clinic in the heart of the Borough of Southwark where he cared for large numbers of local people. Strauss had well-established local credentials of his own. He had been MP for Southwark West from 1910–1918, for Southwark North from 1918–1922 and had twice fought the seat since then. His campaign devoted much time and effort to local issues in addition to the national and Imperial questions which were dominating the fight between Haden-Guest and Isaacs. Strauss picked up on voter dissatisfaction with housing policy. He resurrected his proposals for the building of homes for working-class tenants in Borough High Street which he had campaigned for after the end of the Great War but for which the local Labour borough council had refused to grant the necessary planning permission. The Liberals also tried to knock the shine off Haden-Guest’s medical good works by pointing out that his clinic was not personally funded by him, as some Constitutionalist supporters were happy to imply. Result The result was a gain for the Liberal Party with Strauss obtaining a majority of 1,167 over Isaacs with Haden-Guest a distant third with less than 20% of the poll. In his speech to the crowd after the count, Haden-Guest condemned the Liberal intervention in the by-election as opportunistic. He seemed to feel that it was for him to decide the issue on which the election was determined, rather than the electors of Southwark North. He displayed a proprietarial disposition towards the electorate saying that Strauss had “......intrude[d] on what I had hoped was going to be the direct vote of my own people on the unpatriotic attitude of the Labour Party.” Aftermath Strauss’ victory, together with a number of other Liberal gains from the Conservatives which followed in the rest of 1927 and into 1928 led the Liberals to hope for a political revival, which it was believed would reap dividends at the next general election which was due by 1929. However, many Liberal analysts – including David Lloyd George – were cautious, worrying that a combination of three-cornered contests and growing Labour strength in industrial areas would weigh seriously against them under the first-past-the-post electoral system. Strauss himself spoke for those who had faith that revival had come. He felt the doomsayers had got it all wrong and shared a widespread Liberal hope that the electorate, disillusioned by the government of Stanley Baldwin yet unwilling to