A History of the Liberal Party since 1900

David Dutton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780230361898
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350307001
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Once teetering on the brink of oblivion, the British Liberal Party has again re-established itself as a major force in national and local politics. David Dutton's approachable study offers new insights into the waning, near death and ultimate recovery of the Liberal Party from 1900 to the present day. Discussions of politics, philosophy and performance are all skilfully interwoven as Dutton demonstrates how the party has become, once more, a formidable player on the political stage.

The second edition of this established text offers:
- An entirely new chapter on the coalition government
- A chronology of key events
- Numerous suggestions for further reading

This lively survey of British Liberalism from the era of Campbell-Bannerman to that of Nick Clegg reviews existing literature while offering its own distinctive perspective on one of the most compelling of political dramas.

1 Strange Death or Edwardian Summer, 1902–16?

Recovery 1902–05

The period between the end of the Boer War in 1902 and the General Election of January 1906 saw a transformation in the Liberal Party’s fortunes. As a general rule it is governments that lose elections rather than oppositions that win them, but on this occasion the actions of the Unionists not only weakened their own party but also contributed directly to the strengthening of the Liberals by providing the latter with the factor they had patently lacked, at least since Gladstone’s retirement – unity. The 1902 Education Act, with its marked bias towards Anglican schools, rode roughshod over the sensibilities of nonconformist opinion and greatly assisted the process of Liberal reunification. The Licensing Act of 1904, an apparent sop to the Unionists’ supporters in the brewing trade, had very much the same effect. Organized Labour was alienated by the government’s failure to introduce legislation to reverse the Taff Vale judgment of 1902 and by the scandal surrounding the exploitation of Chinese workers in the mines of the South African Rand. Even more important was Joseph Chamberlain’s celebrated speech in Birmingham on 15 May 1903, in which the Colonial Secretary called for the ending of the prevailing system of free trade and the substitution of a regime of imperial preference. Chamberlain’s initiative started a debate that was to dominate the last two and a half years of Balfour’s government, thereby doing serious damage to the Unionist cause. Divided now between tariff reformers, free traders and Balfourite retaliationists, who would only impose tariffs in response to comparable action by foreign states, the government never again possessed the internal unity and cohesion necessary for an effective administration. Unionism was starkly revealed as an uneasy coalition of forces whose unity was overly dependent on the single issue of opposition to Irish Home Rule. But Chamberlain’s move also exercised a decisive influence over the Liberal Party, by calling into question the sacred creed of free trade, one of the few issues on which Liberals were fully united. Chamberlain was unequivocal about the advantages he believed the introduction of tariff reform would bring about: ‘You have an opportunity,’ he told his Unionist supporters. ‘You will never have it again.’¹ But his words might just as well have been directed to the Liberal opposition. Campbell-Bannerman commented: ‘This reckless – criminal – escapade of Joe’s is the great event of our time. It is playing old Harry with all party relations ... All the old war-horses about me ... are snorting with excitement. We are in for a great time.’²

The changed political climate was soon apparent. Public opinion had begun to move strongly against the Unionists by 1904. Seven seats were lost in by-elections that year and a further seven in 1905. As early as October 1904, Henry Lucy noted ‘a rare consensus of opinion’ that the next General Election would result in a victory for the Liberal Party.³ Seldom in British electoral history can a governing party have been more pessimistic about its prospects at a forthcoming poll. St John Brodrick, the Secretary of State for India, feared that ‘we shall get hideously beaten’, while Chamberlain himself privately predicted a combined Liberal–Irish majority of around 120 seats.⁴ Finally, with his government visibly breaking up around him, Balfour resigned on 4 December 1905 and King Edward VII invited Campbell-Bannerman to form a minority Liberal administration. This task was successfully accomplished, in itself no small achievement, as the new Prime Minister had to overcome an attempt by three leading Liberal Imperialists to determine by themselves some of the key cabinet appointments. Asquith, Grey and Haldane had earlier concluded the socalled Relugas Compact, by which they determined not to serve under Campbell-Bannerman unless the latter agreed to go to the House of Lords, leaving Asquith as Leader of the Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In addition, Grey was to be Foreign Secretary and Haldane Lord Chancellor. Campbell-Bannerman stood his ground and formed a cabinet on his own terms which left him in the Commons and firmly in control of the situation. It was an important moment, revealing that the new Prime Minister was made of sterner stuff than many of his colleagues believed. Then, on 16 December, Campbell-Bannerman announced the dissolution of Parliament for an election in January. Though Chamberlain’s proposals had never become official Unionist policy, everyone recognized that the election would amount to a national referendum on the competing merits of tariff reform and free trade.

Given the seminal importance, particularly in terms of welfare legislation, of the Liberal government which would be endorsed by this General Election, it is necessary to determine the basis on which it was elected. The Liberal Party’s campaign focused above all on the defence of free trade. Ninety-eight per cent of Liberal candidates included this issue in their election addresses. Liberals argued that, while Chamberlain’s proposals might help a few specialist producers, they would in general damage the economy and in particular lead to an increase in the price of food. To this extent the party waged an essentially reactive campaign. Free trade was ‘the great umbrella; fighting negatively, the Liberals got every disaffected element underneath it’.⁵ Much of the Liberal campaign looked back to the nineteenth century, rather than forward into the twentieth, with Campbell-Bannerman standing for ‘a policy covered by the oldest and best of political watchwords, “Peace, Retrenchment and Reform” ’.⁶ But it was also striking that more than two-thirds of Liberal candidates included social reform among their priorities. As the historian of the election notes, ‘although the need to repeal or amend the Education and Licensing Acts of 1902 and 1904 came first in many Liberal minds, pledges made to other social reforms amounted to a recognisable and extensive commitment’.⁷ Poor Law reform and pensions were particularly prominent. Quite how such reforms might be financed was, however, another matter. The fact that Campbell-Bannerman also promised a massive reduction in public expenditure did not suggest that the new government had thought through a clear programme, let alone costed it.

The 1906 General Election

The outcome of the election exceeded all Liberal expectations. The party’s strength in the new House of Commons stood at 400 MPs, with the Unionists reduced to just 157. It was the biggest anti- Conservative majority for more than 80 years, and very few areas of the United Kingdom could now be described as Unionist strongholds. The Liberal tally included 224 gains and just eight losses, giving them a majority of 130 over all other parties combined. In practice, because the Labour contingent of 30 MPs and the 83 Irish Nationalists were hardly likely to vote with the Unionists, the government’s effective majority over the opposition stood at an impregnable 356 seats. Surveying the picture in Lancashire, where the Liberals had done particularly well, the Manchester Guardian only slightly exaggerated what had happened:

A candidate had only to be a Free-trader to get in, whether he was known or unknown, semi-Unionist or thorough Home Ruler, Protestant or Catholic, entertaining or dull. He had only to be a Protectionist to lose all chance of getting in, though he spoke with the tongues of men and of angels, though he was a good employer to many electors, or had led the House of Commons, or fought in the Crimea.⁸

Yet the dimensions of this Liberal triumph must be subjected to closer analysis. The sheer scale of the victory in terms of Commons seats, far beyond what the party had achieved in its Gladstonian heyday, has only added to the mystery of what now followed. Within two decades of this unprecedented triumph, Liberalism would be confined to the sidelines of British politics. But it is clear that the electoral system, which in future years would work consistently to the party’s disadvantage, had exaggerated its performance in 1906. In terms of the popular vote, the gap between the two leading parties remained relatively narrow: 49.5 per cent for the Liberals against 43 per cent for the Unionists. On a simple system of proportional representation the Liberals would have secured 285 seats and the Unionists 236. Put another way, it took almost two and a half times as many votes to return a Unionist to Westminster as it did a Liberal. The margin of the Liberal victory reflected the fact that Liberal votes had been distributed to the party’s greatest advantage, with a marked swing in those constituencies where Unionist seats could be captured. Against this background it becomes easier to see some merit in Alan Sykes’ judgement that ‘The 1906 success was not the continuation of Victorian supremacy but the aberration from the emerging pattern of Liberal weakness, caused primarily by the renewal of Conservative divisions and their adoption of deeply unpopular policies which reignited old Liberal passions for one last time.’⁹

Campbell-Bannerman’s Government

For all that, the Liberal Party had, statistically at least, secured a stunning triumph. Most of this book chronicles the party’s (generally forlorn) attempts to secure political power. But in 1906 the Liberal government held the reality of power in its hands. The question now was the use to which that power would be put. It was by any criterion an able administration. Campbell-Bannerman could deploy the talents of three future Prime Ministers – Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill – as well as those of such accomplished political practitioners as Edward Grey, R. B. Haldane and John Morley. By its end in 1915, the government could look back on a distinguished legislative record, whose main components would gain in lustre as the twentieth century progressed. But ultimate achievement should not be confused with original intent. ‘With its connotations of social justice, state intervention and alliance with Labour,’ writes Peter Clarke, ‘ [progressivism] aptly describes the basis of Liberal policy after 1906.’¹⁰ This is surely a misreading of the evidence. The government arrived in office without having worked out a clear or defined programme of legislation it wished to enact. Its members had been more successful over the preceding three years in identifying what they opposed than in delineating what it was they stood for. The government’s first burst of legislative energy thus gave a misleading impression. The Trades Disputes Act of 1906 overturned the Taff Vale judgment and restored to trade unions the legal immunities in relation to strike action they had presumed they enjoyed prior to the House of Lords’ ruling. Significantly, the government in this case dropped its own more cautious bill and accepted an alternative drawn up by the parliamentary Labour Party. A new Workmen’s Compensation Act, a School Meals Act, based on a private member’s bill introduced by a Labour MP, and Medical Inspections of Children quickly followed.

This all gave a somewhat exaggerated view of the closeness of the Liberal-Labour alliance and of the extent to which the progressive spirit had permeated government thinking. In the last days of the Unionist government, Lord Crewe had warned Campbell-Bannerman that ‘more than ever before the Liberal party was ... [on trial] as an engine for securing social reforms’.¹¹ But the Prime Minister’s attitude and that of most of his leading ministers was more cautious. They recognized that measures to improve the condition of the working classes might well alienate the middle-class support that the Liberals could ill afford to lose. Campbell-Bannerman was therefore resolved to strike a balance, placing party unity before dynamic policies of reform. ‘If we have two sops for Labour,’ he told Asquith, ‘we ought to have some other Bills of general interest to balance them.’¹² These ‘other Bills’, and in particular Education and Licensing measures to satisfy the traditional Liberal nonconformist vote, were at the forefront of the government’s priorities. The other key measure of its first year in office, a bill designed to end the anomaly of ‘plural voting’, also seemed to hark back to an earlier, albeit unfinished, agenda of constitutional reform.

There was, then, a certain ‘confusion of aims’ in the government’s strategy.¹³ This was compounded by a seemingly intractable constitutional obstacle that had confronted earlier Liberal governments – the obstructive powers of the Unionist-dominated House of Lords. In the immediate wake of electoral defeat in January 1906, the Unionist leader, Arthur Balfour, conscious of his party’s continuing strength in the upper chamber, had made the cavalier statement that his party ‘should still control, whether in power or opposition, the destinies of this great Empire’. In practice, the Unionist leadership behaved somewhat more circumspectly than these words implied, weighing up the likely popular reaction to each individual piece of proposed legislation before deciding what to do. As a result, while the Liberals’ Education and Plural Voting Bills were wrecked, the Trades Disputes Act was allowed to pass on to the statute book with little resistance. In June 1907, Campbell-Bannerman moved a resolution that the Lords’ powers to reject or amend bills coming up from the Commons ‘should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail’. But granted that any legislative constitutional changes would themselves need to get through the upper house, it was by no means clear how this aspiration could be achieved.

The Liberals found little from which to draw comfort in 1907. The Irish Councils Bill, designed to devolve power to Irish local government, was badly mishandled and had to be withdrawn. With the ministry ‘apparently drifting into a period of futile and aimless endeavour’,¹⁴ the economic climate now began to show a marked deterioration, with unemployment climbing alarmingly. For Chamberlainites, these developments seemed to presage the imminent collapse of the government’s free-trade finances and gave an enormous boost to the cause of tariff reform within the Unionist ranks. Protective measures, it was argued, could safeguard Britishjobs. Election results suggested that the political tide was already moving against the government. As early as November 1906 the municipal elections witnessed heavy Unionist gains. Then, in 1907, the government lost three by-elections (one to Labour – ‘the most deadly blow the Liberal party has ever received at our hands’¹⁵ – one to the Unionists and one to an independent socialist candidate), followed by three more (all to Unionists) in the first three months of 1908. By that time it was clear that Campbell-Bannerman’s premiership was nearing its end. His first year in office had been marred by his wife’s illness and death; and during the second his own health began to collapse. In April 1908 he was obliged to resign and, too ill to leave 10 Downing Street, he died there before the month was over. During its brief lifetime his government had shown some creditable signs of reforming zeal, without suggesting any significant developments in the general scope of public policy. The one exception perhaps was Asquith’s 1907 Budget, which asserted the important principle of differential rates of taxation in raising that on unearned income to one shilling in the pound.

Asquith Takes Over

The governmental reorganization that followed Campbell-Bannerman’s resignation marked a distinct change in the balance of forces at the top of the Liberal Party. No one seriously questioned Asquith’s claim to the succession. But the new Prime Minister himself was not the key to the change. ‘His concept of progress was limited,’ writes Cameron Hazlehurst. ‘He gave intellectual assent to much of the new Liberalism; he gave it no passion or inspiration.’¹⁶ Lord Riddell offered a comparable contemporary assessment. Asquith was ‘really an old-fashioned Radical of the Manchester school, who [was] leading a heterogeneous band of followers’.¹⁷ Of greater significance was the promotion of David Lloyd George to the Treasury from the Board of Trade to fill the vacancy created by Asquith’s elevation and the appointment to Lloyd George’s old place of Winston Churchill, who joined the cabinet for the first time. These ministerial changes initiated the most constructive era in the history of the Liberal government and the period that provides the most telling evidence of the influence of New Liberal thinking within the party’s upper reaches. Lloyd George, in particular, seemed to recognize that, if his party was to thrive in the era of mass politics, it needed to respond to the problems generated by an industrial society. ‘L. G. is the only leading man who has the courage to attack the rich and powerful,’ declared Lord Riddell. ‘All other leading politicians deal with the stock political commodities, such as Home Rule, Disestablishment, Tariff Reform ... L. G. says what the mass of the people feel but cannot express.’¹⁸ Over a period of four years the government introduced old-age pensions (long promised by both leading parties), established labour exchanges and trade boards, created a National Insurance scheme to cover sickness, invalidity and unemployment, and passed a Miners’ Minimum Wages Act. Each measure combined caution in its specific immediate provisions with far greater long-term significance with regard to assumptions about the role of the state and its duties towards its citizens. But we should be hesitant to suggest that all this Liberal legislation necessarily led to a strengthening of the electoral relationship between the party and the working-class voter. Old-age pensions seem to have been well received. The rewards (5s. a week) were relatively small and the qualifying age (70) high, but the take-up was bigger than expecte...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Strange Death or Edwardian Summer, 1902–16?
• 2 The Liberal Civil War, 1916–35
• 3 So Few and So Futile, 1935–55
• 4 Two Steps Forward and One Back, 1955–79
• 5 A Cracked Mould and a New Beginning, 1979–2001
• 6 Right into Government, 2001–11
• Conclusion
• Chronology of Main Events
• Appendix 1: Liberal Performance at General Elections since 1900
• Appendix 2: Leaders of the Liberal (and Liberal Democrat) Party since 1900
• Notes
• Guide to Further Reading
• Index