Abstract
Historians may differ about the prospects of the Liberal Party on the eve of the Great War, but the Liberals were in office, as they had been for nearly nine years. In municipal politics Liberalism was in retreat.1 On the other hand, many constituency parties, both in Scotland and in England, were expanding their membership in the immediate pre-war years.2 Compare this situation with what happened during the election which was held soon after the signing of the Armistice in December 1918. Although this election took place in somewhat unusual circumstances, it did, broadly speaking, establish the main lines of development for the entire inter-war period.
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Notes
This is the conclusion of Cook, C., ‘Labour and the Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1906–14’, in Sked, A. and Cook, C. (eds), Crisis and Controversy (London, 1976).
Many examples are given in Tanner, D., Political Change and the Labour Party 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1990)
See also Hutchison, I. G. C., A Political History of Scotland 1832–1924 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 231–2.
Ball, S. R., ‘Asquith’s Decline and the General Election of 1918’, Scottish Historical Review, 61 (1982), pp. 44–61.
Winter, J. M., Socialism and the Challenge of War: ideas and politics in Britain 1912–18 (London, 1974).
Wilson, T., The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–35 (London, 1966), p. 40.
Howard, C., ‘Expectations born to death: local Labour party expansion in the 1920s’, in Winter, J. (ed.), The Working Class in Modem British History (Cambridge, 1983), p. 68.
McEwen, J. M., ‘Lloyd George’s Liberal Supporters in December 1916: A Note’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 53 (1980), pp. 265–72.
The literature on the Crisis of December 1916 is voluminous. Here are a few short accounts which provide a good introduction to the subject: Lowe, P., ‘The Rise to the Premiership’, in Taylor, A. J. P. (ed.), Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (London, 1971), pp. 95–133
Fry, M., ‘Political Change in Britain, August 1914 to December 1915: Lloyd George Replaces Asquith: The Issues Underlying the Drama’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), pp. 609 – 27
McEwen, J. M., ‘The Struggle for Mastery in Britain: Lloyd George versus Asquith, December 1916’, Journal of British Studies, 18 (1978), pp. 131–56
Fair, J., British Interparty Conferences (Oxford, 1980), Ch. 7.
On the problems which this presented to Asquith, see Scott’s diary, 9–11 Aug. 1917, Wilson, T. (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott 1911–1928 (London, 1970), p. 298.
Christopher Addison’s diary, 11 January 1917, Addison, C., Four And A Half Years (London, 1934), Vol. 2, p. 315.
David, E., ‘The Liberal Party Divided, 1916–1918’, Historical Journal, 13 (1970), pp. 509–33
Hosking, G. and King, A., ‘Radicals and Whigs in the British Liberal Party, 1906–1914’, in Aydelotte, W. O. (ed.), The History of Parliamentary Behaviour (Princeton, 1977), pp. 154–5.
Gooch, J., ‘The Maurice Debate 1918’, Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (1968), pp. 211–28.
Wilson attempts to show that the Maurice Debate was less influential in determining who received a coupon than is commonly supposed, but he exaggerates his case: Wilson, T., ‘The Coupon and the British General Election of 1918’, Journal of Modern History, 36 (1964), pp. 28–42. See also Douglas, R., ‘The Background to the “Coupon” Election Agreements’, English Historical Review, 86 (1971)
McGill, B., ‘Lloyd George’s Timing of the 1918 Election’, Journal of British Studies, 14 (1974), pp. 109–24.
McKibbin, R., The Evolution of the Labour Party 1910–1924 (Oxford, 1974), Ch. 50; Winter, Challenge of Socialism, Ch. 8.
Wilson, Downfall, pp. 18–19. But the book contains two other theses: the ‘diabolism’ of Lloyd George and the tragic absence of a continued alliance between the two progressive parties. A similar account of the Liberal dilemma, concentrating on the progressive intelligentsia, is provided in Clarke, P., Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge, 1978), Ch. 6.
The best single study of the UDC is Swartz, M., The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics During the First World War (Oxford, 1971)
There is also a useful discussion in Hanak, H., ‘The Union of Democratic Control During the First World War’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 36 (1963), pp. 168 – 80
Robbins, K., The Abolition of War: The ‘Peace Movement’ in Britain 1914–1919 (Cardiff, 1976)
See also Rempel, R. A., ‘Conflicts and Change in Liberal Theory and Practice, 1890–1918: the case of Bertrand Russell’, in Waller, P. J. (ed.), Politics and Social Change in Modern Britain (Brighton, 1987), esp. pp. 127–37.
McGill, B., ‘Asquith’s Predicament 1914–1918’, Journal of Modern History, 39 (1967), pp. 283–303
The respect which most activists in the country continued to have for Asquith is emphasised in Bernstein, G. L., ‘Yorkshire Liberalism during the First World War’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), pp. 107–29.
Robbins, K. G., ‘Lord Bryce and the First World War’, Historical Journal, 10 (1967), p. 268.
Stubbs, J., ‘The Impact of the Great War on the Conservative Party’, in Peele, G. and Cooke, C. (eds), The Politics of Reappraisal 1918–1939 (London, 1975), pp. 14–38.
Pugh, M. D., ‘Asquith, Bonar Law and the First Coalition’, Historical Journal, 17 (1974), pp. 813–36
On Bonar Law’s problems in December 1916, see Blake, R., The Unknown Prime Minister: Life and Times of Andrew Bonar Law 1858–1923 (London, 1955), Ch. 19.
Ramsden, J., The Age of Balfour and Baldwin 1902–1940 (London, 1978), pp. 119–21.
Waites, B., A Class Society at War: England 1914–1918 (Leamington Spa, 1987), esp. Ch. 4
But for a contrary view, see Reid, A., ‘The impact of the First World War on British workers’, in Wall, R. and Winter, J. (eds), The Upheaval of War: Family, Work and Welfare in Europe, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 224–5.
Roberts, R., The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Manchester, 1971; Pelican ed., 1973), Ch. 9, esp. p. 200.
Adams, T., ‘Labour and the First World War: Economy, Politics and the Erosion of Local Peculiarity?’, Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 10 (1990), esp. pp. 27–32.
Harrison, R., ‘The War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, 1914–1920’, in Briggs, A. and Saville, J. (eds), Essays in Labour History 1886–1923 (London, 1971), pp. 211–59.
However, some Labour historians do not accept the view that war-time developments made working people view the role of an interventionist state in a positive light. For example, see Adams, T., ‘Labour and the First World War: Economy, Politics and the Erosion of Local Peculiarity?’, Journal of Regional and Local Studies, 10 (1990), pp. 29–30.
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© 1992 G. R. Searle
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Searle, G.R. (1992). Liberalism and the Great War. In: The Liberal Party. British History in Perspective. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22165-3_7
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