Origins The Liberal Party grew out of the
Whigs, who had their origins in an
aristocratic faction in the reign of
Charles II, and the early 19th century
Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of
Parliament. Although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of
democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist
Whiggery were
Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor
Earl Grey. After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the
First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about the Whigs' demise. The admission of the
middle classes to the franchise and to the
House of Commons led eventually to the development of a systematic middle-class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's retirement, the party was led first by
Lord Melbourne, a fairly traditional Whig, and then by
Lord John Russell, the son of a Duke but a crusading radical, and by
Lord Palmerston, a renegade Irish
Tory and essentially a
conservative, although capable of radical gestures. As early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals"; 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
Conservatives under
Sir Robert Peel. However, their period in
opposition was short because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the
Corn Laws, a free trade issue; and a faction known as the
Peelites (but not Peel himself, who died soon after) aligned to the Liberal side on the issue of free trade. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston and the Peelite
Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William Gladstone, who was a reforming
Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 when the remaining Peelites, Radicals and Whigs agreed to vote down the incumbent Conservative government. This meeting was held at the Willis' rooms in London on 6 June 1859. This led to Palmerston's second government. 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
Second Reform Act was passed by agreement between the parties), Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government. The establishment of the party as a national membership organisation came with the foundation of the
National Liberal Federation in 1877. The philosopher
John Stuart Mill was also a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868.
Gladstone era '' by
John Everett Millais, 1879 For the next 30 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. His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including
Queen Victoria), and his heavy-handed control split the Liberal Party. In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he ordered the
occupation of Egypt by British forces in the 1882
Anglo-Egyptian War. His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the
rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious
Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a
Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms. 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
Elementary Education Act 1870 (
33 & 34 Vict. c. 75), which provided England with an adequate system of elementary schools for the first time. He also secured the abolition of the
purchase of commissions in the British Army and of religious tests for admission to
Oxford and
Cambridge; the introduction of the
secret ballot in elections; the legalization of
trade unions; and the reorganization of the
judiciary in the
Judicature Act. Regarding Ireland, the major Liberal achievements were land reform, where he
ended centuries of landlord oppression, and the
disestablishment of the (Anglican)
Church of Ireland through the
Irish Church Act 1869. In the
1874 general election, Gladstone was defeated by the Conservatives under
Benjamin Disraeli during a sharp economic recession. He formally resigned as Liberal leader and was succeeded by the
Marquess of Hartington, but he soon changed his mind and returned to active politics. He strongly disagreed with Disraeli's pro-
Ottoman foreign policy and in 1880 he conducted the first outdoor mass-election campaign in Britain, known as the
Midlothian campaign. The Liberals won a large majority in the
1880 election. Hartington ceded his place and Gladstone resumed office.
Ireland and Home Rule Among the consequences of the
Third Reform Act (1884) was the giving of the vote to many
Irish Catholics. In the
1885 general election the
Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power in the House of Commons and demanded
Irish Home Rule as the price of support for a continued Gladstone ministry. Gladstone personally supported Home Rule, but a strong
Liberal Unionist faction led by
Joseph Chamberlain, along with the last of the Whigs, Hartington, opposed it. The Irish Home Rule bill proposed to offer all owners of Irish land a chance to sell to the state at a price equal to 20 years' purchase of the rents and allowing tenants to purchase the land.
Irish nationalist reaction was mixed, Unionist opinion was hostile, and the election addresses during the
1886 election revealed English radicals to be against the bill also. Among the Liberal rank and file, several Gladstonian candidates disowned the bill, reflecting fears at the constituency level that the interests of the working people were being sacrificed to finance a costly rescue operation for the landed élite. Further, Home Rule had not been promised in the Liberals' election manifesto, and so the impression was given that Gladstone was buying Irish support in a rather desperate manner to hold on to power. The result was a catastrophic split in the Liberal Party, and heavy defeat in the
1886 election at the hands of
Lord Salisbury, who was supported by the breakaway
Liberal Unionist Party. There was a final weak Gladstone ministry in 1892, but it also was dependent on Irish support and failed to get Irish Home Rule through the House of Lords.
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.
Joseph Chamberlain took a major element of upper-class supporters out of the Party and into a third party called
Liberal Unionism on the Irish issue. It collaborated with and eventually merged into the Conservative party. The Gladstonian liberals in 1891 adopted
The Newcastle Programme that included home rule for Ireland,
disestablishment of the
Church of England in Wales,
tighter controls on the sale of liquor, major extension of factory regulation and various democratic political reforms. The Programme had a strong appeal to the nonconformist middle-class Liberal element, which felt liberated by the departure of the aristocracy.
Relations with trade unions A major long-term consequence of the Third Reform Act was the rise of
Lib-Lab candidates. The Act split all
county constituencies (which were represented by multiple MPs) into
single-member constituencies, roughly corresponding to population patterns. With the foundation of the
Labour Party not to come till 1906, many trade unions allied themselves with the Liberals. In areas with working class majorities, in particular
coal-mining areas, Lib-Lab candidates were popular, and they received sponsorship and endorsement from
trade unions. In the first election after the Act was passed (1885), thirteen were elected, up from two in 1874. The Third Reform Act also facilitated the demise of the Whig old guard; in two-member constituencies, it was common to pair a Whig and a radical under the Liberal banner. After the Third Reform Act, fewer former Whigs were selected as candidates.
Reform policies A broad range of interventionist reforms were introduced by the 1892–1895 Liberal government in areas such as housing, public health, and working conditions. Historian Walter L. Arnstein concludes:
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
R. C. K. Ensor reports that after 1886, the main Liberal Party was deserted by practically the entire whig peerage and the great majority of the upper-class and upper-middle-class members. High prestige London clubs that had a Liberal base were deeply split. Ensor notes that, "London society, following the known views of the Queen, practically ostracized home rulers." The new Liberal leader was the ineffectual
Lord Rosebery. He led the party to a heavy defeat in the
1895 general election.
Liberal factions The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906. It contained numerous contradictory and hostile factions, such as imperialists and supporters of the Boers; near-socialists and laissez-faire
classical liberals;
suffragettes and
opponents of
women's suffrage;
antiwar elements and supporters of the
military alliance with France.
Nonconformists –
Protestants outside the
Anglican fold – were a powerful element, dedicated to opposing the
established church in terms of education and taxation. However, the non-conformists were losing support amid society at large and played a lesser role in party affairs after 1900. The party, furthermore, also included Irish Catholics, and secularists from the labour movement. Many Conservatives (including
Winston Churchill) had recently protested against high tariff moves by the Conservatives by switching to the anti-tariff Liberal camp, but it was unclear how many old Conservative traits they brought along, especially on military and naval issues. 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. 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.
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. and
Winston Churchill enacted the 1909
People's Budget which specifically aimed at the redistribution of wealth. The New Liberals included intellectuals like
L. T. Hobhouse, and
John A. Hobson. They saw individual liberty as something achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed that these conditions could be ameliorated only through collective action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented, and interventionist state. Following the historic 1906 victory, the Liberal Party introduced multiple reforms on a range of issues, including
health insurance,
unemployment insurance, and
pensions for elderly workers, thereby laying the groundwork for the future British
welfare state. Some proposals failed, such as licensing fewer pubs, or rolling back Conservative educational policies. The
People's Budget of 1909, championed by
David Lloyd George and fellow Liberal
Winston Churchill, introduced unprecedented taxes on the wealthy in Britain and radical social welfare programmes to the country's policies. In the Liberal camp, as noted by one study, "the Budget was on the whole enthusiastically received." It was the first budget with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public. It imposed increased taxes on luxuries, liquor, tobacco, high incomes, and land –
taxation that fell heavily on the rich. The new money was to be made available for new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. In 1911 Lloyd George succeeded in putting through Parliament his
National Insurance Act, making provision for sickness and invalidism, and this was followed by his
Unemployment Insurance Act. Historian Peter Weiler argues: Contrasting Old Liberalism with New Liberalism,
David Lloyd George noted in a 1908 speech the following:
Liberal zenith (satirised as an unmarried mother leaving her baby at a
Foundling hospital) abandons his commitment to old age pensions after failing to reach agreement with the
Friendly Societies; Chancellor
Austen Chamberlain threatens duties on consumer items which had been removed by Gladstone (in the picture on the wall);
Chinese indentured labour in South Africa;
John Bull contemplates his vote; and Joseph Chamberlain and
Arthur Balfour (who favoured retaliatory tariffs) wearing top hats. The heading "
ratepayers money for sectarian schools" refers to the
Education Act 1902. 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
William Harcourt, former prime minister
Lord Rosebery, and Gladstone's personal secretary,
John Morley. This intrigue finally led Harcourt and Morley to resign their positions in 1898 as they continued to be at loggerheads with Rosebery over Irish home rule and issues relating to imperialism. Replacing Harcourt as party leader was Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Harcourt's resignation briefly muted the turmoil in the party, but the beginning of the
Second Boer War soon nearly broke the party apart, with Rosebery and a circle of supporters including important future Liberal figures
H. H. Asquith,
Edward Grey and
Richard Burdon Haldane forming a clique dubbed the Liberal Imperialists that supported the government in the prosecution of the war. On the other side, more radical members of the party formed a Pro-Boer faction that denounced the conflict and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Quickly rising to prominence among the Pro-Boers was David Lloyd George, a relatively new MP and a master of rhetoric, who took advantage of having a national stage to speak out on a controversial issue to make his name in the party. Harcourt and Morley also sided with this group, though with slightly different aims. Campbell-Bannerman tried to keep these forces together at the head of a moderate Liberal rump, but in 1901 he delivered a speech on the government's "methods of barbarism" in South Africa that pulled him further to the left and nearly tore the party in two. The party was saved after Salisbury's retirement in 1902 when his successor,
Arthur Balfour, pushed a series of unpopular initiatives such as the
Education Act 1902 and Joseph Chamberlain called for a new system of protectionist tariffs. Campbell-Bannerman was able to rally the party around the traditional liberal platform of free trade and land reform and led them to
the greatest election victory in their history. This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right. Although he presided over a large majority,
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably
H. H. Asquith at the Exchequer,
Edward Grey at the Foreign Office,
Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and
David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and died soon after. He was succeeded by Asquith, who stepped up the government's radicalism. Lloyd George succeeded Asquith at the Exchequer and was in turn succeeded at the Board of Trade by
Winston Churchill, a recent defector from the Conservatives. The 1906 general election also represented a shift to the left by the Liberal Party. In the 1905/06 election campaign, nearly seven out of ten Liberal candidates mentioned social reform, which (as noted by one study) “usually included Poor Law reform and old age pensions.” According to Rosemary Rees, almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of
New liberalism (ideology), while five-sixths of the Liberal party were described as left wing. Important junior offices were also held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and
Fabian collectivists," and much legislation was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours,
National Insurance and welfare. One study has questioned the extent to which the Liberal Party experienced a leftward shift, estimating that 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. In a 1905 speech in Edinburgh, the Liberal politician
Augustine Birrell made a reference to the leftward shift of his party, arguing (as noted by one study) “that Liberals at all levels were coming to accept” state intervention ‘on a large and national scale for the benefit the unsuccessful and for those who started life at grievous disadvantage.’ Additionally, as one observer has noted: depicts Lloyd George as a giant with a cudgel labelled "Budget" in reference to his
People's Budget while "a plutocrat" cowers beneath the table,
Punch 28 April 1909. The caption, not shown, reads "
Fee Fi Fo Phat, I smell the blood of a plutocrat. Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread," 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
third Home Rule bill in 1912. Since the House of Lords no longer had the power to block the bill, but only to delay it for two years, it was due to become law in 1914. The Unionist
Ulster Volunteers, led by Sir
Edward Carson, launched a campaign of opposition that included the threat of a provisional government and armed resistance in
Ulster. The
Ulster Protestants had the full support of the Conservatives, whose leader,
Bonar Law, was of
Ulster-Scots descent. Government plans to deploy troops into Ulster had to be cancelled after the threat of mass resignation of their commissions by army officers in March 1914 (
see Curragh Incident). Ireland seemed to be on the brink of civil war when the
First World War broke out in August 1914. Asquith had offered the Six Counties (later to become
Northern Ireland) an opt out from Home Rule for six years (i.e., until after two more general elections were likely to have taken place) but the Nationalists refused to agree to permanent
Partition of Ireland. Historian
George Dangerfield has argued that the multiplicity of crises in 1910 to 1914, political and industrial, so weakened the Liberal coalition before the war broke out that it marked the
Strange Death of Liberal England. Political scientist Harold Webb Jr. also concludes that the combination of overambitious reforms, internal divisions and external political pressures set the stage for the Party's post-World War I fragmentation and decline. However, most historians date the collapse to the crisis of the First World War.
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: 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. The analysis of historian
A. J. P. Taylor is that the British people were so deeply divided over numerous issues, but on all sides, there was growing distrust of the Asquith government. There was no agreement whatsoever on wartime issues. The leaders of the two parties realized that embittered debates in Parliament would further undermine popular morale and so the House of Commons did not once discuss the war before May 1915. Taylor argues: 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. Asquith and his followers moved to the opposition benches in Parliament and the Liberal Party was deeply split once again.
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. 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
women's suffrage and the
Irish Home Rule movement. After the carnage of 1914–1918, the democratic reforms of the
Representation of the People Act 1918 instantly tripled the number of people entitled to vote in Britain from seven to twenty-one million. The Labour Party benefited most from this huge change in the electorate, forming its
first minority government in 1924. In the
1918 general election, Lloyd George, hailed as "the Man Who Won the War", led his coalition into a
khaki election. Lloyd George and the Conservative leader
Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates—this "
coupon", as it became known, was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself. The coalition won a massive victory: Labour increased their position slightly, but the Asquithian Liberals were decimated. Those remaining Liberal MPs who were opposed to the Coalition Government went into opposition under the parliamentary leadership of
Sir Donald MacLean who also became
Leader of the Opposition. Asquith, who had appointed MacLean, remained as overall Leader of the Liberal Party even though he lost his seat in 1918. Asquith
returned to Parliament in 1920 and resumed leadership. Between 1919 and 1923, the anti-Lloyd George Liberals were called Asquithian Liberals,
Wee Free Liberals or
Independent Liberals. 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
1929 general election, he made a final bid to return the Liberals to the political mainstream, with an ambitious programme of state stimulation of the economy called
We Can Conquer Unemployment!, largely written for him by the Liberal economist
John Maynard Keynes. The Liberal Party stood in Northern Ireland for the first and only time in the
1929 general election, gaining 17% of the vote, but won no seats. Nationally the Liberals gained ground, but once again it was at the Conservatives' expense whilst also losing seats to Labour. Indeed, the urban areas of the country suffering heavily from
unemployment, which might have been expected to respond the most to the radical economic policies of the Liberals, instead gave the party its worst results. By contrast, most of the party's seats were won either due to the absence of a candidate from one of the other parties or in rural areas on the
Celtic fringe, where local evidence suggests that economic ideas were at best peripheral to the electorate's concerns. The Liberals now found themselves with 59 members, holding the balance of power in a Parliament where Labour was the largest party but lacked an overall majority. Lloyd George offered a degree of support to the Labour government in the hope of winning concessions, including a degree of electoral reform to introduce the
alternative vote, but this support was to prove bitterly divisive as the Liberals increasingly divided between those seeking to gain what Liberal goals they could achieve, those who preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one and vice versa.
Splits over the National Government A group of Liberal MPs led by
Sir John Simon opposed the Liberal Party's support for the minority Labour government. They preferred to reach an accommodation with the Conservatives. In 1931 MacDonald's Labour government fell apart in response to the
Great Depression. Macdonald agreed to lead a
National Government of all parties, which passed a budget to deal with the financial crisis. When few Labour MPs backed the National government, it became clear that the Conservatives had the clear majority of government supporters. They then forced MacDonald to call a
general election. Lloyd George called for the party to leave the National Government but
only a few MPs and candidates followed. The majority, led by
Sir Herbert Samuel, decided to contest the elections as part of the government. The bulk of Liberal MPs supported the government, – the
Liberal Nationals (officially the "National Liberals" after 1947) led by Simon, also known as "Simonites", and the "Samuelites" or "official Liberals", led by Samuel who remained as the official party. Both groups secured about 34 MPs but proceeded to diverge even further after the election, with the Liberal Nationals remaining supporters of the government throughout its life. There were to be a succession of discussions about them rejoining the Liberals, but these usually foundered on the issues of free trade and continued support for the National Government. The one significant reunification came in 1946 when the Liberal and Liberal National party organisations in London merged. The National Liberals, as they were called by then, were gradually absorbed into the Conservative Party, finally merging in 1968. The official Liberals found themselves a tiny minority within a government committed to
protectionism. Slowly they found this issue to be one they could not support. In early 1932 it was agreed to suspend the principle of
collective responsibility to allow the Liberals to oppose the introduction of tariffs. Later in 1932 the Liberals resigned their ministerial posts over the introduction of the
Ottawa Agreement on
Imperial Preference. However, they remained sitting on the government benches supporting it in Parliament, though in the country local Liberal activists bitterly opposed the government. Finally in late 1933 the Liberals crossed the floor of the House of Commons and went into complete opposition. By this point their number of MPs was severely depleted. In the
1935 general election, just 17 Liberal MPs were elected, along with Lloyd George and three followers as
independent Liberals. Immediately after the election the two groups reunited, though Lloyd George declined to play much of a formal role in his old party. Over the next ten years there would be further defections as MPs deserted to either the Liberal Nationals or Labour. Yet there were a few recruits, such as
Clement Davies, who had deserted to the National Liberals in 1931 but now returned to the party during
World War II and who would lead it after the war.
Near extinction Samuel had lost his seat in the
1935 election and the leadership of the party fell to
Sir Archibald Sinclair. With many traditional domestic Liberal policies now regarded as irrelevant, he focused the party on opposition to both the rise of
Fascism in Europe and the
appeasement foreign policy of the
National Government, arguing that intervention was needed, in contrast to the Labour calls for pacifism. Despite the party's weaknesses, Sinclair gained a high profile as he sought to recall the
Midlothian Campaign and once more revitalise the Liberals as the party of a strong foreign policy. In 1940, they joined Churchill's wartime coalition government, with Sinclair serving as
Secretary of State for Air, the last British Liberal to hold Cabinet rank office for seventy years. However, it was a sign of the party's lack of importance that they were not included in the
War Cabinet; some leading party members founded
Radical Action, a group which called for liberal candidates to break the
war-time electoral pact. At the
1945 general election, Sinclair and many of his colleagues lost their seats to both Conservatives and Labour and the party returned just 12 MPs to Westminster, but this was just the beginning of the decline. In
1950, the general election saw the Liberals return just nine MPs. Another
general election was called in 1951 and the Liberals were left with just six MPs and all but one of them were aided by the fact that the Conservatives refrained from fielding candidates in those constituencies. 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
Scotland and
Wales clung to their Liberal traditions, whilst in two English towns,
Bolton and
Huddersfield, local Liberals and Conservatives agreed to each contest only one of the town's two seats.
Jo Grimond, for example, who became
Leader of the Liberal Party in 1956, was MP for the remote
Orkney and Shetland islands. Under his leadership a Liberal revival began, marked by the
Orpington by-election of March 1962 which was won by
Eric Lubbock. There, the Liberals won a seat in the London suburbs for the first time since 1935. 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,
Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberals regained the status of a serious third force in British politics, polling up to 20% of the vote, but unable to break the duopoly of Labour and Conservative and win more than fourteen seats in the Commons. An additional problem was competition in the Liberal heartlands in Scotland and Wales from the
Scottish National Party and
Plaid Cymru who both grew as electoral forces from the 1960s onwards. Although
Emlyn Hooson held on to the seat of Montgomeryshire, upon
Clement Davies death in 1962, the party lost five Welsh seats between 1950 and 1966. In September 1966, the
Welsh Liberal Party formed their own state party, moving the Liberal Party into a fully federal structure. In local elections,
Liverpool remained a Liberal stronghold, with the party taking the plurality of seats on the
elections to the new Liverpool Metropolitan Borough Council in 1973. On 26 July 1973, the party won two by-elections on the same day, in the
Isle of Ely (with
Clement Freud), and
Ripon (with
David Austick). In the
February 1974 general election, the Conservative government of
Edward Heath won a plurality of votes cast, but the Labour Party gained a plurality of seats. The Conservatives were unable to form a government due to the
Ulster Unionist MPs refusing to support the Conservatives following the Northern Ireland
Sunningdale Agreement. The Liberals obtained 6.1 million votes, the most it would ever achieve, and now held the balance of power in the Commons. Conservatives offered Thorpe the
Home Office if he would join a coalition government with Heath. Thorpe was personally in favour of it, but the party insisted it would only agree pending a clear government commitment to introducing
proportional representation (PR) and a change of prime minister. The former was unacceptable to Heath's cabinet and the latter to Heath personally, so the talks collapsed. Instead, a minority Labour government was formed under
Harold Wilson but with no formal support from Thorpe. In the
October 1974 general election, the Liberals total vote slipped back slightly (and declined in each of the next three) and the Labour government won a wafer-thin majority. Thorpe was subsequently
forced to resign after allegations that he attempted to have his
homosexual lover murdered by a hitman. The party's new leader,
David Steel, negotiated the
Lib–Lab pact with Wilson's successor as prime minister,
James Callaghan. According to this pact, the Liberals would support the government in crucial votes in exchange for some influence over policy. The agreement lasted from 1977 to 1978, but proved mostly fruitless, for two reasons: the Liberals' key demand of PR was rejected by most Labour MPs, whilst the contacts between Liberal spokespersons and Labour ministers often proved detrimental, such as between Treasury spokesperson
John Pardoe and
Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who were mutually antagonistic.
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,
Shirley Williams and
Bill Rodgers 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!". However, the Alliance was overtaken in the polls by the Tories in the aftermath of the
Falkland Islands War and at the
1983 general election the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide, with Labour once again forming the opposition. While the SDP–Liberal Alliance came close to Labour in terms of votes (a share of more than 25%), it only had 23 MPs compared to Labour's 209. The Alliance's support was spread out across the country, and was not concentrated in enough areas to translate into seats. 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
Liberal Democrats in October 1989. Over two-thirds of Liberal members joined the merged party, along with all sitting MPs. Steel and SDP leader
Robert Maclennan served briefly as interim leaders of the merged party. 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. Only one of the twelve Liberal candidates in 2024 achieved 5% or more of the votes, resulting in all bar that one losing their deposits. == Ideology ==