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In 1910, David Lloyd George, who was serving as chancellor of the exchequer in the Liberal government, opined that: 'Wales had been solid for disestablishment for 40 years' (The Times, 18 Jan. 1910, p.12). According to Lloyd George, this aspiration had been thwarted by the political reality that: 'if a Bill went up to the House of Lords it would not have the slightest chance of getting through'. At its core, the quest for the disestablishment of the Anglican church in Wales was viewed as an unprecedented constitutional and political change. It threatened to dismember one of the pillars of the English state and thereby sever a church/state relationship which, it was argued, predated parliament itself. This article will address the democratic deficit in Wales where the desire of the electorate had been repeatedly frustrated over decades, and the way disestablishment legislation would eventually be enacted through the provisions of the Parliament Act 1911. The final ignominy was that the delay inherent in the new parliamentary process would jeopardise the disestablishment that it had enabled, and this was evident in the first years of the Great War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nineteenth and early twentieth century Liberal Party has been well served by British political historians. By contrast, research on the post‐1945 Liberal Party and Liberal Democrats has become a specialised field, with strong empirical foundations (including in biographies and political science work) but few connections with the larger narratives that historians tell about postwar Britain. This article explores how the story of the 'long Liberal revival' from the late 1950s to the 2010–15 coalition might be reintegrated with contemporary historiography, including debates about deindustrialisation, class dealignment and the rise of 'popular individualism'. It argues that careful attention to the nature and limits of Liberals' political agency can help us understand the changing meaning and significance of third‐party politics in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article inspects the nature of the Scottish National Party and its place in the breakdown of the two-party system across the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s. This is achieved through an examination of the SNP's approach in the small city of Dundee, where the party enjoyed a sustained period of success. It highlights the commonalities between the SNP and the Liberals in the 1970s and SDP-Liberal Alliance in the 1980s. The Nationalists adopted a similar third-party role in Dundee, centring their approach on their moderate politics rather than solely on the issue of self-government. The party's effectiveness in pursuing this approach allowed it to hold on to the Dundee East constituency from 1974 to 1987, until ideological changes affecting the national party made it increasingly impossible to hold firm to this strategy. Nonetheless, this study makes clear that the rise of Scottish Nationalism was a part of a process of British-wide political change, and should not be understood in isolation from the rest of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The victorious conclusion of the war, coupled with a great democratising reform for the peace, created a sense of expectation that the parliament elected in December 1918 could not more starkly have disappointed. There was widespread shock at the overnight transformation of party politics, and general disorientation and speculation. To the central criticism that the 1918 Reform Act had produced a deeply unrepresentative, and therefore undemocratic, house of commons, came complaints that the legislature had become merely an appendage of the executive, and parliamentary government had been supplanted by party government. Many opined that the authority of the house of commons had been undermined. This essay considers how the implications of the act were envisaged, and how they were experienced and reported. It will look at the legislature that resulted, its members, and how they adapted to, and changed, its procedures and conventions. Finally, it will reflect on the politics of the impact of the Reform Act, on the parties, on their policies, and on a new political environment that had been created. Through their writings at the time and their reflections subsequently, those who were members, and those who were observers, of parliament testified as to how they felt the house of commons had changed as a result of the impact of the 1918 Reform Act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 7 December 1916, in a dramatic coup, Lloyd George supplanted Asquith and became prime minister. This marked the death of a great party and has generated huge controversy. For long, Lloyd George was condemned as the culprit but latterly his reputation has risen sharply. Asquith and Lloyd George came from very different wings of the party, imperialist and Little Englander. Asquith seemed the supreme insider, Lloyd George a supreme Welsh outsider. However in peacetime government, they formed a tremendous partnership. Their close association continued to the formation of the first coalition in May 1915. Then serious division came over military conscription, with Lloyd George moving towards his old foes, the Unionists. As minister for munitions, then secretary for war, he became publicly very critical of the conduct of the war. A great conflict arose over his demand for a new war committee. This was directed against the generals: he did not wish to become prime minister. It looked as if a compromise was possible. On 3 December 1916 Asquith agreed to such a committee but, fatally, reversed his view the next day, Crucial was his misjudgment of the Unionist leaders, especially Balfour. On 6 December the king asked Lloyd George to form a government. Asquith seriously exaggerated his own strength while Lloyd George now had growing Unionist support, the backing of Labour and of a majority of Liberal MPs mobilised by Addison. So Asquith fell and a governmental revolution followed - a new small war cabinet, a cabinet secretariat under Hankey, a secretariat of private advisors in the 'Garden Suburb' and an inexorable move towards prime ministerial (or quasi-presidential) government. In May 1918, the 'Maurice debate' saw the Liberals divided into pro- and anti-government factions; they were crushed at the subsequent general election. The party was thereafter haunted by December 1916 and responsibility was bitterly contested. Yet it should be remembered that before 7 December 1916, the two Liberal leaders formed a dynamic and commanding partnership, which changed British politics profoundly and irreversibly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Dadabhai Naoroji's and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree's contribution to politically partisan ideologies on Indian empire as London MPs and reform advocates late in the nineteenth century. Exploring politically nuanced, cultural definitions of racial difference, this article reveals how their participation in British parliamentary and press debate on Indian nationalism adhered to distinct liberal and conservative imperial political conceptions of race and governance during this period. Beyond an analysis of Naoroji and the Indian National Congress's relationship with British liberalism, this essay explores Bhownaggree's contribution to a sustained conservative imperial tradition. This article postulates that Edmund Burke's separation from a liberal imperial rationality and a British Tory critique of liberalism informed a nineteenth-century conservative governing justification in India predicated on conciliating organic national racial difference. As Naoroji's devotion, as a Liberal MP for Central Finsbury (1892–95), to a liberal civilising mission informed an advocacy of political self-governance in Britain and India, Bhownaggree's pursuit of female and technical education reform while Conservative MP for Bethnal Green N.E. (1895–1905) represented a conservative espousal of racial difference. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

All three main parties at the 2010 British election attempted to describe themselves as 'progressive'. While this term has generally been reserved for left-of-centre politics, such claims compel some re-examination in order to establish whether the term still has any meaning or analytical value. The author's earlier study of the progressive tradition during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century located it in a range of organisations, and especially in the shifting boundary between the Liberal and Labour Parties. Progressivism in this period was characterised by profound commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-sectionalism, combined with an empirical approach to the possible benefits of state intervention in the economy, and an open and fluid attitude to organisational affiliations. Progressive principles have enjoyed little success in recent years, especially with respect to the Iraq War and government support of the City's sectional interests. While these defeats do not in themselves signify the disappearance of progressive principles or even the progressive tradition, which are clearly manifest in many contemporary movements, the constellation of beliefs that characterised 'progressivism', together with its underlying moral purpose, has disappeared, as has the specific political context that gave rise to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much historical debate about whether or not there was a ‘political consensus’ in Britain in the postwar decades. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to what politicians said about ‘consensus’ at the time and what this indicated about the nature of political argument. This article shows that ‘consensus’ and similar terms (such as ‘the middle way’) were in use from the 1940s, but it does not assume that consensus existed just because some contemporaries asserted that it did. Rather, it examines how differing interpretations of consensus were invoked in political debate in order to advance a range of partisan agendas. It further shows how right-wing Conservatives from the late 1960s sought both to attack the consensus rhetorically and to reach out (in Keith Joseph’s phrase) to ‘the common ground’ that New Right policies supposedly represented. It concludes that Thatcher, as Conservative leader and Prime Minister, did not abandon the structure of consensus rhetoric so much as repopulate it with exclusively ‘national’ terms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a 'provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania'. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early- and mid-Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the 'People's Charter'. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the 'Birmingham school'. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the 'Manchester school' and economic liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1965, British political parties have radically, and repeatedly, changed the ways in which they choose their leaders. In this article, I explain how and why these changes occurred and assess the consequences of the 'new' selection procedures adopted by four 'mainstream' parties: Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats. In the first section, following Sjoblom and Stark, I outline a theoretical framework which purports to explain the criteria used by parties in parliamentary systems when choosing their leaders. I then examine the four parties in turn and consider two questions. First, how and why has the process of selecting British party leaders changed over time; and secondly, to what extent, and why, have the 'new' selection procedures adopted since 1965 produced different outcomes, resulting in the election of leaders who would not have been chosen had the decision rested with their party's elites and/or MPs alone? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Liberal Party has seen a clear shift towards social liberalism as its main philosophy since 1890 and has seen a series of defections to the Conservative Party, there has been a classical liberal element within the party throughout this period. Moreover, even when such people have left the Party they have typically not gone over to conservatism but have rather entered the world of think tanks and independent thought. Others have stayed in the party. This reflects the way that supporters of the ideas have rejected conservative social attitudes and have worked out a radical market position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the appearances as caricatures of William Frederick Cody nicknamed "Buffalo Bill" in the British short-lived satirical magazine "Moonshine" from April to November 1887. Several of the drawings used his image to satirize Gladstone or the G.O.M., the opposition Liberal Party leader or to embody the American influence being opposed. However, it is stated that the May 21 issue reflected the great impact that Cody and his Wild West persona had on Great Britain in 1887.

The fate of the Liberal Party in West Yorkshire is seen by some as a microcosm of its inevitable decline nationally, because of its inability to appeal to the newly enfranchised working class with its values too close to the Conservatives. Dutton has contended conversely that West Yorkshire Liberalism demonstrated the varied pattern of the Party's development in different regions, and the way in which its association with the Conservatives significantly affected the latter. Using newly available sources, this article takes up Dutton's argument and extends it to look at the fate of the Liberals who did not work with other parties, and what their persistence implies about the fundamental driving forces of politics in West Yorkshire and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the British Liberal party after the end of the First World War posed crucial questions for those with Liberal beliefs and convictions. Should they, despite compelling evidence to the contrary, pin their hopes on the eventual revival of an apparently moribund party? Alternatively, was their best hope to build upon the liberal tendencies within other existing and more powerful parties? In the historical exploration of this dilemma the role of the Liberal National (later National Liberal) party has received comparatively little attention. Historians have tended to accept the verdict of mainstream Liberals that the Liberal Nationals were nothing but Conservatives in disguise. This article seeks to explore these issues through a detailed study of the career of Herbert Janes, active in the politics of Luton for more than two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Liberal revival of the early 1960s gave the party good reason for optimism about the 1964 general election. Financially and organisationally the Liberal party was in reasonable shape; there had been a vigorous outpouring of policy; and in Jo Grimond there was a leader who, in terms of personal appeal, could match his rivals. But in spite of receiving more votes and a greater share of the poll than at any previous post-war election, the party failed decisively to increase its presence at Westminster. The electoral system, jibes about 'wasted votes' and, arguably, 'policy theft' by the other parties may be cited by way of explanation. Moreover the Liberals under Grimond had in certain respects appeared closer to Labour than ever before; certainly his reforming demeanour was similar to that of Harold Wilson. In the aftermath of the election, Grimond resurrected his earlier call for a realignment of the centre-left - this time more tentatively and to little effect. His party had not done quite well enough to hold the balance in the Commons. The false dawn was not inevitable, though. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The secret quest for a Liberal-Labour pact conducted by Paddy Ashdown and Tony Blair in the mid-1990s, carrying with it the eventual possibility of a major realignment on the left of British politics, was foreshadowed by developments within the two parties during Jo Grimond's leadership of the Liberals (1956–67). Grimond's hopes were raised first by the concurrent crusade of Hugh Gaitskell to modernise the Labour party and then by the parliamentary predicament which confronted Gaitskell's successor, Harold Wilson, following the General Election of 1964. Though hopes of a pact, let alone realignment, proved abortive, the possibility of both was taken more seriously than has hitherto been appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the collapse of the Liberal party was the most dramatic feature of British urban politics in the modern period. Description of the suburban political culture and parliamentary elections in south Manchester, England; Discussion of the local politics and suburban progressivism in the region; Significance of education, nonconformity and popular politics on the collapse of the Liberal party; Analysis of the role of class, meritocracy and suburban aspirations in south Manchester's politics.

The author discusses the popularity of stump oratory in British election history. Political figure William E. Gladstone marshalled Liberal Party supporters in Great Britain to win the 1880 election. Stump oratory refers to taking the campaign to the voters through major political addresses. It was untried in Great Britain prior to 1879 and had toppled the whole Conservative majority and brought the Liberals into power.