Decline of the Liberal Party: Democracy & Division

• British Politics has been historically dominated by 2 Major Parties until 1900:

  • The Whigs (who became the Liberals)
  • The Tories (who became the Conservatives)
• The Tory (Conservative) Party believed in tradition & conservatism, they upheld (protected) the social class system and were staunch supporters of the monarchy & opposed new ideas
• The Whig (Liberal) Party upheld the constitutional monarchy, increasingly represented merchants & the growing industrial class, the abolition of slavery and free trade
• First Past the Post is an electoral system in which the candidate receiving the highest number of votes in constituency is returned to parliament & wins the election
• In 1936, George Dangerfield argued that the Liberal Party was doomed eve before WW1, due to the failure of liberalism to cope with the threat of Trade Union Strikes, suffragette militancy & problems in Northern Ireland
• In 1986, Historian George Bernstein drew attention to the failures of the party to adapt to more class-based voting habits (e.g. working class men were rejected from becoming MP's for the Liberal Party)
• However, most historians argue that the Liberals would have been able to adapt and survive had it not been for events after 1914 (the rise of New Liberalism with state intervention to support the vulnerable could've helped them maintain power)
• In 1966, Historian Trevor Wilson argued that the Liberal Party was healthy in 1914, but was run over by a 'rampant omnibus' (the War)
• One reason why the Liberal Party fell was due to the War and the illiberal measures the Party had to take during WW1
• Liberals had traditionally disliked excessive government interference but the War forced the Liberals to take illiberal measures, such as economic controls & conscription to avoid defeat
• David Lloyd George (who was in favour of the war's illiberal measures) ousted the more traditional Liberal Henry Herbert Asquith as Prime Minister of a coalition government in December 1916
• Many Liberals saw Lloyd George as a traitor to the Party and continued to support Asquith as Liberal Leader, ergo the Party was split and failed to reunite in time for the 1918 General Election
• The Maurice Debate in 1918 cemented the personal bitterness between Asquith & Lloyd George (another reason for why the Liberals fell was due to party division)
• General Maurice wrote a public letter that accused Lloyd George of lying to Parliament about the number of British Troops on the Western Front and Asquith led the attack on Lloyd George, but failed to oust him as Prime Minister
• Lloyd George was forced to rely on Conservative Support in what become known as "The Coupon Election" (another reason for why the Liberals fell)
• The Coupon was a letter issued by Lloyd George and Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law to parliamentary candidate who stood for the coalition
• Since 1900, the Conservatives had not won an election so felt they needed the prestige of the 'man who won the war' to boost their votes, whilst Lloyd George needed Conservative Support because so many Liberal MP's supported Asquith (strong divide in the Liberal Party)
• Another reason for the Decline of the Liberal Party was party legislation and the 1918 Representation of the People Act
• The 1918 Representation of the People Act meant all men over the age of 21 were allowed to vote, with no wealth or property restrictions
• The 1918 Representation of the People Act also allowed for some women to vote in a general election as a reward of wartime contribution
• Until 1928, there were several restriction on which women could vote, the most important was being aged 30 and owning property
• Despite these restrictions for women in the The 1918 Representation of the People Act, women now made up 43% of an electorate, that had trebled in size from 7.7 Million in 1910 to 21.4 Million in 1918
• Under the The 1918 Representation of the People Act, women now made up 43% of an electorate, that had trebled in size from 7.7 Million in 1910 to 21.4 Million in 1918
• Under the The 1918 Representation of the People Act, the working classes made up 80% of the electorate (this led to decline of the Liberal Party as this party didn't represent the working class)
• In the 1960's, Historian Henry Pelling argued that the Labour Party was bound to benefit from the franchise extension (The 1918 Representation of the People Act) due to a growing tribal working class identification with Party issues, something he referred to as 'Labourism'
• However, Duncan Tanner and Michael Hart's analysis of the electorate reveals only a small increase in the Working Class majority in 1918, from 76% to 80% (this was because residency restriction affected men of all classes rather than just manual workers)
• Historians such as Paul Adelman have explained the fall of the Liberals with a focus on mistakes made and problems that faced the Liberal Party after 1918
• The Asquith-Lloyd George split was never healed & in May 1920, Asquith Liberals voted to eject Lloyd George supporters from the Leamington Party Conference, due to Lloyd George's failure to convert the temporary coalition to a permanent anti-Labour Centre Party
• The 'Cash for Honours' (where titles were exchanged for political donations or direct cash payments to politicians) and the 'Chanak Incident' in Turkey in September 1922, led most Tories to reject the Coalition
• Lloyd George eventually resigned as Prime Minister in October 1922 (a month after the Chanak Incident)
• Lloyd George had amassed a huge political fund through the Sale of Honours, for example, a Knighthood could be exchanged for £10,000 (but he refused to share any of it with the Liberal Party)
• As Lloyd George didn't give the money for Honours to the Liberal Party, the Liberals lacked funding for local party machinery and couldn't find candidates at general elections in 1922, 1923 and 1924 (only gave the money when Asquith stepped down as leader in 1926)
• The First Past The Post (FPTP) System favoured a 2 Party contest, despite the sizeable electoral support, the Liberals failed to convert this into parliamentary sears and remained a small third party in the 1930's
• The Failure of the Liberals to explore a revision of the FPTP System made it very difficult for them in the 1920's: a system of Proportional Representation (percentage of votes equals percentage of seats) would have helped the party avoid a stratospheric decline