209, taking parliamentary seats mostly from the Liberals, who lose 3/4 of their seats; that’s them done. Party leader H.H. Asquith loses his Paisley seat to Labourite Edward Mitchell; he says he’ll stand again, but that’s him done as a member of Parliament. Labour loses 40 of its 191 seats, despite increasing its share of the popular vote.

Soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald (who does not lose his seat) sez: “My party is up against a maximum reactionary movement. Let ‘em all come.”

There will be 4 women MPs in the new Parliament, down from 8: Lady Nancy Astor, Katharine the Duchess of Atholl (who used to be an anti-suffragist and honestly still may be), Mabel Philipson, and a newcomer, Ellen Wilkinson.

Winston Churchill returns to Parliament, this time as a “Constitutionalist.”

Not a good election for sons of party leaders, the sons of Baldwin and MacDonald failing to get elected to Parliament and Lloyd George’s son Gwilyn losing his seat.

The test case on whether tax return information can be made public is tried in Cleveland, the judge ruling that it can. But many local collectors are still refusing to follow the law.

In a little Roosevelt-on-Roosevelt action, Franklin Delano R. (who used to be assistant secretary of the Navy) says Theodore R. Jr. (who also used to be assistant secretary of the Navy) sucked at the job and Navy morale has plummeted, with officers resigning, ships sinking, men deserting, etc. He says when TR Jr. testified to the Senate Teapot Dome Committee, he displayed “the most charming and complete ignorance about his job that any government official has ever displayed.” Charming and complete ignorance is the best kind of ignorance, er, probably.

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