1956-1976
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1959-74: years of Liberal revolution?
Introduction to this special issue on the Liberal postwar revival.
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Alliance, Liberals and the SDP
1971 – 1985: the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland was born in the midst of the Troubles, in April 1970. This article looks back at the party’s history and its relationships with the Liberal Party and the SDP.
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The Liberal predicament, 1945-64
How, despite the desperate state of their party, many Liberals kept the faith going at the nadir of the Liberal Party’s fortunes.
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Shirley Williams (Lady Williams), 1930-2021
As the by-election car cavalcade drove slowly through a council estate in Warrington, Shirley Williams, microphone in hand, was drumming up support for SDP candidate Roy Jenkins. Standing precariously on the front seat, her head and shoulders poking through the sun-roof, Williams was in her element. As she passed a broken-down car, its grease-stained owner…
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Roy Jenkins (Lord Jenkins), 1920-2003
Roy Jenkins played a significant role in developing and articulating a new progressive vision of social, political and constitutional change. His reforms at the Home Office helped to transform Britain into a more modern, more civilised society. He was a successful, if orthodox, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He played an important and consistent role in…
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Violet Bonham Carter (Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury), 1887-1969
Violet Bonham Carter was born in Hampstead on 15 April 1887 as Helen Violet Asquith, the daughter of Herbert Henry Asquith and his first wife Helen Melland. In 1891 Violet’s mother died of typhoid fever, and in 1894 Asquith married Margot Tennant. At the time of Violet’s birth, Asquith had just entered the House of Commons.…
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Jeremy Thorpe, 1929-2014
The infamy of Jeremy Thorpe’s downfall unfairly colours all else in his life. Thorpe was a stylish, progressive and popular politician. Under his leadership the Liberal Party won more votes than ever before or since at a general election and helped drive legislation taking Britain into the European Community through a divided Parliament. But the…
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Red Guard versus Old Guard? The influence of the Young Liberal movement on the Liberal Party in the 1960s and 1970s a witness seminar
In the 1960s and early 1970s the press coined the phrase the “Red Guard” to describe the radical politics of the youth wing of the Liberal Party. At the 1966 Party Conference in Brighton, the Red Guard sponsored an anti-NATO resolution. Over the next decade the YLs were active on a number of foreign policy…