Sheffield Attercliffe by-election, 1894

A by-election was held for the British House of Commons constituency of Sheffield Attercliffe on 5 July 1894. It was the first parliamentary election contested by the Independent Labour Party.

The election was caused by the succession of Bernard Coleridge to the peerage. He had been the Liberal Party Member of Parliament for the seat since its creation for the 1885 general election. He had been re-elected at the 1886 and 1892 general elections, but the Conservative Party had taken more than 40% of the vote on each occasion. G. Hill Smith stood for the Conservatives in 1892, receiving 43.1% of the vote, and reducing Coleridge to his smallest majority to date.

The seat of Attercliffe had a large working class population, many working in trades which were well unionised: ironworking, toolmaking and coal mining. Local labour movement leaders believed that the new representative for the seat should be a worker.

The Conservative Party re-selected their candidate from 1892, G. Hill Smith.

Several possible Liberal candidates were discussed, including Robert Hadfield, Joshua Rowntree and C. P. Scott, but two names came to the fore: J. Batty Langley and Charles Hobson. Hobson, the leader of the Sheffield Federated Trades Council, was a President of the Labour Electoral Association and would have stood as a Liberal-Labour candidate. Local Liberal leaders hoped that, if he were selected, it would discourage more radical labour movement activists from standing their own candidate. Langley ran a large saw mill in the city, and was an alderman on Sheffield Town Council. He had served as Mayor of Sheffield in 1892–93, when he took the initiative in resolving a major coal strike.

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