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Decline of the Liberal party
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This refers to the decline of the Liberal Party in Britain in the Late 19th Century and the early 20th Century. In particular the 1906 election which saw a triumph for the party has been selected as the point to assess its decline. The Liberal Party had been one of the dominant forces in British politics in the 19th century. But after the end of the First World War it faced a decline it failed to recover from. The historiographical debate on this has tended to focus on whether one could see the decline beginning before the war. This is what this essay seeks to discuss. The issue of the decline of the Liberal party is complex and subsumes a vast part of late 19th and early 20th century history. This question asks whether the party was in decline before 1906 which is a rather strange way of viewing the politics relating to the Liberal party. 1906 ostensibly marked the triumph of the Liberal party in the election of that year under its largely forgotten leader Henry Campbell Bannerman where it won 401 seats to the Conservatives' 157. So the idea of decline is not in this context an obvious thing to consider. It is when looking with an eye to the post war era that the consideration of the decline of the Liberal party pre 1914 and indeed before1906 comes to the fore. 1918 saw the Aquithian Liberal party reduced to 57 whist David Lloyd George's section who supported the coalition government secured 133 (but it is important to note that these seats were uncontested by the Conservatives). 1922 saw Labour win 142 seats to the Liberal's 116 and after this the gap widened. The inter-war years saw the end of the Liberal party as the one of the two dominant forces in British politics, a position that was assumed by the Labour Party. It is in this context that historians have sought to discover at what stage the decline of the Liberal party began. I would assert that this question complicates an understanding of the politics of this sweeping period. For it ignores a fundamental development that transformed British politics: the fourth reform act of 1918. The Liberal party of 1906 was in a rather different political arena to the one of 20years later. The era of universal adult manhood suffrage and the same process that was ongoing for women added 4.5 million male voters in 1918 compared to their number in 1910. The case I seek to assert is that the Liberal party successfully reformed in the 1890s and 1900s retaining its position as one of the two main parties of government in Great Britain. This means it was not fundamentally in decline before 1906, although it did have serious problems at times. But that its success was best suited to the franchise produced with the reform acts of 1867 and 1884. The trends of the late 19th and early 20th century and the development of the Liberal party meant that it was likely to face a serious challenge if universal manhood suffrage was passed. To understand the party of 1906 one first needs to consider how this party differed to that of earlier. The party that existed for most of William Gladstone's political career was rather different and one of 1906 had undergone serious change, which had helped to maintain its electoral popularity. Gladstone's party had in effect three parts to it by the later stages of his career. There were the Liberals, the aristocratic Whigs and the radicals. It needs to be stressed that Gladstone was in favour of aristocratic government and until 1892 his cabinets had a strong aristocratic scent to them. For example that his cabinet of 12 of 1880 had 5 Earls, a Duke and a Marquis! But this belied the gradual tension that had been growing within the party. Gladstone had been able appeal to vast array of voters and politicians who saw the part of his governing ideas that linked to their own. The Employers' Liability Act of 1880 and 1881 Irish Land Act were the sorts of action the radical MPs wished for. Yet Gladstone's tactic had been to ally the party around one particular cause: in 1866 reform, in 1868 Irish Reform and his coming to support Home Rule in 1885. But the radical parts of his party were not satisfied by this.
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