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The Historians and the Decline of the Liberal Party*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

J. A. Thompson
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Extract

The dramatic collapse of the Liberal party during the second decade of the twentieth century has long fascinated academic historians, but only in the past twenty years has it become one of their major preoccupations. Every history of modern Britain now has a discussion of the causes and course of the Liberal collapse, and the specialized literature on the subject is voluminous, much of it highly technical and sophisticated.

It is easy to see why the Liberal decline appeals to historians. It has personal drama: the contest between Herbert Asquith, “the last of the Romans,” and David Lloyd George, “the Welsh Wizard.” There is the larger drama associated with the collapse of a great party and the rise of another. There are the large silent “revolutions” historians have found behind the political changes: the rise to maturity of the working classes, the evolution of British capitalism, and a vast cultural shift ushered in with the First World War.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 65 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1990

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Walter L. Arnstein, Don M. Cregier, and John D. Fair, who read an earlier version of this article.

References

1 Twenty years ago it was possible to treat the question as a historical problem (Thompson, J. A., ed., The Collapse of the British Liberal Party: Fate or Self-Destruction? [Lexington, Mass., 1969])Google Scholar, because professional historians were already giving the subject close attention; but only one, Trevor Wilson, had written a full-length study on the Liberal collapse. For an excellent earlier review see Arnstein, Walter L., “Edwardian Politics: Turbulent Spring or Indian Summer?” in O'Day, Alan, ed., The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability 1900–1914 (London, 1979).Google Scholar

2 Of the last of these, Kenneth O. Morgan has written that “the decline of the Liberal Party has been popularly equated with the decline of a whole civilization, with the erosion of the Liberal ethic, of the optimism and the certainty of moral values which the tensions and disillusionments of British society since 1914 have so largely undermined. In a sense, the decline of Liberalism has been taken as a parable of the decline of modern Britain.” Cited in Sked, Alan and Cook, Chris, eds., Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A. J. P. Taylor (New York, 1976), p. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But Peter Stansky has suggested that “Britain in so many ways is a Liberal society that studies of the past of Liberalism and the Liberal party may, paradoxically, have more relevance to the present than studies of the Conservative party that outlasted it, or the Labour party that in some sense supplanted it” (Historical Journal 21 [March 1978]: 199Google Scholar). Clarke, Peter expresses a similar view in “Liberalism,” History Today 33 (1983): 42–45.Google Scholar

3 Wilson, Trevor, The Downfall of the Liberal Party 1914–1935 (London, 1966), p. 390.Google Scholar

4 The Economist 263 (June 20–26, 1987): 58–59.Google Scholar

5 In 1903 J. Ramsay MacDonald, secretary of the newly-formed Labour Representation Committee, and Herbert Gladstone, Liberal chief whip, negotiated a secret agreement in the hope of avoiding election clashes between Liberal and LRC candidates which would benefit the Conservatives. In most constituencies in which they stood, Labour candidates were given a clear run against the Conservatives; Labour candidates were encouraged in other constituencies to withdraw in favor of the Liberals. It should be noted, however, that the “alliance” was not renewed after the election of 1906. Thereafter, Labour did not formally cooperate with the Liberal party or see itself as the parliamentary partner of the Liberals.

6 The labels of Geoffrey Hosking and Anthony King. See their essay “The British Liberal Party, 1906–1914,” in Aydelotte, William O., ed., The History of Parliamentary Behavior (Princeton, N.J., 1977).Google Scholar

7 Lancashire and the New Liberalism (London, 1971).Google Scholar

8 The phrase and argument of Pelling, Henry (Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian Britain [London, 1968], p. 120Google Scholar). Among contemporary historians the inevitablist case is put most cogently by Pelling and another prominent Labor historian, Ross McKibbin.

9 Douglas, Roy, The History of the Liberal Party 1895–1970 (London, 1966), ch. 13.Google Scholar

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13 The Strange Death of Liberal England (New York, 1935), pp. 10, 299Google Scholar. Only 29 of Dangerfield's “fifty-three Labour representatives” were sponsored by the Labor party. The others were workingclass M.P.s. For a recent consideration of the Dangerfield thesis, see the articles in an issue of Albion (17, 4 [Winter 1985])Google Scholar which assess The Strange Death of Liberal England fifty years after it was first published.

14 Ibid., p. 72.

15 The British People 1746–1946 (London, 1938), p. 466.Google Scholar

16 The Decline and Fall of British Capitalism (New York, 1950).Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. xiv.

18 Ibid., p. 113.

19 Ibid., pp. 270–271. Of course Hutchison was a bad prophet, as even Marxist historians now concede. See, for example, Hobsbawm, Eric, Politics for a Rational Left: Political Writing 1977–1988 (London, 1989).Google Scholar

20 According to Chris Cook the Liberal revival at first owed little or nothing to its own strength but was dependent on the weakness — temporary as it proved — of its Conservative and Labour opponents. See his discussion of “The Liberal and Nationalist Revival,” in McKie, David and Cook, Chris, eds., The Decade of Disillusion: British Politics in the Sixties (London, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 The Downfall of the Liberal Party, pp. 18–19.

22 In a speech at Glasgow, 11 October 1906, cited in Clarke, , Lancashire and the New Liberalism, p. 394.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., ch.15, “Edwardian Progressivism.”

24 Ibid., p. 406.

25 Times Literary Supplement, 27 August 1976, p. 1044.Google Scholar

26 See Gilbert, Bentley B., “Lloyd George and the Historians,” Albion 2, 1 (Spring 1979): 74–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Brooks, David, “Lloyd George, For and Against,” The Historical Journal 24, 1 (March 1981): 223–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Brooks reviews studies of Lloyd George by Peter Rowland, Don M. Cregier, John Grigg, Michael G. Fry, and Kenneth O. Morgan from the standpoint of the position and prospect of the Liberal party before 1914.

27 Cited in White, Carolyn W., “The Strange Death of Liberal England in Its Time,” Albion 17, 4 (Winter 1985): 446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 For a discussion of the methods used to build some kind of picture of electoral politics from the partial and inexact evidence which survives, see Howarth, Janet, “The Liberal Revival In Northamptonshire, 1880–1895: A Case Study In Late Nineteenth Century Elections,” The Historical Journal 12, 1 (1969): 78–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wald, Kenneth D., “Class and the Vote Before the First World War,” British Journal of Political Science 8, 4 (October 1978): 441–457CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The historian finds a bewildering variety of descriptions about the political sympathies of the pre-war working class. Data is fuller for local elections, as Wald demonstrates, but few scholars share his confidence that local elections provide valuable insights about voter behavior in parliamentary elections.

29 The argument for the value of this technique is given by Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (New York, 1969), pp. 247–254Google Scholar and ff; for criticisms see Clarke, P. F., “Electoral Sociology of Modern Britain,” History 57 (February 1972): 52–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Wald, , “Class and the Vote Before the First World War,” pp. 444–45.Google Scholar

30 Clarke, P. F., “The Electoral Position of the Liberal and Labour Parties, 1910–1914,” English Historical Review 90 (October 1975)Google Scholar and Douglas, Roy, “Labour in Decline, 1910–14,” in Brown, Kenneth D., ed., Essays in Anti-Labour History (London, 1974)Google Scholar. For a balanced assessment of Labour's electoral position on the eve of the First World War see also Brown, Kenneth D., “The Edwardian Labour Party,” in Brown, K. D., ed., The First Labour Party (London, 1985).Google Scholar

31 Clarke, , “The Electoral Position of the Liberal and Labour Parties, 1910–1914,” p. 836.Google Scholar

32 The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford 1978), p. 255Google Scholar. For other discussions of the ideology of the new Liberalism see Weiler, Peter, The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain 1889–1914 (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Greenleaf, W. H., The British Political Tradition: The Ideological Heritage, 2 vols. (London, 1983), 1: 144–170Google Scholar; and Collini, Stefan, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England 1880–1914 (Cambridge 1979).Google Scholar

33 Emy, H. V., Liberals, Radicals, and Social Politics, 1892–1914 (Cambridge, England 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Murray, Bruce K., “The Politics Of The ‘People's Budget,’” The Historical Journal 16, 3 (September 1973): 555–570CrossRefGoogle Scholar and more fully in book form, The People's Budget, 1909–1910: Lloyd George and Liberal Politics (New York, 1980)Google Scholar. Murray looked forward to the budget of 1914, noting that it was intended to carry on the work begun in 1909.

35 Gilbert, Bentley Brinkcrhoff, David Lloyd George: A Political Life (Columbus, Ohio), p. 278.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 290. Lloyd George made this observation before the Welsh National Council on 10 October 1906. Gilbert suggests that Lloyd George did not take the Labour threat seriously, but Don M. Cregier strongly disagrees. See Cregier, , Bounder from Wales: Lloyd George's Career Before the First World War (Columbia, Missouri, 1976), pp. 90 and 96–98.Google Scholar

37 Churchill, , Liberalism And The Social Problem (London, 1919), p. 71.Google Scholar

38 Beer, Samuel H., Modern British Politics (London, 1965), p. 141Google Scholar. But others have questioned the workability of a strategy which defied class reality and, it was said, provoked the hostility of activists in both parties. See Howkins, Alun, “Edwardian Liberalism and Industrial Unrest: a class view of the decline of Liberalism,” History Workshop (Autumn 1977)Google Scholar, Petter, Martin, “The Progressive Alliance,” History 58 (February 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Powell, David, “The New Liberalism And The Rise Of Labour, 1886–1906,” The Historical Journal 29, 2 (June 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bernstein, George L., Liberalism and Liberal Politics in Edwardian England (Winchester, Mass. 1986)Google Scholar. According to Bernstein (p. 4), by 1909 most Liberals were using language derived from the new Liberalism, but “these were never the priorities of the rank and file.…Nor were the rank and file ever very comfortable with the progressive alliance, for they perceived the Labour Party to represent a class interest. Even more, they hated the socialists who were part of the political labour movement…because they asserted the necessary opposition of capital and labour.…The socialists were equally indifferent to the progressive alliance. At the same time, working people most often were indifferent, and occasionally even hostile, to Liberal social reforms.” For a discussion of the third paradox suggested by Bernstein (that the new Liberalism was not popular with many of the working class voters on whose behalf social reform measures were supposedly enacted), see the essay, “The Working Class and the Origins of the Welfare State,” in Pelling, , Popular Politics, pp. 1–18.Google Scholar

39 Gilbert, Bentley B., “David Lloyd George: The Reform of British Land-Holding and The Budget of 1914,” The Historical Journal 21, 1 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Liberals, Radicals, and Social Politics, pp. 94–103, 297–98, 280. See also Clarke, P. F., “The End of Laissez-Faire and the Politics of Cotton,” Historical Journal 15, 3 (September 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a similar view. But Searle, G. R. challenges this thesis and Emy's counting in “The Edwardian Liberal Party and Business,” English Historical Review 98 (January 1983)Google Scholar. He argues that ties between Liberalism and the business community remained tight, that “desertions” were few, and that the role played in the party's affairs by possessors of “disinterested intelligence” has been exaggerate.

41 Aydelotte, , The History of Parliamentary Behavior, pp. 135–158Google Scholar. Perhaps cohesion was maintained, as John D. Fair suggests, because it was Irish Home Rule and other Liberal-motivated issues of a traditional character which most profoundly dominated the behavior of M.P.s prior to the First World War. Newer socio-economic issues came to the fore only in the 1920s. See his article, “Party Voting Behavior In The British House of Commons 1886–1918,” Parliamentary History 5 (1986)Google Scholar, which is also based on an analysis of division lists.

42 McKibbin, , The Evolution of the Labour Party, p. 240.Google Scholar

43 Ibid., p. 244.

44 Ibid., p. 82.

45 Ibid., p. 84. See also Pelling, , Popular Politics, pp. 115–117.Google Scholar

46 McKibbin, , The Evolution of the Labour Party, p. 85Google Scholar. Pelling suggests that the number of elected Labour representatives increased from 56 in 1907 to 184 in 1913 (Popular Politics, p. 117). See also Kenneth Wald, “Class and the Vote Before the First World War,” for an analysis of local government voting in five English cities (Bradford, Brighton, Norwich, Reading, and Wolverhampton) between 1885 and 1910. According to Wald, to the extent that class affected the vote in local elections, it worked to the disadvantage of the Liberals. His findings support the argument that Liberalism declined due to the rise of class consciousness. But see Cook, Chris, “Labor and the Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1906–1914,” in Sked, and Cook, , Crisis And ControversyGoogle Scholar, who finds the Labor advance in municipal elections before 1914 not only unimpressive but often achieved in cooperation with Liberals against Conservatives. Cahill, Michael, “Labour In The Municipalities,” in Brown, K. D., The First Labour PartyGoogle Scholar, comes to a similar conclusion.

47 The franchise was restricted primarily by difficult residence requirements: of adult males, about 60% were on the registers at any one time, although only 12% were barred absolutely. The remainder moved residence too often or simply did not bother to register (see Blewett, Neal, “The Franchise in the United Kingdom, 1885–1918,” Past and Present 32 [December 1965]).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Matthew, H. C. G., McKibbin, R. I. and Kay, J. A., “The franchise factor in the rise of the Labour Party,” English Historical Review 91 (October 1976)Google Scholar. It was, arguably, a change induced by the war, but Labour historians believe war only hastened the inevitable. See Tanner's, Duncan “The Parliamentary Electoral System, the ‘Fourth’ Reform Act and the Rise of Labour in England and Wales,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 56 (November 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which he questions the assumption that working-class non-voters before 1914 were inherently Labour inclined.

49 Matthew, , McKibbin, and Kay, , “The Franchise Factor,” pp. 447–48.Google Scholar

50 Pelling, , Poplar Politics, p. 11Google Scholar

51 McKibbin, , The Evolution of the Labour Party, p. xiv.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., p. 86. But Kenneth Brown has pointed out in The First Labour Party (p. 4), that the proportion of trade unionists affiliated to Labour levelled off at around 50% between 1910 and 1912, and by 1914 it had fallen back to 38%, lower than it had been in 1903.

53 McKibbin, , The Evolution of the Labour Party, pp. 240, 243, 244Google Scholar. Pelling, , Popular Politics, pp. 119–120Google Scholar agrees: “the decline of Liberalism was not due…to the impact of the war upon Liberal values and upon the unity of the parliamentary Liberal Party. Rather it was the result of long-term social and economic changes.…” But see Hart, Michael, “The Liberals, the War, and the Franchise,” English Historical Review 97 (October 1982)Google Scholar, and Pugh's, Martin chapter, “The Impact Of The Great War On British Politics,” in The Making of Modern British Politics 1867–1939 (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar. Pugh writes (p. 181): “The potential for a governing party based on the working class had existed unrealized for decades, but there are no good grounds for thinking that Labour would have attained this status in the 1920s but for the decisions and blunders of 1914–18.”

54 See, for example, Bernstein, George L., “Liberalism and the Progressive Alliance in the Constituencies, 1900–1914: Three Case Studies,” The Historical Journal 26, 3 (September 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Clarke, P. F., “British Politics and Blackburn Politics,” The Historical Journal 12, 2 (1969)Google Scholar. With case studies of Norwich, Leeds, and Leicester Bernstein throws doubt on the effectiveness of the progressive alliance and the new Liberalism, but in Blackburn Clarke finds evidence that “the Progressive label was much more than an electoral ellipsis: it was the hallmark of a new synthesis in politics” (p. 327).

55 Socialists, Liberals and Labour: The Struggle for London 1885–1914 (London 1967)Google Scholar. But Clarke, (Lancashire, p. 401)Google Scholar, questions Thompson's conclusions and suggests that “What is in dispute is, not so much the claim that Liberalism was dying in London as the assumption that it must have been.”

56 Howe, , “Liberals, Lib-Labs and Independent Labour in North Gloucestershire, 1890–1914,” Midland History 11 (1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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58 Bentley, , The Climax of Liberal Politics: British Liberalism in Theory and Practice 1868–1918 (London 1987), pp. 141–42.Google Scholar

59 Defined as Northumberland and Durham plus Middlesborough, an area that returned twenty-five M.P.s.

60 Purdue, , “The Liberal and Labour Parties in North-East Politics 1900–14: The Struggle For Supremacy,” International Review Of Social History 26 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Perhaps for this reason, Morgan suggests, the Liberals were ill-equipped to meet Labour's challenge when the old society passed away after 1914.

62 Morgan, K. O., “The New Liberalism and the Challenge of Labour: The Welsh Experience, 1885–1929,” The Welsh History Review 6, 1 (June 1973)Google Scholar. In Scotland, too, Liberals were able to retain the support of the working-class voter before the First World War because Liberal issues still had appeal and the party was seen as the enemy of Tory landowners. See Fraser, W. Hamish, “The Labour Party in Scotland,” in Brown, K. D., The First Labour Party 1906–1914Google Scholar. It required the major changes of the war years, says Fraser, to create the necessary links between Labour politicians and the masses.

63 Gilbert, , David Lloyd George, p. 267.Google Scholar

64 Ibid., p. 10. “With a new Liberalism [Lloyd George] tried to revive what he saw was an expiring Liberal party. Yet his medicine may have helped to kill it.”

65 Ball, Stuart, Baldwin and the Conservative Party: The Crisis of 1929–1931 (New Haven, 1988), p. 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After the War, as Cowling, Maurice shows in The Impact of Labour 1920–1924: The Beginnings Of Modern British Politics (London, 1971)Google Scholar, the Conservatives sought, with some success, to frame the political debate in terms of “Resistance to Socialism.” In some postwar elections the Conservatives were only a minority, however, and gained office because the “progressives” were divided. Nor did the Conservatives offer only a defensive face. See Finlayson, Geoffrey, “The Changing Face of British Conservatism,” History Today 33 (October 1983)Google Scholar, and Fair, John D. and Hutcheson, John A. Jr., “British Conservatism in the Twentieth Century: An Emerging Ideological Tradition,” Albion 19, 4 (Winter 1987): 549–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 Sked, and Cook, , Crisis and Controversy, p. 63Google Scholar

67 Clarke, Peter, “Political History in the 1980s,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12, 1 (Summer 1981).Google Scholar

68 In The Climax of Liberal Politics, pp. x–xviii, Michael Bentley identifies five styles of argument (pietistic, ideological, economistic, sociological, and perceptual) applied in the study of British Liberalism.

69 As an American political scientist rightly observes, “It is doubtful that any other period of comparable length in British history witnessed as many profound changes in politics as did the first quarter of the twentieth century” (see Stephens, Hugh W., “Party Realignment in Britain, 1900–1915,” Social Science History 6, 1 [Winter, 1982], p. 35Google Scholar). The changes are identified and discussed in the article.

70 Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978).Google Scholar

71 Clarke's argument is developed with a contemporary application in mind by Ingle, Stephen in The British Party System (Oxford, 1987), pp. 166–67Google Scholar. Clarke also sets out the principles of social democracy in a chapter, “Liberals and Social Democrats in Historiographical Perspectives,” in Bogdanor, Vernon, ed., Liberal Party Politics (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar

72 Cited in Ingle, , British Party System, p. 221Google Scholar. For the context see Gilbert, , David Lloyd George, p. 290Google Scholar and Cregier, , Bounder from Wales, pp. 96–98Google Scholar

73 In 1906 Lloyd George did warn of a possible polarization of the progressive forces.

74 That promise, so alive in 1981 and 1983, and to a lesser degree even in the spring of 1987, faded after the election of 1987. Ironically, the Liberals themselves brought the “Liberal Party” officially to an end in 1988 when they became “Social and Liberal Democrats.”

75 Bentley, , The Climax of Liberal Politics, pp. 151–5Google Scholar