ABSTRACT
Independent candidates were unusually numerous at this election and also small parties, whose candidates laboured under many of the disadvantages of Independents. We have considered the Communist and Common Wealth parties together with the three major parties, since their programme and appeal was general and rivalled or matched the appeals of the larger rivals. The Independent Labour party, although it presented two candidates in England, at Wolverhampton and Bradford, and although its ideas make an appeal to a certain type of Socialist in all parts, has its focus in Glasgow, and only in Glasgow did it return any members. Indeed, only in Glasgow did it present candidates other than the two mentioned above. The Welsh Nationalists with eight candidates and the Scottish Nationalists also with eight, were more than mere Independents, but their appeal was only in Wales and Scotland and only in a minority of constituencies. They had one advantage over the ordinary independent candidates in that there was a central organization providing literature and speakers for each contest. Their candidates formed a team expounding more or less the same gospel and their appeal was likely to be equally potent in any part of their country. But the odds against them were very heavy. The issues which they put before the electors ran counter to the issues of the election as set out by the mass of politicians, by the press, and by the broadcasts in which they had no share. Thus they distracted attention from the main struggle which they tried to prove to be irrelevant. This tended to cause them to be regarded as irrelevant themselves. They were extra, and so under the imputation of being superfluous.
