1895-1910
-
The slow death of Liberal Wales 1906 – 1979
The story of Liberalism in Wales 1906 – 1979.
-
The New Liberalism
The disaster of the 1895 election, when the Liberals lost almost a hundred seats, struck a mortal blow at Rosebery's leadership and pointed to the urgent need for a new direction. Although for some it was the party's abandonment of its historic principles of self-help, voluntaryism and constitutional reform that lay at fault, to others…
-
Sir Winston Churchill, 1874-1965
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire on 30 November 1874, the son of Lord Randolph Churchill and his American wife, Jennie. He was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst, and embarked on a military career which took him to India and Africa. He also began to make a name for himself as…
-
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…
-
David Lloyd-George (Earl Lloyd-George and Viscount Gwynedd), 1863-1945
[…]The pinnacle of Lloyd George’s career was the peace-making at Paris in the first half of 1919, leading to the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919. While rightly criticised in many aspects (such as the war guilt clause, the scale of reparations and many boundaries), Lloyd George tilted the settlement in a more…
-
Sir William Harcourt, 1827-1904
{…}It took Harcourt, like Gladstone, a long time to become a Liberal, but once this affiliation was decided, he became an active and prominent one. He did not completely fulfil his expected potential, being perhaps the classic case of the best Prime Minister we never had. But as a strong contender for another title, that…
-
Fighting Labour: the struggle for radical supremacy in Scotland 1885-1929
The Liberal Democrat History Group is holding its first meeting in Scotland as part of the fringe at the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ spring conference. The meeting will look back at the Liberal Party’s contribution to radical, progressive politics in Scotland and its struggle with Labour in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in…
-
“Methods of Barbarism” – Liberalism and the Boer War
“When is a war not a war?” asked the Liberal leader Campbell-Bannerman. “When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa.” One hundred years after the Boer War began, Professor Denis Judd (University of North London), author of The Boer War and Empire, reviewed the response of Liberalism to the War. Dr…
-
A Liberal in power
Review of Roy Jenkins, Asquith (Collins, 1964).