A Short History of the Liberal Party Also by Chris Cook * THE AGE OF ALIGNMENT: ELECTORAL POLITICS IN BRITAIN, 1922–29 * SOURCES IN BRITISH POLITICAL HISTORY, 1900–51 (6 vols, with Philip Jones et al.) THE SLUMP: BRITAIN IN THE GREAT DEPRESSION (with John Stevenson) BY-ELECTIONS IN BRITISH POLITICS (ed. with John Ramsden) * EUROPEAN POLITICAL FACTS OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY (with John Paxton) * BRITISH HISTORICAL FACTS, 1830–1900 (with Brendan Keith) * THE POLITICS OF REAPPRAISAL, 1918–39 (ed. with Gillian Peele) * CRISIS AND CONTROVERSY: ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF A.J.P. TAYLOR (ed. with Alan Sked) POST-WAR BRITAIN: A POLITICAL HISTORY (with Alan Sked) THE LONGMAN HANDBOOK OF MODERN BRITISH HISTORY, 1714–2001 (with John Stevenson) THE LABOUR PARTY (ed. with Ian Taylor) * AFRICAN POLITICAL FACTS SINCE 1945 (with David Killingray) THE LONGMAN COMPANION TO BRITAIN SINCE 1945 (with John Stevenson) THE LONGMAN HANDBOOK OF MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY, 1763–1996 (with David Waller) WHAT HAPPENED WHERE (with Diccon Bewes) * A DICTIONARY OF HISTORICAL TERMS THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO BRITAIN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 1815–1914 THE ROUTLEDGE GUIDE TO BRITISH POLITICAL ARCHIVES THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO EUROPEAN HISTORY SINCE 1763 (with John Stevenson) THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO WORLD HISTORY SINCE 1914 (with John Stevenson) * Also published by Palgrave A Short History of the Liberal Party The Road back to Power Chris Cook © Christopher Cook 1976, 1984, 1989, 1993, 1998, 2002, 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 7th edition 2010 978-0-230-21043-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition 1976 Second edition 1984 Third edition 1989 Fourth edition 1993 Fifth edition 1998 Sixth edition 2002 This edition published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-0-230-21044-8 ISBN 978-1-137-05607-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137056078 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Contents Introduction and Acknowledgements vii 1 The Liberal Tradition 1 2 Liberalism in Eclipse 19 3 The Liberals in Opposition: 1900–1906 30 4 The Liberal Ascendancy: 1906–1910 41 5 The Crisis of Liberalism: 1910–1914 51 6 Liberals at War: 1914–1918 62 7 A Party Divided: 1918–1923 76 8 Revival and Decline: 1923–1926 90 9 Lloyd George Again: 1926–1931 105 10 Dissension and Decline: 1931–1945 117 11 A Party in the Wilderness: 1945–1956 129 12 The Sound of Gunfire: 1956–1967 136 13 The Thorpe Leadership: 1967–1976 147 14 Pacts and Alliances: 1976–1983 163 15 A Tale of Two Leaders: 1983–1987 175 16 Merger Most Foul: 1987–1988 188 17 A New Agenda: 1988–1992 201 18 Voting for Change: 1992–1997 213 19 Living with Labour: 1997–2001 238 20 An Effective Opposition: 2001–2005 260 21 From Kennedy to Clegg: 2005–2010 279 22 Voting for Deadlock: The General Election of May 2010 309 23 Consenting Adults: The Liberal–Conservative Coalition 317 vi A Short History of the Liberal Party Appendix I Major Holders of Liberal Party Office, 1900–1988 327 II Major Holders of Liberal Democrat Office, 1988–2010 330 III The Liberal Vote, 1918–2010 331 IV Liberal By-Election Victories since 1945 332 V Liberal Democrat Seats (after May 2010) 333 VI The Continuing Liberal Party 335 Bibliographical Note 336 Notes 341 Index 356 Introduction and Acknowledgements This volume attempts a relatively short survey of the fortunes of the Liberal Party and its successor, the Liberal Democrats, during the period since 1900. Since the history of the party during these years must be seen in the context of the Victorian era, the first two chapters of the book are devoted to a brief survey of the main events of that period. No person writing on the history of the Liberal Party can fail to be indebted to the important studies produced by Roy Douglas and Trevor Wilson.* This book incorporates new material and more recent published studies, but its original debt to both authors remains high. In producing a short survey, many episodes have necessarily to be passed over briefly. In particular, the halcyon years of Liberalism from 1906 to 1914, together with the First World War, have been only briefly surveyed here, for they have both been extensively written about elsewhere. For other periods (such as 1945 to 1956) the story is short because very little of lasting importance happened to the depleted Liberal ranks. This book has been written in the hope that students both of history and of politics will find it of use. In addition, in the changed political climate in Britain, it is hoped that the facts and figures given here on the fortunes of the Liberal Democrats since their birth in 1988 and their recent performance in the May 2010 general election will be of relevance both to the specialist and to the general reader. Much of the research for the seventh edition of this book was done at the London School of Economics. A particular debt is owed to colleagues and friends there who helped at various stages in its production. Much of the typing for the current edition of this book was done with unfailing energy and kindness by Linda Hollingworth. I must also thank James Robinson and John Stevenson for their help and support in preparing this edition. Finally, my continued thanks are due to the publishers, Palgrave Macmillan, for encouraging a seventh edition of this book – over thirty years after the original edition first appeared. * See R. Douglas, The History of the Liberal Party, 1895–1970 (1971) and T. Wilson, The Downfall of the Liberal Party (1966). For the Victorian period, the brilliant study by John Vincent, The Formation of the Liberal Party, 1857–1868 (1966), is indispensable. vii 1 The Liberal Tradition Over a century has now passed since the Liberal electoral landslide of 1906. Likewise over ninety years have gone by since Lloyd George supplanted Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916. For over eighty years, since the electoral debacle of October 1924, the Liberal Party has been the Cinderella of British politics. During this period the party has endured repeated dissension and decline. Yet despite the oft-repeated forecasts of politicians and historians, the party still remains. Its fighting spirit is still very much in evidence. In 1962, with a sensational by-election victory in suburban Orpington, the party achieved a major, if temporary, revival. Again, in 1973, a remarkable series of electoral victories brought the party into the forefront of British politics. In the subsequent general election of February 1974 the party polled over 6 million votes. In the 1980s, the Alliance of Liberal and Social Democrats in the June 1987 election preceded the birth in March 1988 of the Social and Liberal Democratic Party. Under the leadership of Ashdown and Kennedy the new party grew in strength. After the election of May 2010 it was back in government. It is with the varying fortunes of the party since 1900 that this book is concerned. But the fate of the party in this period can only be seen in perspective against the background of Victorian politics in which the Liberal Party grew up so successfully. In the confused and changing period of British politics between the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867 the Liberal Party of the Victorian era gradually took shape. However, there is no single satisfactory moment when the Liberal Party can be said to have been born. The nearest is, perhaps June 1859. On this occasion, at the famous meeting in Willis’s rooms, the Whig, Peelite and Radical leaders in Parliament combined together to oust the minority Government of Disraeli and Derby. However, although 1859 marks an important stage in the evolution of the party, the new government of Palmerston, which included for 1 2 A Short History of the Liberal Party the first time both Gladstone and Lord John Russell and which survived until Palmerston’s death in October 1865, was less a ‘Liberal’ ministry than a reconstituted Whig Government. The decisive date at which the Victorian Liberal Party came of age was 1868. In the general election of that year, following the Second Reform Bill, a definite Liberal victory heralded the formation of Gladstone’s first administration. The Parliamentary Liberal Party which slowly took shape in the decade after 1859 was almost unrecognisable from the unified, disciplined parties of the twentieth century. It was less a party in the modern sense than a loose alliance of groups of many shades of political opinion and widely differing social background. From the beginning, the Liberal Party was an uneasy coalition. The most divergent shades of opinion within the Liberal ranks were represented by the Whigs and the Radicals. It was this division which constituted the most obvious potential split within the political coalition that made up mid-nineteenth-century Liberalism. The division of Whigs and Radicals was one of both social background and political ideology. The great Whig family groupings – such names as Portland, Argyll and Devonshire – formed the traditional aristocratic core of the party. The Liberalism of these great landowners was much more the product of tradition, loyalty and history rather than of any very specific programme or set of principles. However, despite their innate conservatism, the Whig grandees played a crucial part in nineteenth- century Liberalism – even after successive Reform Acts in 1832 and 1867 had reduced their influence in the Commons. Their importance lay neither in their numbers (although they formed a large and important group in the House of Lords) nor in their immense wealth, but rather in their domination of the key posts in Liberal ministries. It was the Whigs much more than the Radicals who held the vital offices in Gladstone’s Cabinet. Their political programme was extremely limited. Such interest as they possessed in moderate reform rapidly waned in the field of parliamentary and electoral reform. Here, their own political vested interests were deeply affected, since any measure of reform would inevitably strike at Whig influence in the surviving small boroughs. Within the Liberal ranks the Whigs constituted an exclusive caste in the upper reaches of political society. Thus the leadership of Lord John Russell, despite his close association with parliamentary reform, was acceptable partly because he came from the same social stratum as the Grosvenors, Cavendishes and Fitzwilliams. Gladstone, on the other hand, represented a break with the past. Socially, he always remained outside the powerful inner circle of Whig society which Palmerston had successfully manipulated. Politically,