Founded as the "Party of the Barefeet" () in Crete (then an autonomous region of the
Ottoman Empire), its early leaders were
Kostis Mitsotakis (grandfather of
Konstantinos Mitsotakis) and
Eleftherios Venizelos. After the annexation of Crete by Greece, Venizelos moved to
Athens and turned the party into a national one, under the
Fileleftheron (liberal) name in 1910. For the following 25 years, the fate of the party would be tied to that of Venizelos. The party was legally disbanded after the
failed coup attempt led by
Nikolaos Plastiras of 1935, although the organization remained active. During
World War II, a
Greek government in exile was formed in
Cairo,
Egypt, with the assistance of the British. The government was formed almost entirely of prominent Liberals, including
Georgios Papandreou and
Sophoklis Venizelos, even as
King George remained the official head of state. The party was reformed after the war. By the 1950s, the Liberal Party had lost much of its support and it was eventually merged into the
Centre Union, which went on to win the
1963 and
1964 elections. Throughout its existence, the Liberal Party sought to hinder the rise of the
Communist Party of Greece which was the only real opposition to the Liberals on their most important electoral basis (the refugees of the New Lands, i.e., lands acquired by Greece following the
Balkan Wars and
World War I), sometimes with the use of
anti-communist legislation. The Liberal Party merged into
Center Union (
Enosi Kentrou) in 1961, under the leadership of
Georgios Papandreou. In 1980, Eleftherios Venizelos' grandson Nikitas founded a new party under the same name that claims to be the continuation of the original party, see
Liberal Party (Greece, modern). ==Ideology==