The 1927 Southwark North by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Southwark North held on 28 March 1927. The election was won by Edward Strauss of the Liberal Party, regaining the seat from the Labour Party. Vacancy The by-election was caused by the resignation of the sitting Labour MP, Leslie Haden-Guest. Haden-Guest had represented Southwark North since the 1923 general election but found himself increasingly at odds with official Labour Party policy. The immediate cause of Haden-Guest’s resignation from the Parliamentary Labour Party was the policy the party had adopted in respect of the Chinese Civil War. Haden-Guest believed that Labour’s policy was tantamount to a call for intervention in the civil war and was therefore in contravention to the policy agreed at the party conference in Margate in 1926 and that as a consequence British citizens in Shanghai would be put at risk. Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald called on Haden-Guest to resign his seat, assuming that Labour would be able to hold it in the ensuing by-election. Haden-Guest declared that he was willing to contest a by-election, standing as an Independent Constitutionalist. There was never any Constitutional Party as such with any centralised organisation but it fielded candidates in the 1924 general election in constituencies where local Conservative and Liberal parties were willing to join forces against socialism. Haden-Guest sought local Conservative Party backing for his candidacy, attending a meeting of the North Southwark Conservative Association on 3 March 1927 – although making it clear he would not stand as a Conservative. The Tories endorsed his stance against Labour’s Chinese policy which they described as ‘anti-British’ and their candidate, Rear Admiral Humphrey Hugh Smith announced his willingness to stand aside for Haden-Guest at a by-election urging local Conservative supporters to vote for him. Smith later reinforced and justified his position in a letter to The Times later in the campaign. Haden-Guest resigned from Parliament using the traditional device of applying for the Chiltern Hundreds. Previous result Candidates At an early stage after Haden-Guest’s resignation from the Parliamentary Labour Party, it seemed that Labour was anxious to use the opportunity of a by-election to get William Wedgwood Benn into Parliament as a Labour MP. Wedgewood-Benn had been Liberal MP for the St George's division of Tower Hamlets in east London from 1906 until 1918 and then for Leith in Scotland, a seat he held