Carmarthen by-election, 1928

The Carmarthen by-election, 1928 was a parliamentary by-election held for the British House of Commons constituency of Carmarthen in West Wales on 28 June 1928.

The seat had become vacant when the constituency's Member of Parliament Alfred Mond had been elevated to the peerage as Baron Melchett.

Mond had held the seat since his election as a Liberal at the by-election in August 1924, and had been re-elected at the general election in October 1924 with a hefty majority over his only opponent, the Labour Party candidate Rev E.T. Owen. He defected to the Conservative Party in 1926 over the issue of land policy and David Lloyd George's proposal in the October 1925 publication Land and the Nation (also known as the Green Book) that some agricultural land be nationalised.

Three candidates contested the by-election.

After Mond's defection, the local Liberals had held an election to choose a successor to him to stand at the next election. This was initially contested by six candidates but four withdrew and the choice was between the businessman and soldier William Nathaniel Jones and Richard Thomas Evans of Cardiff. Jones won in a close contest by 149 votes to 147, having made clear he was an opponent of the Green Book land policy whereas Evans, who had worked closely with Lloyd George on other Liberal policies, was in favour.

The Conservatives had not fielded a candidate in 1924, and Mond had won easily in a straight fight with Labour. However this time, they put up the barrister, Sir Courtenay Mansel, another escapee from the Liberal Party in 1926 who had been MP for Penryn and Falmouth from 1922-23 but who had local connections in Carmarthenshire and was also a Justice of the Peace there.

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