Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the early 19th century until the 1920s, and a third party of varying strength and importance up to 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party (the SDP) to form a new party which would become known as the Liberal Democrats.

Liberal decline

In the 1918 general election Lloyd George, "the Man who Won the War", led his coalition into another khaki election, and won a sweeping victory over the Asquithian Liberals and the newly-emerging Labour Party. Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Andrew 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. Asquith and most of his colleagues lost their seats. Lloyd George still claimed to be leading a Liberal government, but he was increasingly a prisoner of the Conservatives. In 1922 the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition in general, citing in particular the Chanak Crisis over Turkey and Lloyd George's corrupt sale of honours amongst other grievances, and Lloyd George was forced to resign. The Conservatives came back to power under Bonar Law and then Stanley Baldwin.

Related Topics:
1918 general election - Khaki election - Labour Party - Andrew Bonar Law - 1922 - Chanak Crisis - Turkey - Stanley Baldwin

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At the 1922 and 1923 elections the Liberals won barely a third of the vote and 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 ominously 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 about the prospect of a Labour government, but 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 get support from both Conservatives and Labour in crucial Commons divisions. But 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 expenses. It was a fatal error.

Related Topics:
1922 - 1923 - 1922 - 1923 - Stanley Baldwin

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Labour was determined to destroy the Liberals and become the sole party of the left. When 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 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).

Related Topics:
Ramsay MacDonald - Snap election in 1924 - Michael Foot - Tony Benn

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Asquith died in 1926 and the enigmatic figure of Lloyd George returned to the leadership and 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 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.

Related Topics:
1926 - 1929 general election - John Maynard Keynes - Celtic fringe - Alternative vote

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In 1931 MacDonald's government fell apart under the impact of the Great Depression, and the Liberals agreed to join his National Government, which was dominated by the Conservatives. Lloyd George however was ill and did not join himself. Soon, however, the Liberals faced another divisive crisis when it was proposed to fight the 1931 general election as a National Government and seek a mandate for tariffs. From outside the government Lloyd George called for the party to abandon the government completely in defence of free trade, but only a few MPs and candidates followed him, most of them related to him. Another group under Sir John Simon emerged who were prepared to continue their support for the government and take the Liberal places in the Cabinet if there were resignations. The third group under Sir Herbert Samuel pressed for the parties in government to fight the election on separate platforms. In doing so the bulk of Liberals remained supporting the government, but two distinct Liberal groups had emerged within this bulk - the National Liberals 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 35 MPs but proceeded to diverge even further after the election, with the National Liberals remaining supporters of the government throughout its life. There were to be a succession of discussions about them rejoining the Liberals but these usually founded on the issues of free trade and continued support for the National Government and came to little (though in 1946 the Liberal and National Liberal party organisations in London did merge).

Related Topics:
1931 - Great Depression - 1931 general election - Sir John Simon - Sir Herbert Samuel - National Liberals - 1946

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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 any way. 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. However over the next ten years there would be further defections as MPs deserted to either the National Liberals or Labour. There were however a few recruits, such as Clement Davies, who had deserted to the National Liberals in 1931 but now returned to the party during the Second World War and who would lead it after the war.

Related Topics:
1932 - Collective responsibility - Ottawa Agreement - Imperial Preference - 1935 general election - Independent Liberals - Clement Davies - 1931 - Second World War

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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 part on opposition to both the rise of Fascism in Europe and the appeasement foreign policy of the British 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.

Related Topics:
1935 - Sir Archibald Sinclair - Appeasement - Midlothian Campaign

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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. However it was a sign of the party's lack of importance that they were not included in the War Cabinet. At the 1945 general election, however, Sinclair and many of his colleagues lost their seats to both Conservatives and Labour. By 1951 there were only six MPs, all but one of them were aided by the Conservatives not putting up a candidate. In 1957 this total fell to five when one of their MPs died and the subsequent by-election was lost to the Labour Party, who fielded the former Liberal Deputy Leader Lady Megan Lloyd George as their candidate. The Liberal Party seemed close to extinction. During this low period, it was often joked that Liberal MP's could hold meetings in the back of one taxi.

Related Topics:
1940 - Secretary of State for Air - War Cabinet - 1945 general election - 1951 - 1957 - Lady Megan Lloyd George

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