1935 Labour Party leadership election

1935 Labour Party leadership election

← 1932 26 November – 3 December 1935 (1935-11-26 – 1935-12-03) 1955 →

Candidate Clement Attlee Herbert Morrison Arthur Greenwood First ballot 58 (43.0%) 44 (32.6%) 33 (24.4%) Second ballot 88 (64.7%) 48 (35.3%) Eliminated

Leader before election Clement Attlee (interim) Elected Leader Clement Attlee

This article is part of a series about Clement Attlee
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The 1935 Labour Party leadership election took place on 26 November 1935 when Herbert Morrison and Arthur Greenwood challenged Clement Attlee, the incumbent party leader of only one month and one day. Attlee, previously Deputy Leader, had been appointed as an interim leader the previous month when George Lansbury resigned and the general election was looming.

With the Labour Party now having roughly three times as many MPs as in the 1931-5 Parliament, both Morrison and Greenwood stood in the annual election for leader, feeling that Attlee's appointment had only been intended as an interim measure. Morrison had not been an MP at the time of the October appointment, whilst Greenwood had declined to offer himself as a candidate then because he was strongly associated with trade union leaders such as Ernest Bevin, who were widely regarded as the reasons for forcing Lansbury to resign, a move that the vast majority of Labour MPs opposed.