The 1927 Bosworth by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the House of Commons constituency of Bosworth in Leicestershire on 31 May 1927. Vacancy The by-election was caused by the resignation of the sitting Conservative MP, Robert Gee. Gee had formerly been MP for Woolwich East from 1921 to 1922 and had held his Bosworth seat since the 1924 general election. He was clearly disillusioned with Parliamentary life however because he was reported to have been absent from his political duties for over a year at the time of the by-election, having emigrated to the backwoods of Western Australia with no intention of returning. Previous Result Bosworth was clearly a three-way marginal at this time. It had been won by a Coalition Liberal in 1918, a Tory in 1922, was Liberal in 1923 and Conservative again in 1924. Although Labour had not yet won the seat, the party consistently polled about a third of the vote in all these recent contests, coming second in 1922. Candidates Conservatives The Conservatives selected 40-year-old Brigadier General Edward Spears, a noted First World War soldier who had been head of the British Military Mission in Paris and who was from 1922 to 1924 the National Liberal MP for Loughborough. Liberals The Liberals chose Sir William Edge, a 45-year-old manufacturer who had been MP for Bolton from 1916 to 1923 and was a former government whip. Labour The Labour Party settled upon John Minto, originally from Kilmarnock a member of Leicester City Council since 1922 and an engineer working for Leicester Co-operative Society. Issues In 1926 the retirement of H H Asquith as Liberal leader and his replacement by Lloyd George began to turn the tide for the Liberals. In March 1927, they gained a Labour seat in a by-election at Southwark North. Spears began the campaign with a public announcement that the political tide was running in favour of the government and the Conservative Party. The major issue throughout the campaign was the Trade Unions Bill, a measure brought in following the General Strike of 1926 which outlawed secondary strike action and any strike whose purpose was to coerce the government of the day directly or indirectly. He attacked Minto and Edge for opposing the Bill. In so doing he tried to paint Edge as a socialist who stood against Parliamentary government and the liberty of the workers. He also began by offering himself as