Ashford by-election, 1933

The Ashford by-election, 1933 was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Ashford on 17 March 1933.

The by-election was caused by the sitting Conservative MP, Michael Knatchbull's succession to the peerage on 15 February 1933. He had been MP here since gaining the seat in 1931.

Ashford had been gained by the Conservatives from the Liberals at the last election. The Liberals had gained the seat in 1929, the only occasion since the war that the Conservatives did not win. The result at the last General election was as follows;

The local Conservatives selected 48-year-old Patrick Spens as candidate to defend the seat. He served in the First World War as an adjutant in the 5th battalion of the Queen's Royal Regiment. After the war Spens started practising as a lawyer and became a King's Counsel (KC) in 1925. He unsuccessfully contested St Pancras South West in the 1929 general election.

The Liberals selected 52-year-old Wesleyan minister and former MP for the seat, Rev. Roderick Kedward as candidate. During the First World War, Kedward served in Egypt and France. He was invalided out of the army in October 1916 with 'trench fever' but served as president of ex-servicemen's associations after the war. He unsuccessfully contested the Kingston upon Hull Central constituency at the 1918 general election. He stood in Bermondsey West at the 1922 general election. At the next election in 1923, he was elected as the Bermondsey West Member of Parliament but was defeated at the 1924 general election. Transferring his political allegiance to his original home area, Kedward stood at the 1929 general election for Ashford in Kent. He won a remarkable victory with a swing of over 20% from the Tories to the Liberals. During this time, Kedward was strongly associated with the National Tithe-payers Association, a group which campaigned against the collection of tithes by the Church of England mainly for the upkeep of the clergy and which was unevenly levied across the country, hitting some areas harder than others. In 1931, having sided with the Simonite faction in the Liberal party, Kedward fought Ashford as a Liberal National but was defeated as the local Conservatives refused to endorse his candidacy, seeing him as too radical and disliking his overt non-conformism (anti-tithe stance).

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