The History of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat Parties
Roy Douglas
The party of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George, the Liberal Party emerged in mid-Victorian Britain from a combination of Whigs and Peelite Tories. It was a dominant force in Britain, and the world, at the height of the power of the British Empire. Split by Gladstone's Home Rule Bills, it nevertheless returned to power in Edwardian England and held it until after the outbreak the First World War, with Lloyd George heading a National Government from 1916-22. Riddled by internal divisions and with its traditional ground increasingly occupied by the Labour Party, the party lost ground in Parliament, becoming little more than a rump for many years. With the foundation of the Social Democrats in 1981, and their subsequent merger with the Liberals as Liberal Democrats in 1988, a modern version of the party emerged, under Paddy Ashdown and now Charles Kennedy as a significant third force in British politics.
'I often think it's comical
How Nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal,
That's born into the world alive,
Is either a little Liberal,
Or else a little Conservative!'
W.S. GILBERT, IOLANTHE
