Liberals, Europe and the people

June 30, 2025 / 18:00

Lady Violet Room, National Liberal Club

1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE

The Liberals were the first party to argue for British participation in the European Common Market, in 1956. Support for membership of the European Economic Community was one the main drivers behind the formation of the SDP in 1981. Since the two parties merged, Britain’s destiny as part of the European Union has been a core value for the Liberal Democrats.

The British people have twice been asked to decide whether they should be ‘in or out’ of Europe. In 1975, Jeremy Thorpe and other leading Liberals played a key role in the successful ‘Yes to Europe’ campaign and seized the opportunity to build the party’s profile. They and social democrats in the Labour Party enjoyed working together and saw the potential for future collaboration.

In 2016, the Liberal Democrats were the strongest supporters of the Remain campaign in the Brexit referendum. Two days after the result, the party leader Tim Farron promised to fight the next election on the basis that the UK would be better off inside the EU. Later, the party enthusiastically backed the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign for a second referendum on the final Brexit deal.

Discuss the Liberals’ and Liberal Democrats’ involvement in cross-party campaigns for Europe with Dr Robert Saunders (Queen Mary, University of London and author, Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain), Morgan Jones (author of a forthcoming book on the post-2016 People’s Vote campaign) and Dr Nicholas Alderton (Welsh historian and author, Deputy Editor, Journal of Liberal History).

Those unable to attend in person will be able to view the meeting via Zoom; to register, click here. Note: registration will close at 17:45 on Monday 30 June. For those attending in person, there is no need to register.

Breakthrough: the Liberal Democrat performance in the 2024 election

January 27, 2025 / 18:00

David Lloyd George Room, National Liberal Club

1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE

The outcome of the general election on 4 July 2024 was extraordinary. Compared to the 2019 election, the Liberal Democrats’ share of the vote rose by less than 1 per cent, to 12.2 per cent, but the number of MPs jumped from 11 (plus 4 by-election gains) to 72, the highest number since 1923.

Highly effective targeting of campaigning resources and a narrowly focused message, combined with an unprecedented collapse in the Conservative vote and a high degree of tactical voting by anti-Tory voters meant that, for the first time ever, the first-past-the-post electoral system did not seriously disadvantage the party. With 10.9% of the total number of MPs, the discrepancy between Liberal votes and seats is the smallest since 1910. Traditional areas of strength in south-west and northern England and northern Scotland lost in 2015 were regained, and joined by new seats in East Anglia and, especially, in southern England.

Lloyd George, Herbert Samuel and Palestine: background and legacy

July 25, 2024 / 18:30

National Liberal Club

1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE.

What role did Liberals play in the Middle East settlement after the First World War?

In 1917, the Lloyd George Coalition Government announced its support for the establishment of a ‘national home for the Jewish people’ in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. This was the ‘Balfour Declaration’, named after Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour.

After the defeat and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the new League of Nations established a mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, and Britain governed the region until 1948. The first High Commissioner was Herbert Samuel, a former Liberal MP and minister, and later (1929–35) leader of the Liberal Party. He held the High Commissioner post from 1920 to 1925.

Discuss these topics with Dr Peter Shambrook, an independent scholar and historical consultant to the Balfour Project, which works to advance equal rights for all in Palestine/Israel. He is the author of Policy of Deceit: Britain and Palestine, 1914–1939 (2023). Chair: Layla Moran MP, Liberal Democrat spokesperson for foreign affairs.

The 1847 Financial Crisis and the Irish Famine

January 29, 2024 / 18:30

Lady Violet Room, National Liberal Club

1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE

The Irish famine of the 1840s remains the worst humanitarian crisis in the United Kingdom’s history. Within six years of the arrival of the potato blight in Ireland in 1845, more than a quarter of its people had died or emigrated.

Despite this, Lord John Russell’s Whig government decided in spring 1847 – long before the famine ended – to cut Treasury spending on public relief efforts. The move is generally attributed by economic historians to the pervasive influence of ‘laissez-faire’ ideas on Russell and his colleagues. But they also faced a deepening financial crisis, which severely limited the government’s options. The Bank Charter Act of 1844 required all bank notes issued by the Bank of England to be fully backed by gold. A major harvest failure in Ireland and England the previous year had led to large price increases and trade deficits, which had in turn caused a sharp drain of gold reserves from the Bank of England in March and April 1847. The Bank responded by lifting the discount rate at which it would lend money to other banks. This led to a drastic curtailment of available commercial credit and contributed to the collapse of numerous businesses in the autumn.

By October 1847, Russell and his cabinet faced a choice: between suspending the Bank Charter Act to permit the Bank of England to discount more freely and to issue banknotes in greater volume, or sticking to economic orthodoxy. They also had to tread carefully through the two crises because the government lacked a parliamentary majority.

Dr Charles Read (Faculty of History, University of Cambridge and author of The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain’s Financial Crisis (2022)) and Liam Kennedy (Emeritus Professor of History at Queen’s University, Belfast) discuss the Russell government’s response to the 1847 financial crisis and the Irish Famine.

The Strange Death of Liberal England Revisited

July 10, 2023 / 18:30

Lounge, National Liberal Club

1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE

George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England, published in 1935, became one of the most influential accounts of the Liberal Party’s demise as a party of government. Dangerfield claimed that by ‘the end of 1913 Liberal England was reduced to ashes’ by three forms of political turbulence and upheaval: the threat of civil war in Ireland; the campaign for women’s suffrage; and an unprecedented wave of strikes.

But in recent decades many historians have taken issue with Dangerfield’s thesis and some point out that liberal values, and the Liberal Party, endured in the inter-war years and after.

Vernon Bogdanor (Research Professor at the Centre for British Politics and Government at King’s College London and author of The Strange Survival of Liberal Britain: Politics and Power Before the First World War) and Richard Toye (Professor of History at the University of Exeter)  discuss Liberal politics in the early twentieth century. Chair: Anne Perkins (journalist and historian).