The 1920 Stockport by-election was a parliamentary by-election held on 27 March 1920 for the constituency of Stockport, in Cheshire. It followed the death of Spencer Leigh Hughes and resignation of George Wardle, the two Members of Parliament (MPs) for Stockport. With the departure of both MPs, a single by-election was held for both seats. Always a rare occurrence in Britain, Stockport was the first such by-election since the 1899 Oldham by-election; it proved to be the last such by-election, as multi-member constituencies were abolished in 1950. Background At the 1918 general election, the Lloyd George Coalition Government had won a large majority. The coalition included most of the Conservative and Liberal parties. Both Stockport MPs had been Coalition candidates, Hughes being a Liberal, but Wardle unusually being a Labour Party supporter of the Coalition. With this unusual level of cross-party agreement, they had not faced any opposition. By 1920, the prospect of a merger of the Conservative and Liberal parties was being seriously considered. The local Conservative group considered that had it run candidates in 1918, it would have won both seats. As a result, when Hughes died, they considered it their turn to nominate a candidate for the constituency. Meanwhile, the Liberal group was determined to run a candidate to replace Hughes. David Lloyd George and Bonar Law, national Liberal and Conservative leaders, had been considering merging their organisations to form a single party, and considered that it would be a disaster to have Conservative and Liberal candidates facing each other. In order to keep their local organisations happy, they convinced Wardle to resign, enabling both to stand a candidate. The Liberals chose Henry Fildes, and the Conservatives, William Greenwood. The majority of the Labour Party were opposed to the Coalition, and determined to stand candidates outside it in an attempt to gain Wardle's seat. After some discussion, they decided to stand economist and former Liberal MP Leo Chiozza Money and to support the candidature of the national organiser of the Co-operative Party, Samuel Perry. Horatio Bottomley, a prominent right-wing independent politician also assembled a slate of two candidates on an "Anti-Waste" platform, foreshadowing the Anti-Waste League he formed the following year. The Irish War of Independence had begun in 1919. While the Labour Party had a policy in favour of Irish self-determination, many Irish people considered that it had done little to act on it. A leading