The Liberal Party

Abstract

The Liberal Party provides at once the confirmation and the denial of the view that Britain naturally has a two-party system. In its period of growth and greatness from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War, the Liberal Party functioned as the left wing of a two-party system. Breakaway parties, such as the Peelites or the Liberal Unionists, were duly absorbed into one wing or the other. Then, when the Labour Party emerged on the scene, the demise of the Liberal Party seemed to confirm the essentially dualistic character of British politics. During the 1930s, 1940s or early 1950s the persistence of the Liberal Party at a minor level was seen as the obstinate refusal of a dying party to accept that fate. The only outcome other than death allowed by the inexorable system was absorption into one of its two wings.