Liberal Party, UK It emerged in the mid-nineteenth century when Liberals combined with Whigs and Radicals to dominate government for much of the next sixty years. Its 1905–15 government implemented an extensive pro-gramme of social legislation, which formed the basis of the British
welfare state. The party was divided in World War I, first in 1914 over whether or not to fight, and more importantly in 1916 over conscription, when many Liberals argued that it was wrong for a democracy to compel people to fight. It led to a crucial decline in (mostly pacifist) Nonconformist support, which had formed the backbone of its electoral support before the war.
In addition to this collapse of the Liberals' moral world-view, in the years after the war their economic credo was increasingly difficult to maintain, as a return to Free Trade from wartime controls proved illusory and even unpopular given the current economic difficulties. Furthermore, the party was challenged by an increasingly coherent and well-organized Labour Party, and by a
Conservative Party which managed to attract much support from previously staunchly Liberal sections of the population. Between Labour and the Conservatives, by the 1920s the party had effectively become ideologically redundant. Finally, the Liberals' fortunes were shattered by a series of divisions, beginning with the
Coupon Election of 1918, in which they were divided between official Liberals led by
Asquith, and those Liberals led by
Lloyd George who were elected with Conservative backing.
The support of the divided Liberals thus declined markedly during the 1920s, most notably between the 1923 and 1924 general elections, when the number of Liberal seats in the Commons was reduced from 159 to 40. The party formally reunited under Lloyd George in 1926, but he never again enjoyed unqualified support from the rank and file. As a result, his efforts at ideological innovation, most notably the adoption of
Keynesianism in the ‘Yellow Book’ of 1929, led to a slight electoral gain that year, but failed to translate into renewal at grass roots, or long term electoral recovery.
A further split occurred in 1930–1, when Lloyd George wanted to support the minority Labour government under
MacDonald, whilst John
Simon favoured the Conservatives in their response to the Great
Depression. Despite the objections of Lloyd George, who was ill at the time, in August 1931, the deputy leader, Herbert
Samuel, led the party into a coalition with the Conservatives in the
National Government. Samuel replaced Lloyd George as leader in November 1931. Samuel resigned following the O'Hara agreements, though some so-called Liberal Nationals, led by John
Simon, continued to support the government. By 1945, the Liberal Nationals had become virtually indistinguishable from the conservatives. The Liberal tradition was therefore continued by those led by Samuel, who was succeeded by Archibald Sinclair in 1935. It also supported Churchill's wartime coalition.
After World War II, the party's support declined even further under Clement Davies's leadership (1945–56). It was reduced to six seats in the 1951 and 1955 elections. It did, however, maintain some support in Scotland, Wales, and the south-west of England. Joseph Grimond became leader in 1956, and although he did not gain any more seats in 1959, the party made a recovery in the 1960s. However, despite winning 18 per cent of the votes in 1964 and 16 per cent in 1966, the ‘first-past-the-post’ electoral system meant that it gained only nine seats in 1964, and twelve in 1966. Under Jeremy Thorpe, the party refused Edward
Heath's offer of a coalition in 1974, but in 1977–8 under David Steel's leadership, it supported
Callaghan's Labour government in the ‘Lib-Lab Pact’. In 1981, the Liberals formed an Alliance with the
Social Democratic Party, and the two parties merged in 1988 to form the Social and
Liberal Democrats.
tariff reform (UK)
