For some time now, the narrative of the Liberal party's demise during the First World War has been fairly firmly defined. The war imposed strains on liberal ideology by forcing Liberals to compromise long-cherished policies such as free trade, a free market and a volunteer army. Concurrently, a growing division among Liberals emerged over how to conduct the war. H. H. Asquith and his supporters were increasingly reluctant to accept further compromises of voluntarism and the market mechanism for allocating resources; David Lloyd George and his supporters demanded massive government intervention in every aspect of the economy to mobilize the nation for total war. The replacement of Asquith by Lloyd George as prime minister in December 1916 marked the triumph of the latter approach. Traditional liberalism as a practical ideology of government was now discredited. The Liberal party was left with no unity or purpose. The leaders disliked and distrusted each other; there was no agreement on policy or the future direction of the party. Thus, it was in no position by the end of the war to compete with the resurgent Conservative and Labour parties for the allegiance of the British voter.

In a major new history of British industrial relations, Alan Fox noted in 1985 that, ‘The Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919 has so far received only the briefest of passing references in the texts, apparently on the supposition that its passage can be taken for granted. This understates its significance’. The Act, to which Fox himself devoted only two pages of his lengthy book, was passed after the cessation of the First World War. It declared as its aim the fulfilment of a wartime pledge made by the government to trade unions to reinstate in British factories those pre-war working practices which had been abandoned by Labour for the duration of the war, in order to expedite the output of munitions. These practices covered such matters as manning arrangements, closed shop agreements, restriction of overtime and apprenticeship rules.

Historians have not expended much energy in tracing the fortunes of the National Liberal party. Though the party enjoyed a theoretically independent existence for nearly forty years, there is general agreement that it is best seen as a mere adjunct of Conservatism. Writers whose sympathies lie with the mainstream Liberal party have been particularly dismissive. Roy Douglas notes that as early as the autumn of 1933 the Liberal Nationals ‘had become Conservatives for all practical purposes’. In similar terms, Sir Dingle Foot concludes that they ‘became the obedient servants of their Tory masters. In return they received their quota of offices and honours.’ Yet while the policies of National Liberalism became increasingly indistinguishable from those of their Conservative allies, many who bore this label clung tenaciously to it and proved most reluctant to give up their independent identity and ‘the grand old name of Liberal.’ The fortunes of the post-war party, and in particular the role played by its elder statesman, Lord Simon, are not without interest for the student of the modern British political system.

It is hardly surprising that, for many years, historians of the political crisis of 1885–6 gave relatively little attention to the land purchase proposals which accompanied Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill. For the Land Purchase Bill progressed no further than its first reading on 16 April 1886, one week after that of its partner. Within weeks it was recognized by its sponsors as a political liability and, unlike the Home Rule Bill, never reached a parliamentary division. In recent years, there has been a re-evaluation of its significance as a policy initiative for Ireland. Two major works published in the centenary year of the crisis challenged Professor John Vincent's claim, in an article which appeared just over a decade ago, that the Land Bill was a ‘dummy’ whose place in Gladstone's scale of priorities was dictated by the exigencies of the parliamentary timetable and of internal cabinet manoeuvrings. Both Dr James Loughlin and Dr Alan O'Day see purchase as part of a coherent policy designed by Gladstone to tackle the problem of agrarian violence and to lay the foundations of a more secure social order in Ireland. For the first time, then, the content of the Bill has received serious and lengthy treatment. What remains to be discussed in some depth is its reception in the country in the spring and summer of 1886.

From its inception, the committee on national expenditure chaired by Sir Eric Geddes has been regarded as one of the most controversial exercises in the reduction of public expenditure essayed by any modern British government. The appointment in August 1921 of Geddes and a team of fellow businessmen to report on means of reducing supply services expenditure drew the criticism from contemporaries that it represented the abrogation of the executive's responsibilities for fiscal policy. The three reports which the committee produced in early 1922 were no less controversial: seeking a reduction of almost £87m in supply estimates of approximately £528m, they have been seen as the most radical statement of the policy of retrenchment adopted by the Lloyd George coalition. In view of this, and of the proud hopes of reconstruction which had been fostered after the armistice, the Geddes committee has often been the subject of obloquies from post-war British historians of liberal sensibilities.

The success of wartime governments in the twentieth century is determined not just by their effectiveness in waging war, but also by their ability to plan for peace. Mobilizing the population for total war and winning the benevolent neutrality or active support of major uncommitted powers require the projection of a vision of a better, peaceful world which will be the necessary consequence of victory. The reordering of international society is therefore proclaimed as a war aim of each belligerent. By December 1916, when Lloyd George displaced Asquith, the desirability of establishing a league of nations was already a matter of serious popular and diplomatic discussion. The new administration almost immediately had to state its attitude on questions of post-war international organization. In launching his peace initiative President Wilson called for the establishment after the war of a ‘league of nations to insure peace and justice’. The joint reply of the Entente powers endorsed the setting up of such a body. In a separate commentary, which was given wide publicity in America, the foreign secretary, A. J. Balfour, explained that, as a condition of durable peace, ‘behind international law, and behind all treaty arrangements for preventing or limiting hostilities, some form of international sanction should be devised which would give pause to the hardiest aggressor’.

‘Labour Comes of Age’, Kingsley Martin observed a few days after the party's electoral landslide of 1945. This might have been more precise if a chorus had added, sotto voce, ‘…And Comes Into an Inheritance’, for since the publication of Paul Addison's The road to 1945 (1975), the history of the Labour party during and after the war has been dominated by the notion of a political consensus forged during the Churchill coalition and left as a legacy to the Attlee government. According to Addison, it was the consensus of Keynes and Beveridge that shaped post-war politics rather than any distinctive contribution from Labour.