1943 Chippenham by-election

The seat had become vacant when the constituency's Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), Victor Cazalet, was killed in an aircraft crash on 4 July 1943, aged 46.

[2] The Labour party had selected Swindon man, H.F. Chilcott as their prospective candidate back in 1937 for the General Election expected to take place in 1939–40.

The chairman of the Liberal Action Group, which opposed the electoral truce, was 30-year-old Dr Donald Johnson.

[5] Johnson decided to contest the Chippenham by-election as an Independent Liberal and resigned from the party in order to do so.

Before doing so he attended the Liberal Assembly in July 1943 in an attempt to rally activists in the party to support him in Chippenham.

As war threatened in July 1939 he enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps (TA), being commissioned as a captain and serving in Bristol.

During the Blitz on London, Johnson's Belgian first wife Christiane Coussaert whom he had married in 1928 was killed by German bombs.

The Communist Party of Great Britain also formally supported Eccles, an act which Johnson attacked as "unwarrantable interference".