‘If you strike a King you must kill him’: Sir Archibald Salvidge and the Revolt of Liverpool’s Conservative MPs, 1927-1928
In the spring of 1927, Liverpool’s Conservative MPs concluded that the local party was not equipped to counter the rise of Socialism in the city. They therefore demanded significant changes were made to the structure of the Liverpool Conservative Party. At the head of the local party was Sir Archibald Salvidge, a ruthless political operator who was determined not to give up the powers he had accrued over decades of service. What began as an internal row between Salvidge and seven rebel MPs became a national news story, and the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Conservative Party Chairman became entangled. In many ways, the row represented the moment when Liverpool’s pre-war rowdy Unionism clashed with Stanley Baldwin’s post-war consensual conservatism; and the outcome of the dispute determined the character of Liverpool’s politics until the outbreak of the Second World War.