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  1. Politics
20 November 2014

The Returning Officer: Croydon South II

By Stephen Brasher

Herbert Williams was Tory MP for Reading (1924-29), Croydon South (1932-45) and Croydon East (1950-54), having fought Wednesbury in 1922 and 1923 and the Combined English Universities in 1918 and 1931.

He served in the ordnance corps in the First World War and in 1918 stood for the universities seat, after being assured he wouldn’t need a “coupon” from the coalition government. Coupons were then issued to the historian H A L Fisher and the explorer and art critic William Martin Conway, who were elected under the PR system. In his memoirs, he wrote that he suspected a “dirty intrigue” and noted that the choice between the Tory candidates was “made by the Liberals
and socialists”.

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