Eliot Crawshay-Williams resigned as MP for Leicester in 1913, having been cited in the divorce case of H W C Carr-Gomm, the MP for Rotherhithe. George Banton was nominated for Labour but did not stand, as Ramsay MacDonald held the other Leicester seat in a deal with the Liberals. In 1918, after being attacked by demobbed soldiers at a meeting with MacDonald, Banton lost to the Liberal Gordon Hewart. He won the 1922 by-election caused when Hewart was made lord chief justice but lost in the same year’s general election, won in 1923 and lost again in 1924.
In 1926, after seven years campaigning, Banton, now the mayor of Leicester, secured a Canadian war widow pension for a local charwoman.
Stephen Brasher
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