1895-1910
1909 People’s Budget
The 1909 People's Budget was the Liberal Government's key weapon in instigating social reform and marked a final move away from the system of Gladstonian finance, which had seen the Liberals traditionally associated with retrenchment in government expenditure and an emphasis on self-help. With its radical plans to redistribute the burden of tax and finance…
Liberal Unionists
Gladstone’s decision to pursue a policy of Home Rule for Ireland in 1886 divided the Liberal Party to the core and prompted the departure of the Liberal Unionists, who subsequently formed a separate political party, under the leadership of the Marquess of Hartington.
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,…
William Ewart Gladstone, 1809-1898
As Roy Jenkins concluded in his masterly biography, ‘Mr Gladstone was almost as much the epitome of the Victorian age as the great Queen herself’. He was the political giant of his lifetime and even at the end of the twentieth century the principles and aspirations he brought to public life are still inherent in the…
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…
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…
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…
Hidden workers of the party
The professional Liberal agents, 1885-1910. To access this content, you must purchase Annual subscription (digital) – unwaged rate, Annual subscription (digital) – standard rate, Annual subscription (print plus digital) – overseas, Annual subscription (print plus digital), standard rate, UK or Annual subscription (print plus digital), unwaged rate, UK.
Asquith and the Liberal legacy
Assessment of Asquith’s record – in a lecture given to mark the centenary of the formation of Aquith’s administration. To access this content, you must purchase Annual subscription (digital) – unwaged rate, Annual subscription (digital) – standard rate, Annual subscription (print plus digital) – overseas, Annual subscription (print plus digital), standard rate, UK or Annual…
British Liberalism and Irish Nationalism
Review of Eugenio Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism, 1876-1906 (Cambridge University Press, 2007).