In November 1938, the Somerset Parliamentary Constituency of Bridgwater was briefly centre-stage in the fight against fascism.

Campaigning as an Independent Progressive, journalist and radio broadcaster Vernon Bartlett turned a small-town by-election into an international event, passionately opposing the Munich Agreement that had abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s Germany.

Bartlett’s victory sent an emphatic message of defiance to Neville Chamberlain’s Conservative-dominated National government coalition, whose bitterly divisive appeasement policy had sacrificed a sovereign country to try and satisfy or at least stall Nazi Germany’s aggressive expansionism, all the while proclaiming ‘Peace in Our Time’.