History of the Party: Part One. The Foundations of the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party was formed on 6 June 1859, when Whigs, Peelites and Radicals met at Willis's Rooms in St. James Street, London, to unite in opposition to the Conservatives. The Liberals governed Britain for most of the following sixty years, benefiting from the extensions of the franchise in 1867 and 1885; Prime Ministers Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George dominated British politics during this period. The Liberal government of 1906-15, one of the great reforming administrations of the twentieth century, broke the power of the House of Lords and laid the foundations of the modern welfare state.
The Post War Decline. The strains of fighting the First World War, however, left the Liberal Party divided and demoralised. Throughout the 1920s factions led by Asquith and Lloyd George fought each other rather than the Conservative and Labour Parties. The party's grassroots organisation fell apart, allowing the Labour Party to capture the votes of the new working class and women voters enfranchised in 1918. The Liberals reunited to fight the 1929 general election on a radical platform of Keynesian economics, but were by then too firmly established as the third party to achieve much influence in government. They split again in the 1930s and continued to decline until the mid-1950s. In 1957 there were only five Liberal MPs and just 110 constituencies had been contested by the party at the previous general election. The Slow Road to Recovery. Revival came with the election of Jo Grimond as party leader in 1956. His vision and youthful appeal were well suited to the burgeoning television coverage of politics. In 1958 the Liberal Party won its first by-election for 30 years, at Torrington in Devon, and in 1962, Eric Lubbock (now Lord Avebury) won the sensational by-election victory of Orpington. Many commentators speculated that the Liberals would make a substantial breakthrough at the next general election. Unfortunately, the party was hampered by organisational difficulties and progress was slow, with a loss of votes and seats under Wilson's Labour government. Revival came once more in the 1970s, with Jeremy Thorpe as leader, peaking in the two general elections of 1974, with 19% and 18% of the vote.One reason for the revival in Liberal fortunes was the development of community politics, in which Liberal activists campaigned intensively to empower local communities, and win council seats. This strategy was formally adopted by the party in 1970 and was most successful in Liverpool. Although Liberals found it difficult to translate success in local government into parliamentary seats, David Alton's by-election victory in Edge Hill in 1979 showed that it could be done. The Alliance.Following Labour's defeat in the 1979 election, the internecine strife and growing success of the left within the party alienated many MPs and members. Moderate Labour leaders such as Shirley Williams had worked with the Liberal Party during the referendum on membership of the European Community, and the Lib-Lab Pact which kept Labour in power in 197778. On 26 March 1981 a number of them broke away from Labour to found the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The new party attracted members of both the Labour and Conservative parties and also brought many people into politics for the first time. The Liberal Party and SDP formed an Alliance later the same year, agreeing to fight elections on a common platform with joint candidates. The Alliance's political impact was immediate, winning a string of by-election victories and topping the opinion polls for months. The two parties won 25% of the vote in the 1983 general election, the best third-party performance since 1929. Labour won just 27% of the vote, but 209 MPs, compared to 23 for the Alliance.The Merger. The Liberal-SDP Alliance struggled to maintain its early momentum, however, and its vote share dropped to 23% in the 1987 general election. The Liberal leader David Steel immediately proposed a merger of the two parties, and following lengthy negotiations and all-member ballots, on 3 March 1988 (the legal 'vesting day' was 8 March) the Liberal Democrats came into existence. As a result of a fully democratic, one member one vote election, Paddy Ashdown MP was elected Leader of the new Party in July 1988 and an all-member ballot in October 1989 adopted the name Liberal Democrats (Lib Dem) as the common name of the Party. Roy Jenkins (Lord Jenkins of Hillhead) led the party in the House of Lords, until late 1997, when he retired and was replaced by Bill Rodgers (Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank). The first two years of the new party's existence were difficult ones. A minority of members of both the SDP and the Liberal Party refused to join the Liberal Democrats and stood against it at by-elections. The Conservative victory at Richmond in February 1989 (where William Hague was first elected to Parliament) was due entirely to the split in the centre-party vote between the SDP and the Liberal Democrats. In the 1989 European elections the Liberal Democrats finished fourth behind the Greens. Regaining Lost Ground. However, the successful Conference in September 1989 marked a turning point with morale, finances and membership recovering steadily thereafter. In 1990 the Liberal Democrats re-established themselves on the political scene with David Bellotti winning the Eastbourne by-election, overturning a substantial Tory majority.The Ribble Valley by-election in March 1991 saw Michael Carr win the formerly conservative seat with a swing of 24.7%, and in November 1991, the Party completed the hat trick with an impressive victory in the Kincardine & Deeside by-election, where the Government's unpopular health reforms helped Nicol Stephen to an 8,000 majority over the Tories. Further success came in the May 1991 local elections. Displaying a growing ability to concentrate votes in areas of strength, the Liberal Democrats gained 520 seats and took outright control of 17 councils - a triumph of grass roots campaigning. In the 1992 general election the party won 17.8% of the vote and 20 seats. Paddy Ashdown was consistently described in opinion polls as the most popular party leader and the party's policies, especially its pledge to raise income tax to invest extra resources in education, were widely praised. History of the Party: Part Two |
