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The Effect of Electoral Pacts on the Decline of the Liberal Part

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Alan H. Taylor
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Extract

‘The decline of the Liberal Party was not due to the inescapable logic of history, or to theinapplicability of Liberal remedies to the issues of the day, but to avoidable mistakesmade by Liberals themselves.’1 This is the essence of a recent reinterpretation of the fallof the Liberal Party. The mistakes consisted chiefly of the 1906 Liberal—Labour electoralpact, which gave Labour significant parliamentary representation but was of little benefit to the Liberals: the split in the Liberal Party dating from Asquith's resignation in 1916 and the resulting electoral pact between the Lloyd George Liberals and the Conservatives: the failure of the Liberals to form a government in 1923: and the despair of the Liberal leaders after the 1929 election and their resulting failure to act as an independent party.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , April 1973 , pp. 243 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 Douglas, R., The History of the Liberal Party, 1895–1970 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1971), p.3.Google Scholar

2 Miller, W. L., ‘Cross-voting and the Dimensionality of Party Conflict in Britain during the Period of Realignment, 1918–1931’, Political Studies, XXIX (1971), 455–61, p. 461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Wilson, T., The Downfall of the Liberal Party, 1914–1935 (London: Collins, 1966), p.181.Google Scholar

4 Miller, , ‘Cross-voting’, p. 457.Google Scholar

5 Taylor, A. H., ‘The Proportional Decline Hypothesis in English Elections’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 135 (1972), 365–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Douglas, , The History of the Liberal Party, 1895–1970, p. 125.Google Scholar

7 Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 252 and 259.Google Scholar