1910-1929
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Liberal Governments of 1905-15
The Liberal government which took office as a minority administration in December 1905, before securing an overwhelming popular endorsement at the General Election of January 1906, remained in power until May 1915.
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Rainbow Circle
The Rainbow Circle was a dining club which comprised a group of progressive politicians who met between 1894-1920.
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Edwin Montagu, 1879-1924
Few of the young men swept into Parliament by the Liberal landslide in 1906 endured as meteoric a rise and fall as Montagu. By the age of thirty-eight he was Secretary of State for India, introducing sweeping reforms to the government of the subcontinent. Yet he was forced to resign in 1922 after a bitter…
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Sir Donald Maclean, 1864-1932
Sir Donald Maclean had greatness thrust upon him. Until 1918, everything in his career suggested that he was living a useful public life which would one day merit an obituary notice in The Times, but would hardly bring him into the first rank of politics – yet he was to play a critical and unexpected…
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Isaac Foot, 1880-1960
Isaac Foot was born in Plymouth, Devon on 23 February 1880, the fifth child of Isaac and Eliza, nee Ryder. His father was a carpenter and undertaker, who, as a young man, had migrated from Horrabridge, Devon, the family home for at least three centuries, to Plymouth, building his own home at 20, Notte Street.…
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Graham Wallas, 1858-1932
Graham Wallas was born in Sunderland on 31 May 1858, the son of an Evangelical clergyman of the Church of England who later became Rector of Shobrooke in Devon, where the young Wallas was brought up. He went to public school at Shrewsbury and thence to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he read Greats. Wallas…
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Sir Archibald Sinclair (Viscount Thurso), 1890-1970
Archibald Sinclair was the Liberal leader from 1935 to 1945. He was a leading figure in British politics in that period, first as an outspoken critic of appeasement, and then as a minister during the war. For Liberals, his importance lay in his belief in the possibility of a Liberal revival, which was crucial in…
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Herbert Samuel (Viscount Samuel), 1870-1963
Herbert Samuel was a leading figure in the Liberal Party for over fifty years, from its zenith before the First World War to the nadir of its fortunes in the mid-1950s. With Sinclair, he was the last independent Liberal to serve in the Cabinet. A respected statesman, formidable mediator and administrator, and notable political thinker,…