he was returned unopposed at the by-election on 28 October. On taking his seat he wore his uniform as a Trooper of the Royal Dragoon Guards. Hopkinson did not have time to get acquainted with the House before the end of the war pitched him into a re-election battle. Owing to boundary changes he fought the new Mossley constituency where he was adopted as a Liberal who supported David Lloyd George's governing Coalition. However, during the campaign he said that calling himself the Coalition candidate did not bind him to supporting the Coalition, and that he might oppose anything the government did. He insisted that he had merely taken the 'badge' of the Coalition for the good of the country. Hopkinson faced opposition only from the Co-operative Party and won with more than 75% of the vote. Political activities Initially, as shown by his choice of taking his seat in uniform, Hopkinson was particularly active on military matters, calling for 'democracy under discipline' and a recognition that democratic forces were present when reconstructing the Army. He was a member of the House of Commons Army Committee in 1919, and the following year criticised the actions of Brigadier-General Dyer in the Amritsar massacre following the official report into it. Also in 1920 he criticised bureaucracy in the building of public housing, saying that he was building homes for a fraction of the price (it was in 1921 that he made his donation of Ryecroft Hall). By the end of 1920 Hopkinson was already making a reputation for being one of the best speakers and most independent minds in the House, although he was still officially sitting as a Coalition Liberal. He became increasingly involved in industrial topics in which he was critical of the trades unions (regarding them as having devoured the liberty of the workers) and of socialism to the level of distrusting the motives of those advocating socialist policies. He was a strong supporter of free trade. Hopkinson was much in demand as a speaker because of his unorthodox views and the frank and clear way in which he expressed them. Independence On 22 March 1922 Hopkinson wrote to The Times to suggest that ballot papers include a box in which voters could express their disapproval of all the candidates on offer. He was by now of this opinion himself: the previous month, he stopped receiving the Coalition Liberal