Liberal Party (UK)
Liberal Party | |
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Succeeded by | Liberal Democrats (majority) Liberal Party (UK, 1989) (minority) |
Headquarters | Offices at the National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place, London |
Youth wing | Young Liberals |
Ideology | |
National affiliation | SDP–Liberal Alliance (1981–1988) |
European affiliation | Federation of European Liberal Democrats (1976–1988) |
International affiliation |
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European Parliament group |
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Northern Irish affiliate | Ulster Liberal Party (1956–1987) |
Colours |
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Anthem | "The Land" |
Conference | Liberal Assembly |
This article is part of a series on |
Liberalism in the United Kingdom |
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Part of a series on |
Liberalism |
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The Liberal Party was one of the two
Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state.[4] Although Asquith was the party leader, its dominant figure was David Lloyd George. Asquith was overwhelmed by the wartime role of coalition prime minister and Lloyd George replaced him in late 1916, but Asquith remained as Liberal Party leader. The split between Lloyd George's breakaway faction and Asquith's official Liberal Party badly weakened the party.[5]
The coalition government of Lloyd George was increasingly dominated by the Conservative Party, which finally replaced him as prime minister in 1922. By the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives' main rival. The Liberal Party went into steady decline after 1918, and, by the 1950s, the party had won as few as six seats at general elections. Apart from a few notable by-election victories, its fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. At the 1983 general election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but won only 23 of the 650 seats it contested. At the 1987 general election, its share of the vote fell below 23% and the Liberals and the SDP merged in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), who the following year were renamed the Liberal Democrats. A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989.
Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes, and social planner William Beveridge. Winston Churchill during his years as a Liberal authored Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909), which was praised by Henry William Massingham as "an impressive and convincing argument".[citation needed]
History
Origins
The Liberal Party grew out of the
The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about the Whigs' demise. The admission of the
As early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality, his party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many Liberals were Nonconformists), avoidance of war and foreign alliances (which were bad for business) and above all free trade. For a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals.
In 1841, the Liberals lost office to the
However, the Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party while it was dominated by aristocrats and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party. This was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government (during which the
Gladstone era
For the next thirty years Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Gladstone served as prime minister four times (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94). His financial policies, based on the notion of balanced budgets, low taxes and laissez-faire, were suited to a developing capitalist society, but they could not respond effectively as economic and social conditions changed. Called the "Grand Old Man" later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class. Deeply religious, Gladstone brought a new moral tone to politics, with his evangelical sensibility and his opposition to aristocracy.[7] His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including Queen Victoria), and his heavy-handed control split the Liberal Party.[8][9]
In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he ordered the
As prime minister from 1868 to 1874, Gladstone headed a Liberal Party which was a coalition of Peelites like himself, Whigs and Radicals. He was now a spokesman for "peace, economy and reform". One major achievement was the
Regarding Ireland, the major Liberal achievements were land reform, where he
In the
Ireland and Home Rule
Among the consequences of the
The result was a catastrophic split in the Liberal Party, and heavy defeat in the
Newcastle Programme
Historically, the aristocracy was divided between Conservatives and Liberals. However, when Gladstone committed to home rule for Ireland, Britain's upper classes largely abandoned the Liberal party, giving the Conservatives a large permanent majority in the House of Lords. Following the Queen, High Society in London largely ostracized home rulers and Liberal clubs were badly split.
Relations with trade unions
A major long-term consequence of the Third Reform Act was the rise of
Reform policies
A broad range of interventionist reforms were introduced by the 1892–1895 Liberal government. Amongst other measures, standards of accommodation and of teaching in schools were improved, factory inspection was made more stringent, and ministers used their powers to increase the wages and reduce the working hours of large numbers of male workers employed by the state.[18][page needed]
Historian Walter L. Arnstein concludes:
Notable as the Gladstonian reforms had been, they had almost all remained within the nineteenth-century Liberal tradition of gradually removing the religious, economic, and political barriers that prevented men of varied creeds and classes from exercising their individual talents in order to improve themselves and their society. As the third quarter of the century drew to a close, the essential bastions of
laissez-faire economics; and a Britannia that ruled the waves and many a dominion beyond.[19]
After Gladstone
Gladstone finally retired in 1894. Gladstone's support for Home Rule deeply divided the party, and it lost its upper and upper-middle-class base, while keeping support among Protestant nonconformists and the Celtic fringe. Historian
The new Liberal leader was the ineffectual
Liberal factions
The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906.
The middle-class business, professional and intellectual communities were generally strongholds, although some old aristocratic families played important roles as well. The working-class element was moving rapidly toward the newly emerging Labour Party. One uniting element was widespread agreement on the use of politics and Parliament as a device to upgrade and improve society and to reform politics. All Liberals were outraged when Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to block reform legislation.[29] In the House of Lords, the Liberals had lost most of their members, who in the 1890s "became Conservative in all but name." The government could force the unwilling king to create new Liberal peers, and that threat did prove decisive in the battle for dominance of Commons over Lords in 1911.[30]
Rise of New Liberalism
The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of New Liberalism within the Liberal Party, which advocated state intervention as a means of guaranteeing freedom and removing obstacles to it such as poverty and unemployment. The policies of the New Liberalism are now known as social liberalism.[31]
The New Liberals included intellectuals like
After the historic 1906 victory, the Liberal Party introduced multiple reforms on a range of issues, including
Historian Peter Weiler argues:
Although still partially informed by older Liberal concerns for character, self-reliance, and the capitalist market, this legislation nevertheless, marked a significant shift in Liberal approaches to the state and social reform, approaches that later governments would slowly expand and that would grow into the welfare state after the Second World War. What was new in these reforms was the underlying assumption that the state could be a positive force, that the measure of individual freedom... was not how much the state left people alone, but whether it gave them the capacity to fill themselves as individuals.[37][38]
Contrasting Old Liberalism with New Liberalism, David Lloyd George noted in a 1908 speech the following:
[Old Liberals] used the natural discontent of the people with the poverty and precariousness of the means of subsistence as a motive power to win for them a better, more influential, and more honourable status in the citizenship of their native land. The new Liberalism, while pursuing this great political ideal with unflinching energy, devotes a part of its endeavour also to the removing of the immediate causes of discontent. It is true that man cannot live by bread alone. It is equally true that a man cannot live without bread.[39]
Liberal zenith
The Liberals languished in opposition for a decade while the coalition of Salisbury and Chamberlain held power. The 1890s were marred by infighting between the three principal successors to Gladstone, party leader
Campbell-Bannerman was able to rally the party around the traditional liberal platform of free trade and land reform and led them to
The 1906 general election also represented a shift to the left by the Liberal Party. According to Rosemary Rees, almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the 'New Liberalism' (which advocated government action to improve people's lives),[42]) while claims were made that "five-sixths of the Liberal party are left wing."[43][44] Other historians, however, have questioned the extent to which the Liberal Party experienced a leftward shift; according to Robert C. Self however, only between 50 and 60 Liberal MPs out of the 400 in the parliamentary party after 1906 were Social Radicals, with a core of 20 to 30.[45] Nevertheless, important junior offices were held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and Fabian collectivists,"[46] and much legislation was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and welfare.
A political battle erupted over the People's Budget, which was rejected by the House of Lords and for which the government obtained an electoral mandate at the January 1910 election. The election resulted in a hung parliament, with the government left dependent on the Irish Nationalists. Although the Lords now passed the budget, the government wished to curtail their power to block legislation. Asquith was required by King George V to fight a second general election in December 1910 (whose result was little changed from that in January) before he agreed, if necessary, to create hundreds of Liberals peers. Faced with that threat, the Lords voted to give up their veto power and allowed the passage of the Parliament Act 1911.
As the price of Irish support, Asquith was now forced to introduce a
Decline
The Liberal Party might have survived a short war, but the totality of the Great War called for measures that the Party had long rejected. The result was the permanent destruction of the ability of the Liberal Party to lead a government. Historian Robert Blake explains the dilemma:
[T]he Liberals were traditionally the party of freedom of speech, conscience and trade. They were against jingoism, heavy armaments and compulsion. [...] Liberals were neither wholehearted nor unanimous about conscription, censorship, the
Defence of the Realm Act, severity toward aliens and pacifists, direction of labour and industry. The Conservatives [...] had no such misgivings.[49]
Blake further notes that it was the Liberals, not the Conservatives who needed the moral outrage of Belgium to justify going to war, while the Conservatives called for intervention from the start of the crisis on the grounds of realpolitik and the balance of power.[49] However, Lloyd George and Churchill were zealous supporters of the war, and gradually forced the old peace-orientated Liberals out.
Asquith was blamed for the poor British performance in the first year. Since the Liberals ran the war without consulting the Conservatives, there were heavy partisan attacks. However, even Liberal commentators were dismayed by the lack of energy at the top. At the time, public opinion was intensely hostile, both in the media and in the street, against any young man in civilian garb and labeled as a slacker. The leading Liberal newspaper, the
The fact that the Government has not dared to challenge the nation to rise above itself, is one among many signs. [...] The war is, in fact, not being taken seriously. [...] How can any slacker be blamed when the Government itself is slack.[50]
Asquith's Liberal government was brought down in May 1915, due in particular to a
The Unionists, by and large, regarded Germany as a dangerous rival, and rejoiced at the chance to destroy her. They meant to fight a hard-headed war by ruthless methods; they condemned Liberal 'softness' before the war and now. The Liberals insisted on remaining high-minded. Many of them had come to support the war only when the Germans invaded Belgium. [...] Entering the war for idealistic motives, the Liberals wished to fight it by noble means and found it harder to abandon their principles than to endure defeat in the field.
The 1915 coalition fell apart at the end of 1916, when the Conservatives withdrew their support from Asquith and gave it instead to Lloyd George, who became prime minister at the head of a new coalition largely made up of Conservatives.[53] Asquith and his followers moved to the opposition benches in Parliament and the Liberal Party was deeply split once again.[54]
Lloyd George as a Liberal heading a Conservative coalition
Lloyd George remained a Liberal all his life, but he abandoned many standard Liberal principles in his crusade to win the war at all costs. He insisted on strong government controls over business as opposed to the laissez-faire attitudes of traditional Liberals. in 1915–16 he had insisted on conscription of young men into the Army, a position that deeply troubled his old colleagues. That brought him and a few like-minded Liberals into the new coalition on the ground long occupied by Conservatives. There was no more planning for world peace or liberal treatment of Germany, nor discomfit with aggressive and authoritarian measures of state power. More deadly to the future of the party, says historian Trevor Wilson, was its repudiation by ideological Liberals, who decided sadly that it no longer represented their principles. Finally, the presence of the vigorous new Labour Party on the left gave a new home to voters disenchanted with the Liberal performance.[55]
The last majority Liberal Government in Britain was elected in 1906. The years preceding the First World War were marked by worker strikes and civil unrest and saw many violent confrontations between civilians and the police and armed forces. Other issues of the period included
In the
Lloyd George was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party who numerically dominated the coalition. In 1922, the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing, in particular, Lloyd George's plan for war with Turkey in the Chanak Crisis, and his corrupt sale of honours. He resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Bonar Law.
At the 1922 and 1923 elections the Liberals won barely a third of the vote and only a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons as many radical voters abandoned the divided Liberals and went over to Labour. In 1922, Labour became the official opposition. A reunion of the two warring factions took place in 1923 when the new Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin committed his party to protective tariffs, causing the Liberals to reunite in support of free trade. The party gained ground in the 1923 general election but made most of its gains from Conservatives whilst losing ground to Labour—a sign of the party's direction for many years to come. The party remained the third largest in the House of Commons, but the Conservatives had lost their majority. There was much speculation and fear [by whom?] about the prospect of a Labour government and comparatively little about a Liberal government, even though it could have plausibly presented an experienced team of ministers compared to Labour's almost complete lack of experience as well as offering a middle ground that could obtain support from both Conservatives and Labour in crucial Commons divisions. However, instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent, and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense, but it was a fatal error.
Labour was determined to destroy the Liberals and become the sole party of the left. Ramsay MacDonald was forced into a snap election in 1924 and although his government was defeated, he achieved his objective of virtually wiping the Liberals out as many more radical voters now moved to Labour whilst moderate middle-class Liberal voters concerned about socialism moved to the Conservatives. The Liberals were reduced to a mere forty seats in Parliament, only seven of which had been won against candidates from both parties and none of these formed a coherent area of Liberal survival. The party seemed finished, and during this period some Liberals, such as Churchill, went over to the Conservatives while others went over to Labour. Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.
Asquith finally resigned as Liberal leader in 1926 (he died in 1928). Lloyd George, now party leader, began a drive to produce coherent policies on many key issues of the day. In the
Splits over the National Government
A group of Liberal MPs led by
The official Liberals found themselves a tiny minority within a government committed to
Near extinction
Samuel had lost his seat in the
In 1940, they joined Churchill's wartime coalition government, with Sinclair serving as
In 1957, this total fell to five when one of the Liberal MPs died and the subsequent by-election was lost to the Labour Party, which selected the former Liberal Deputy Leader Megan Lloyd George as its own candidate. The Liberal Party seemed close to extinction. During this low period, it was often joked that Liberal MPs could hold meetings in the back of one taxi.
Liberal revival
Through the 1950s and into the 1960s the Liberals survived only because a handful of constituencies in rural
The Liberals became the first of the major British political parties to advocate British membership of the European Economic Community. Grimond also sought an intellectual revival of the party, seeking to position it as a non-socialist radical alternative to the Conservative government of the day. In particular he canvassed the support of the young post-war university students and recent graduates, appealing to younger voters in a way that many of his recent predecessors had not, and asserting a new strand of Liberalism for the post-war world.
The new middle-class suburban generation began to find the Liberals' policies attractive again. Under Grimond (who retired in 1967) and his successor,
In local elections,
Thorpe was subsequently forced to resign after allegations that he attempted to have his
Alliance, Liberal Democrats and reconstituted Liberal Party
The Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election, placing the Labour Party back in opposition, which served to push the Liberals back into the margins.
In 1981, defectors from a moderate faction of the Labour Party, led by former Cabinet ministers Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Shirley Williams, founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The new party and the Liberals quickly formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance, which for a while polled as high as 50% in the opinion polls and appeared capable of winning the next general election. Indeed, Steel was so confident of an Alliance victory that he told the 1981 Liberal conference, "Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for government!".[68]
However, the Alliance was overtaken in the polls by the Tories in the aftermath of the
In the 1987 general election, the Alliance's share of the votes fell slightly and it now had 22 MPs. In the election's aftermath Steel proposed a merger of the two parties. Most SDP members voted in favour of the merger, but SDP leader David Owen objected and continued to lead a "rump" SDP.
In March 1988, the Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party merged to create the Social and Liberal Democrats, renamed the
A group of Liberal opponents of the merger with the Social Democrats, including Michael Meadowcroft (the former Liberal MP for Leeds West) and Paul Wiggin (who served on Peterborough City Council as a Liberal), continued with a new party organisation under the name of the 'Liberal Party'. Meadowcroft joined the Liberal Democrats in 2007, but the Liberal Party as reconstituted in 1989 continues to hold council seats and field candidates in Westminster Parliamentary elections. None of the nineteen Liberal candidates in 2019 achieved 5% of the votes, resulting in all losing their deposits.
Ideology
During the 19th century, the Liberal Party was broadly in favour of what would today be called
If there be any party which is more pledged than another to resist a policy of restrictive legislation, having for its object social coercion, that party is the Liberal party. (Cheers.) But liberty does not consist in making others do what you think right, (Hear, hear.) The difference between a free Government and a Government which is not free is principally this—that a Government which is not free interferes with everything it can, and a free Government interferes with nothing except what it must. A despotic Government tries to make everybody do what it wishes; a Liberal Government tries, as far as the safety of society will permit, to allow everybody to do as he wishes. It has been the tradition of the Liberal party consistently to maintain the doctrine of individual liberty. It is because they have done so that England is the place where people can do more what they please than in any other country in the world. [...] It is this practice of allowing one set of people to dictate to another set of people what they shall do, what they shall think, what they shall drink, when they shall go to bed, what they shall buy, and where they shall buy it, what wages they shall get and how they shall spend them, against which the Liberal party have always protested.[1]
The political terms of "modern", "progressive" or "new" Liberalism began to appear in the mid to late 1880s and became increasingly common to denote the tendency in the Liberal Party to favour an increased role for the state as more important than the classical liberal stress on self-help and freedom of choice.[72]
By the early 20th century, the Liberals stance began to shift towards "New Liberalism", what would today be called
David Lloyd George adopted a programme at the
After nearly becoming extinct in the 1940s and the 1950s, the Liberal Party revived its fortunes somewhat under the leadership of
Religious alignment
Since 1660,
By the 1820s, the different Nonconformists, including
The political strength of Dissent faded sharply after 1920 with the secularisation of British society in the 20th century. The rise of the Labour Party reduced the Liberal Party strongholds into the nonconformist and remote "Celtic Fringe", where the party survived by an emphasis on localism and historic religious identity, thereby neutralising much of the class pressure on behalf of the Labour movement.[81] Meanwhile, the Anglican Church was a bastion of strength for the Conservative Party. On the Irish issue, the Anglicans strongly supported unionism. Increasingly after 1850, the Roman Catholic element in England and Scotland was composed of recent emigrants from Ireland who largely voted for the Irish Parliamentary Party until its collapse in 1918.
Liberal leaders
Liberal Leaders in the House of Lords
- Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville(1859–1865)
- John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1865–1868)
- Granville George Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Granville(1868–1891)
- John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley (1891–1894)
- Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery(1894–1896)
- John Wodehouse, 1st Earl of Kimberley (1896–1902)
- John Spencer, 5th Earl Spencer (1902–1905)
- George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon (1905–1908)
- Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe (1908–1923)
- Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1923–1924)
- William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp (1924–1931)
- Rufus Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading (1931–1936)
- Robert Crewe-Milnes, 1st Marquess of Crewe (1936–1944)
- Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel (1944–1955)
- Philip Rea, 2nd Baron Rea (1955–1967)
- Frank Byers, Baron Byers(1967–1984)
- Nancy Seear, Baroness Seear (1984–1989)
Liberal Leaders in the House of Commons
- Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1859–1865)
- William Gladstone(1865–1875)
- Spencer Cavendish, 8th Duke of Devonshire (1875–1880)
- William Gladstone (1880–1894)
- Sir William Harcourt(1894–1898)
- Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman(1899–1908)
- H. H. Asquith (1908–1916)
Leaders of the Liberal Party
- H. H. Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, 1925 (1916–1926)
- Donald Maclean, Acting Leader (1919–1920)
- David Lloyd George (1926–1931)
- Sir Herbert Samuel(1931–1935)
- Sir Archibald Sinclair(1935–1945)
- Clement Davies (1945–1956)
- Jo Grimond (1956–1967)
- Jeremy Thorpe (1967–1976)
- Jo Grimond, Interim Leader (1976)
- David Steel (1976–1988)
Deputy Leaders of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
- Herbert Samuel(1929–1931)
- Archibald Sinclair(1931–1935)
- Post vacant (1935–1940)
- Percy Harris(1940–1945)
- Post vacant (1945–1949)
- Megan Lloyd George (1949–1951)
- Post vacant (1951–1962)
- Donald Wade(1962–1964)
- Post vacant (1964–1979)
- John Pardoe (1976–1979)
- Post vacant (1979–1985)
- Alan Beith (1985–1988)
Deputy Leaders of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords
- Eric Drummond, 16th Earl of Perth(1946–1951)
- Walter Layton, 1st Baron Layton (1952–1955)
- Post vacant (1955–1965)
- Gladwyn Jebb, 1st Baron Gladwyn (1965–1988)
Liberal Party front bench team members
Electoral performance
Election | Leader | Votes | Seats | Position | Government | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
No. | % | No. | ± | ||||
1865 | Henry John Temple
|
508,821 | 59.5 | 369 / 658
|
13 | 1st | Liberal |
1868[fn 1] | William Gladstone
|
1,428,776 | 61.5 | 387 / 658
|
18 | 1st | Liberal |
1874 | 1,281,159 | 52.0 | 242 / 652
|
145 | 2nd | Conservative | |
1880 | Spencer Cavendish
|
1,836,423 | 54.2 | 352 / 652
|
110 | 1st | Liberal |
1885[fn 2] | William Gladstone
|
2,199,198 | 47.4 | 319 / 670
|
33 | 1st | Liberal minority |
1886 | 1,353,581 | 45.5 | 191 / 670
|
128 | 2nd | Conservative– Liberal Unionist
| |
1892 | 2,088,019 | 45.4 | 272 / 670
|
80 | 1st | Liberal minority | |
1895 | Archibald Primrose | 1,765,266 | 45.7 | 177 / 670
|
95 | 2nd | Conservative–Liberal Unionist |
1900 | Henry Campbell-Bannerman | 1,572,323 | 44.7 | 183 / 670
|
6 | 2nd | Conservative–Liberal Unionist |
1906 | 2,565,644 | 48.9 | 398 / 670
|
214 | 1st | Liberal | |
January 1910 | H. H. Asquith | 2,712,511 | 43.5 | 274 / 670
|
123 | 1st | Liberal minority |
December 1910 | 2,157,256 | 43.2 | 272 / 670
|
2 | 1st | Liberal minority | |
1918[fn 3] | 1,355,398 | 13.0 | 36 / 707
|
235 | 5th | Coalition Liberal –Conservative
| |
1922 | 2,601,486 | 18.9 | 62 / 615
|
26 | 3rd | Conservative | |
1923 | 4,129,922 | 29.7 | 158 / 615
|
96 | 3rd | Labour minority | |
1924 | 2,818,717 | 17.8 | 40 / 615
|
118 | 3rd | Conservative | |
1929[fn 4] | David Lloyd George | 5,104,638 | 23.6 | 59 / 615
|
19 | 3rd | Labour minority |
1931 | Herbert Samuel
|
1,346,571 | 6.5 | 33 / 615
|
29 | 4th | Conservative–Liberal–National Labour |
1935 | 1,414,010 | 6.7 | 21 / 615
|
12 | 4th | Conservative–Liberal National–National Labour | |
1945 | Archibald Sinclair
|
2,177,938 | 9.0 | 12 / 640
|
9 | 3rd | Labour |
1950 | Clement Davies | 2,621,487 | 9.1 | 9 / 625
|
3 | 6th | Labour |
1951 | 730,546 | 2.5 | 6 / 625
|
3 | 4th | Conservative–National Liberal | |
1955 | 722,402 | 2.7 | 6 / 630
|
0 | 3rd | Conservative–National Liberal | |
1959 | Jo Grimond | 1,640,760 | 5.9 | 6 / 630
|
0 | 3rd | Conservative–National Liberal |
1964 | 3,099,283 | 11.2 | 9 / 630
|
3 | 3rd | Labour | |
1966 | 2,327,533 | 8.5 | 12 / 630
|
3 | 3rd | Labour | |
1970[fn 5] | Jeremy Thorpe | 2,117,035 | 7.5 | 6 / 630
|
6 | 3rd | Conservative |
February 1974 | 6,059,519 | 19.3 | 14 / 635
|
8 | 3rd | Labour minority | |
October 1974 | 5,346,704 | 18.3 | 13 / 635
|
1 | 3rd | Labour | |
1979 | David Steel | 4,313,804 | 13.8 | 11 / 635
|
2 | 3rd | Conservative |
1983 | 4,273,146 | 25.4 | 17 / 650
|
6 | 3rd | Conservative | |
1987 | 4,170,849 | 22.6 | 17 / 650
|
0 | 3rd | Conservative |
- Notes
- ^ The first election held under the Reform Act 1867.
- ^ The first election held under the Representation of the People Act 1884 and the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885.
- ^ The first election held under the Representation of the People Act 1918 in which all men over 21 and most women over the age of 30 could vote and therefore a much larger electorate.
- ^ The first election under universal suffrage in which all women aged over 21 could vote.
- ^ Franchise extended to all 18- to 20-year-olds under the Representation of the People Act 1969.
See also
- Category:Liberal Party (UK) MPs
- List of Liberal Party (UK) MPs
- Liberalism in the United Kingdom
- Liberal Democrats
- List of United Kingdom Liberal Party Leaders
- List of United Kingdom Whig and allied party leaders (1801–59)
- List of Liberal Chief Whips
- President of the Liberal Party
- List of UK Liberal Party general election manifestos
References
- ^ a b The Times (31 December 1872), p. 5.
- ISBN 978-0-7456-4077-8. Retrieved 20 July 2013.
- ISBN 978-0-415-18188-4.
- Martin Pugh, "Lloyd George, David, 1st Earl Lloyd-George", The Oxford Companion to British History, p. 565, quote: "Lloyd George made a greater impact on British public life than any other 20th-century leader, thanks to his pre-war introduction of Britain's social welfare system (especially medical insurance, unemployment insurance, and old-age pensions, largely paid for by taxes on high incomes and on the land)."
- ^ Michael Fry (1988). "Political Change in Britain, August 1914 to December 1916: Lloyd George Replaces Asquith: The Issues Underlying the Drama". Historical Journal 31 (3): 609–627.
- ^ "John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)". BBC. Retrieved 30 August 2016.
- ^ J. P. Parry, Democracy and Religion: Gladstone and the Liberal Party, 1867–1875 (1989), p. 174.
- ^ H. C. G. Matthew, "Gladstone, William Ewart (1809–1898)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
- ^ J. L. Hammond and M. R. D. Foot, Gladstone and Liberalism (1952).
- ^ R. C. Mowat, "From Liberalism to Imperialism: The Case of Egypt 1875–1887", Historical Journal 16#1 (1973), pp. 109–124 focus on Lord Cromer as a Liberal imperialist. online.
- ^ Graham D. Goodlad, British foreign and imperial policy, 1865–1919 (2000), p. 21.
- ^ Pearce, Robert and Stearn, Roger (2000). Access to History, Government and Reform: Britain 1815–1918 (2 ed.). Hodder & Stoughton. pp. 56–57.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - S2CID 154679807.
- R. C. K. Ensor, England 1870–1914 (1936), pp. 206–207.
- ^ Peter Fraser, "The Liberal Unionist Alliance: Chamberlain, Hartington, and the Conservatives, 1886–1904." English Historical Review 77#302 (1962): 53–78.
- ISBN 9781137056078.
- ^ Pearce, Robert and Stearn, Roger (2000). Access to History, Government and Reform: Britain 1815–1918 (2 ed.). Hodder & Stoughton. p. 74.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Kenneth O. Morgan, The Age of Lloyd George: Liberal Party and British Politics, 1890–1929.
- ^ Walter L. Arnstein, Britain Yesterday and Today: 1832 the Present (6th ed. 1992), p. 125.
- ^ R. C. K. Ensor, England 1870–1914 (1936), p. 207.
- ^ Paul A. Readman, "The 1895 general election and political change in late Victorian Britain." Historical Journal 42.02 (1999): 467–493.
- ^ Ian Packer, "The great Liberal landslide: the 1906 General Election in perspective." Historian 89#1 (2006): 8–16.
- ^ John W. Auld, "The Liberal Pro-Boers." Journal of British Studies 14#2 (1975): 78–101.
- ^ Martin Pugh, Votes for women in Britain 1867–1928 (1994),
- ^ Nabil M. Kaylani, "Liberal Politics and British-Foreign-Office 1906-1912-Overview." International Review of History and Political Science 12.3 (1975): 17–48.
- ^ G. I. T. Machin, "Gladstone and Nonconformity in the 1860s: The Formation of an Alliance." Historical Journal 17, no. 2 (1974): 347–64. online.
- JSTOR 1849549.
- ISBN 9780230210912.
- ^ R. C. K. Ensor, England 1870–1914 (1936), pp. 384–420.
- ^ Kenneth Rose, King George V (1984) pp 113 for quote, 121; Ensor. p. 430.
- ^ Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford UP, 1978).
- ISBN 978-0719060205.
- ^ The Routledge encyclopaedia of philosophy (2016), p. 599 online.
- ^ Geoffrey Lee – "The People's Budget: An Edwardian Tragedy". Archived 5 March 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Mr Balfour's Poodle by Roy Jenkins, 2011
- JSTOR 1852870.
- ^ Weiler, Peter (1995). "New Liberalism". Twentieth-century Britain: an encyclopedia. Garland. pp. 564–65.
- ^ Weiler, Peter (2016). The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914.
- ^ History, Liberal. "The New Liberalism · Liberal History".
- required.)
- ^ A. K. Russell, Liberal landslide : the general election of 1906 (1973).
- ISBN 9780435327576.
- ISBN 9780815630425.
- ^ Hansen, P. "The identification of ʻradicalsʼ in the British Parliament, 1906–1914" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ISBN 9781317877820.
- ISBN 9780521530538.
- ^ Morgan 1974, p.69
- ^ George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910–1914 (1935).
- ^ a b Robert Blake, The Decline of Power: 1915–1964 (1985), p. 3.
- ISBN 9780571280223.
- S2CID 144038154.
- ISBN 9780198217152.
- ^ Kenneth O. Morgan, "7 December 1916: Asquith, Lloyd George and the Crisis of Liberalism." Parliamentary History 36.3 (2017): 361–371.
- ^ Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party: 1914–1935 (1966), pp. 90–131.
- ^ Trevor Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party: 1914–1935 (1966), pp. 23–48.
- ^ A. J. P. Taylor, English History, 1914–1945 (1965).
- ^ Beaverbrook, Lord (1963). The Decline and Fall of Lloyd George (first ed.). New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce. pp. 290–291. Retrieved 30 December 2017.
- ISBN 0283484772.
- ISBN 978-0-7546-2712-8, p. 59.
- ^ "Election 2010 Results". BBC News.
- Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918–1940 (1955).
- ^ Chris Cook, A Short History of the Liberal Party: 1900 – 2001, pp. 268–269.
- ^ "1945: Labour landslide buries Churchill". The election battles 1945–1997. BBC News.
- ^ "1950: Labour limps home". The election battles 1945–1997. BBC News.
- ^ "1951: Churchill's return". The election battles 1945–1997. BBC News.
- ^ Russell Deacon (2011), History of the Welsh Liberal party, Welsh Academic Press.
- ISSN 1746-918X.
- ^ Stone-Lee, Ollie (10 September 2003). "Conference season's greatest hits". BBC News. Retrieved 7 April 2010.
- ISBN 9781860645969.
- ^ "SDP: Breaking the mould". BBC News. 25 January 2001.
- ISBN 9780826458148.
- ^ W. H. Greenleaf, The British Political Tradition. Volume II: The Ideological Heritage (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 143.
- ^ "Education Scotland – Higher Bitesize Revision – History – Liberal – Impact: Revision 1". BBC News. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
- ^ "The Liberal reforms 1906–1914". GCSE Bitesize. BBC News. Retrieved 28 February 2009.
One government that is often seen as an example of 'reforming' by introducing positive changes that really improve peoples' lives is the Liberal government in Britain of 1906–1914. Many historians label this period the beginning of the welfare state [...]
. - ^ Liberal Industrial Inquiry, Britain's Industrial Future (London: Ernest Benn, 1928), p. 453.
- ^ "1964 Liberal Party Election Manifesto". Liberal / SDP / Libdem Manifestos. Retrieved 25 April 2010.
- ^ Henry Pelling, Social Geography of British Elections, 1885–1910 (London, 1967), 89–90, 206.
- ^ D. W. Bebbington, The Nonconformist Conscience: Chapel and Politics, 1870–1914 (George Allen & Unwin, 1982).
- ^ David L. Wykes, "Introduction: Parliament and Dissent from the Restoration to the Twentieth Century", Parliamentary History (2005) 24#1, pp. 1–26.
- ISBN 9780191044144.
- ^ a b Iain MacAllister et al., "Yellow fever? The political geography of Liberal voting in Great Britain", Political Geography (2002) 21#4, pp. 421–447.
- ISBN 978-0415668514
Further reading
- Adelman, Paul. The decline of the Liberal Party 1910–1931 (2nd ed. Routledge, 2014).
- Bentley, Michael The Climax of Liberal Politics: British Liberalism in Theory and Practice, 1868–1918 (1987).
- Brack, Duncan; Randall, Ed, eds. (2007), Dictionary of Liberal Thought, London: Politico's, ISBN 978-1842751671
- Brack, Duncan; Ingham, Robert; Little, Tony, eds. British Liberal Leaders (2015).
- Campbell, John Lloyd George, The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–31 (1977).
- Clarke, P. F. "The Electoral Position of the Liberal and Labour Parties, 1910–1914." English Historical Review 90.357 (1975): 828–836. in JSTOR.
- Cook, Chris. A Short History of the Liberal Party, 1900–2001 (6th edition). Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002. ISBN 0-333-91838-X.
- Cregier, Don M. "The Murder of the British Liberal Party," The History Teacher 3#4 (1970), pp. 27–36 online edition
- Cross, Colin. The Liberals in Power, 1905–1914 (1963).
- David, Edward. “The Liberal Party Divided 1916–1918.” Historical Journal 13#3 (1970, pp. 509–32, online
- Dangerfield, George. The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935), a famous classic online free.
- Dutton, David. A History of the Liberal Party Since 1900 (2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
- Fairlie, Henry. "Oratory in Political Life," History Today (Jan 1960) 10#1 pp 3–13. A survey of political oratory in Britain from 1730 to 1960.
- Fahey, David M. “Temperance and the Liberal Party – Lord Peel's Report, 1899.” Journal of British Studies 20#3 (1971), pp. 132–59, online.
- Gilbert, Bentley Brinkerhoff. David Lloyd George: A Political Life: The Architect of Change 1863–1912 (1987)' David Lloyd George: A Political Life: Organizer of Victory, 1912–1916 (1992).
- Goodlad, Graham D. “The Liberal Party and Gladstone's Land Purchase Bill of 1886.” Historical Journal 32#3 (1989), pp. 627–41, online.
- Hammond, J. L. and M. R. D. Foot. Gladstone and Liberalism (1952)
- Häusermann, Silja, Georg Picot, and Dominik Geering. "Review article: Rethinking party politics and the welfare state–recent advances in the literature". British Journal of Political Science 43#1 (2013): 221–240.online.
- Hazlehurst, Cameron. "Asquith as Prime Minister, 1908–1916," The English Historical Review 85#336 (1970), pp. 502–531 in JSTOR.
- Heyck, Thomas William. “Home Rule, Radicalism, and the Liberal Party, 1886–1895.” Journal of British Studies 13#2 (1974), pp. 66–91, online.
- Hughes, K. M. “A Political Party and Education: Reflections on the Liberal Party's Educational Policy, 1867–1902.” British Journal of Educational Studies 8#2, (1960), pp. 112–26, online.
- Jenkins, Roy. "From Gladstone to Asquith: The Late Victorian Pattern of Liberal Leadership," History Today (July 1964) 14#7 pp 445–452.
- Jenkins, Roy. Asquith: portrait of a man and an era (1964).
- Jenkins, T. A. “Gladstone, the Whigs and the Leadership of the Liberal Party, 1879–1880.” Historical Journal 27#2 (1984), pp. 337–60, online.
- Jones, Thomas. Lloyd George (1951), short biography
- Kellas, James G. “The Liberal Party in Scotland 1876–1895.” Scottish Historical Review 44#137, (1965), pp. 1–16, online
- Laybourn, Keith. "The rise of Labour and the decline of Liberalism: the state of the debate." History 80.259 (1995): 207–226, historiography.
- Lubenow, W. C. “Irish Home Rule and the Social Basis of the Great Separation in the Liberal Party in 1886.” Historical Journal 28#1 (1985), pp. 125–42, online.
- Lynch, Patricia. The Liberal Party in Rural England, 1885–1910: Radicalism and Community (2003).
- MacAllister, Iain, et al., "Yellow fever? The political geography of Liberal voting in Great Britain," Political Geography (2002) 21#4 pp. 421–447.
- McEwen, John M. “The Liberal Party and the Irish Question during the First World War.” Journal of British Studies, 12#1, (1972), pp. 109–31, online.
- McGill, Barry. “Francis Schnadhorst and Liberal Party Organization.” Journal of Modern History 34#1 (1962), pp. 19–39, online.
- Machin, G. I. T. "Gladstone and Nonconformity in the 1860s: The Formation of an Alliance." Historical Journal 17, no. 2 (1974): 347–64. online.
- McCready, H. W. “Home Rule and the Liberal Party, 1899–1906.” Irish Historical Studies 13#52, (1963), pp. 316–48, online.
- ISBN 0297767054
- Mowat, Charles Loch. Britain between the Wars, 1918–1940 (1955) 694 pp. scholarly survey online
- Packer, Ian. Liberal government and politics, 1905–15 (Springer, 2006).
- Parry, Jonathan. The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain (Yale, 1993) ISBN 0-300-06718-6.
- Poe, William A. “Conservative Nonconformists: Religious Leaders and the Liberal Party in Yorkshire/Lancashire.” Nineteenth Century Studies, vol. 2, (1988), pp. 63–72, online.
- Pugh, Martin D. "Asquith, Bonar Law and the First Coalition." Historical Journal 17.4 (1974): 813–836.
- Pugh, Martin. “The Liberal Party and the Popular Front.” English Historical Review 121#494, (2006), pp. 1327–50, online.
- Rossi, John P. “The Transformation of the British Liberal Party: A Study of the Tactics of the Liberal Opposition, 1874–1880.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 68#8, (1978), pp. 1–133, online.
- Rossi, John P. “English Catholics, the Liberal Party, and the General Election of 1880.” Catholic Historical Review, 63#3, (1977), pp. 411–27, online.
- Russell, A.K. Liberal Landslide: The General Election of 1906 (David & Charles, 1973).
- Searle, G. R. “The Edwardian Liberal Party and Business.” English Historical Review 98#386, (1983), pp. 28–60, online.
- Searle, G. R. A New England? Peace and war, 1886–1918 (Oxford University Press, 2004), wide-ranging scholarly survey
- Thorpe, Andrew. "Labour Leaders and the Liberals, 1906–1924", Cercles 21 (2011), pp. 39–54. online.
- Tregidga, Garry. “Turning of the Tide? A Case Study of the Liberal Party in Provincial Britain in the Late 1930s.” History 92#3 (2007), pp. 347–66, online.
- Weiler, Peter. The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914 (Routledge, 2016).
- Wilson, Trevor. The Downfall of the Liberal Party: 1914–1935 (1966).
Historiography
- St. John, Ian. The Historiography of Gladstone and Disraeli (Anthem Press, 2016) 402 pp. excerpt.
- Thompson, J. A. “The Historians and the Decline of the Liberal Party.” Albion 22#1, (1990), pp. 65–83, online.
Primary sources
- Liberal Magazine 1901 in-depth coverage of 1900.
- Liberal Magazine 1900 in-depth coverage of 1899.
- The Liberal Year Book: 1908. 1908. Biographies and voting returns since 1880s.
- Craig, Frederick Walter Scott, ed. (1975). British General Election Manifestos, 1900–74. Springer.
External links
- Liberal Democrat History Group.
- Catalogue of the Liberal Party papers (mostly dating from after 1945) at LSE Archives.
- The Liberal Magazine Volume 2 1895.
- Liberal Magazine A Periodical for the Use of Liberal Speakers, Writers and Canvassers Volume 1 1893.
- Facts for Liberal Politicians By John Noble 1879.
- Proceedings in Connection with the Annual Meeting of the National Liberal Federation with the Annual Report By National Liberal Federation, 1881.
- Election Address and Speeches By Samuel Smith, 1882.
- Annual Report Presented at a Meeting of the Council By National Liberal Federation, 1887.
- Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Council By National Liberal Federation, 1895.
- Five Years of Liberal Policy and Conservative Opposition By George Charles Brodrick, 1874.
- Leaflets published by the Liberal Publication Department for the General Election of 1906, 1906.
- The Liberal year book for 1908.
- The Government's record, 1906–1913 : seven years of Liberal legislation and administration By Liberal Publication Dept. (Great Britain).
- The Yale Review Volume 4 1895.
- The Age of Lloyd George The Liberal Party and British Politics, 1890–1929 By Kenneth O. Morgan, 2021.