Biography
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Charles James Fox, 1749-1806
[…]His first years as an MP were marked by a conservative, even reactionary, attitude. […. What] marked his shift to support the Whigs and reform of the system of government were, first, the Royal Marriage Bill, and then the American War of Independence. […] When the Royal Marriage Bill attempted to restrict, at George III’s…
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Clement Davies, 1884-1962
[…]rom his boyhood Clement Davies had been fascinated by political life. He was approached as a possible Liberal candidate as early as 1910, but did not consent to stand for Parliament until 1927 when he was chosen as the Liberal candidate for his native Montgomeryshire. Seen initially as an avid radical and a stalwart supporter…
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Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 1836-1908
There have been four Liberals at the head of clearly Liberal governments – Gladstone, Rosebery, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith. Three of them are well-known names. Yet of the four, ‘CB’ was far and away the best party leader. […]
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Christopher Addison (Lord Addison), 1869-1951
When in November 1918 Lloyd George promised to make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in, it fell to Christopher Addison to formulate and carry out the policy through which homes would be provided for the men returning from the Great War. The Housing and Town Planning Act of 1919, under which local authorities…
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Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse, 1864-1929
Leonard Trelawney Hobhouse, born at Liskeard, Cornwall on 8 September 1864, came from a long line of Anglican clerics. His father, the Venerable Reginald Hobhouse, was Rector of St Ive, near Liskeard, a position he had obtained through his political connections with Sir Robert Peel. His mother was a Trelawney from the prominent West Country…
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John Atkinson Hobson, 1858-1940
John Atkinson Hobson, the economic writer and radical journalist most associated (along with L. T. Hobhouse) with Edwardian New Liberalism was born in Derby on 6 July 1858, the second son of William and Josephine (ne Atkinson) Hobson. William Hobson was the proprietor of the Derbyshire Advertiser, to which his son later contributed, and was…
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Joseph Hume, 1777-1855
Joseph Hume was a Scottish radical who devoted his political career to championing the principles of retrenchment. He was born near Montrose, Forfarshire in January 1777, the first son of James Hume. Hume’s father, master of a small fishing ship, died when he was nine and the family was forced to fall back on the…
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John Maynard Keynes (Lord Keynes), 1883-1946
Maynard Keynes was an active Liberal as well as one of the most important liberal writers of the twentieth century. He revolutionised economics, creating the case for deficit spending to stimulate employment which became the basis of government economic policy throughout the Western world for almost four decades. He helped to found the international economic…
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Michael Meadowcroft, 1942-
Michael Meadowcroft was Liberal MP for Leeds West from 1983 to 1987, confounding sceptics to win a solidly inner-city seat by using the community politics approach which he had helped to develop over the preceding fifteen years. He was the main, indeed very nearly the only, philosopher of applied Liberalism within the old Liberal Party…