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Liberal Unionist Party
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The Liberal Unionists were a British political party that split away from the Liberals in 1886, and had effectively merged with the Conservatives by the turn of the century. The formal merger was completed in 1912. Their principal leaders were Lord Hartington (later the Duke of Devonshire) and Joseph Chamberlain.
The reason for the split in the Liberals was the conversion of William Ewart Gladstone to the cause of Irish Home Rule. The 1885 General Election had left Charles Stewart Parnell's Irish Nationalists holding the balance of power, and had convinced Gladstone that the Irish wanted and deserved Home Rule. Some Liberals believed that Gladstone's Home Rule bill would lead to de facto independence for Ireland, and the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which they could not countenance. Seeing themselves as defenders of the Union of Britain and Ireland, they called themselves Liberal Unionists.
Most of the Liberal Unionists were drawn from the Whig faction of the party, including Hartington, Lord Lansdowne, and George Goschen, and had been expected to split from the party anyway, for reasons connected with economic and social policy. Also relevant in their pro-unionism was there extensive landed estates in Ireland and the fear that these would be lost or reduced if Ireland had its own parliament.
The surprise was that a small group of Radicals led by Chamberlain joined the breakaway. The National Liberal Federation supported Gladstone, so the rebels formed their own organisations: the Committee for the Preservation of the Union, the National Radical Union, and later the Liberal Unionist Association. Interestingly ,the radical liberal David Lloyd George (later British Prime Minister) had been due to go to the first meeting of the National Radical Union in Birmingham but got his dates wrong and arrived on the wrong day.
The 1886 election left the Conservative Party as the largest party in the House of Commons, but without an overall majority. The leading Liberal Unionists were invited to join the Conservative Lord Salisbury's government. Salisbury said he was even willing to let Hartington become Prime Minister of a coalition ministry but the latter declined. In part, Hartington was worried this would split the Liberal Unionists and lose them votes from pro-Unionist Liberal supporters. The Liberal Unionists, despite providing the necessary margin for Salisbury's majority, continued to sit on the opposition benches throughout the life of the parliament elected in 1886, and Hartington and Chamberlain continued to occupy the opposition front benches alongside their former colleagues Gladstone and Harcourt.
However, a few months later Goschen, by far the most conservative of the leading Liberal Unionists, received an invitation to become the new Chancellor of the Exchequer in the place of Lord Randolph Churchill when the latter suddenly resigned in December 1886. After consulting Hartington, Goschen agreed to join the Conservative government and remained Chancellor for the next six years.
Whilst the Whiggish wing of the Liberal Unionists were informally cooperating with the Conservative Government (and supplying them with a cabinet minister) , the party's Radical Unionist wing sat down for a series of meetings with their former Liberal colleagues. Lead by Joseph Chamberlain and Sir George Otto Trevelyan the 'Round Table Conference' was a perhaps half hearted attempt to see if reunion of the Liberal party was possible. Despite some progress (and Chamberlain's statement that they were united on 99 out of 100 issues regarding the future of Liberalism), the issue of Home Rule for Ireland could not be reconciled. Neither Hartington or Gladstone took direct part in these meetings - and there seemed to be no other Liberal statesman who would be able to reunite the party. Within a few months the talks were over, though some Radical Unionists including Trevelyan later rejoined the Liberal Party.
The failed talks of 1887 forced the Liberal Unionist party to continue to develop its links with the Conservatives. In Parliament, they supported the Salisbury administration - though for political presentation reasons, they sat on the opposite side of House of Commons with the Liberal Party . Relations between former political colleagues hardened with the return of Gladstone as Prime Minister following the 1892 General Election. Forming a minority government with Irish Nationalist support, the Liberals introduced the second Home Rule bill. Leading the opposition against the bill were the Duke of Devonshire (as Hartington had become in 1891 following the death of his father) and Joseph Chamberlain. The Home Rule bill was defeated this time in the House of Lords and Gladstone resigned not long after.
By now all chance of a reunion between the two Liberal parties had disappeared, and it was no great surprise when leading Liberal Unionists joined Salisbury's administration in 1895. The resulting government was generally referred to as "Unionist", and the distinction between Conservatives and Liberal Unionists began to dissolve - indeed some like Goschen formally joining the Conservatives without bothering any more with the Liberal Unionist label. However, despite these ever-closer bonds, the Liberal Unionists continued to maintain a separate identity. The party's strength in the House of Commons fell from 78 seats in 1886 to 47 in 1892 but recovered to 71 and then 68 in the General Elections of 1895 and 1900. They managed to stay strong in the West of England, Birmingham (the centre of Joseph Chamberlain's power base) and Scotland.
The Liberal Unionists retained their political cohesion until 1903 when they were split in a division between Devonshire and Chamberlain over the issue of free trade. After Chamberlain took up the issue of Tariff Reform in May 1903, Devonshire and other supporters of free trade left the Liberal Unionist Association in 1904 in protest. Chamberlain took over the leadership, but a number of former leading Liberal Unionists including MPs defected back to the Liberal Party.
In the 1906 General Election the Liberal Unionists shared the same fate as their Conservative allies in a big reduction in their parliamentary strength. They now numbered only 23 (or 25 according to other calculations) MPs in the House of Commons, but now the Unionists were more divided between those who supported tariffs and those who kept faith with free trade. A few months later Chamberlain was crippled by a stroke, although he remained the official leader of the Liberal Unionists. His son Austen Chamberlain acted as his deputy for both the Tariff Reform League and the Liberal Unionists, and the party was able to increase its parliamentary caucus in the two 1910 General Elections to 31 and then 35 MPs. In 1912, however, the Liberal Unionist Association merged with the Conservatives to form the Conservative and Unionist Party (the modern Conservative Party).
Although by then the political distinction between the two parties had long ceased to have any real meaning, it was a factor in Austen Chamberlain's failure to become the Unionist leader in the House of Commons in 1911. When Arthur Balfour resigned, Austen Chamberlain and Walter Hume Long both declared themselves as candidates for the leadership of the Unionist Party in the House of Commons. However, as Austen Chamberlain was still officially at least a Liberal Unionist, his candidature was opposed by many Conservatives because they already had the Liberal Unionist Lord Lansdowne leading them in the House of Lords. In the end Andrew Bonar Law was elected unopposed by Unionist M.P.s instead and Chamberlain would have to wait ten years for his chance to lead the party.
The political impact of the Liberal Unionist breakaway marked the end of the long nineteenth century domination by the Liberal party of the British political scene. From 1830 to 1886 the Liberals (the name the Whigs, Radicals and Peelites accepted as their political label after 1859) had been managed to become almost the party of permanent government with just a couple of Conservative interludes. After 1886 it was the Conservatives who enjoyed this position and they received a huge boost with their alliance with a party of disaffected Liberals.
Though not numerous - the Liberal Unionists boasted having within their ranks the vast bulk of the old Whig aristocracy as exemplified by the Duke of Devonshire and the 'radical imperialist' Joseph Chamberlain - someone who was arguably the first true full time politician who had got to the front rank of British politics by his own efforts rather than depending on patronage or a hereditary title. If he hadn't been disabled by a stroke in 1906 - Chamberlain could have re-cast the political scene again with a more 'radical' Conservative party. Though the Liberal Unionist party disappeared as a separate organisation in 1912 - the Chamberlain legacy helped keep the industrial powerhouse of Birmingham from ever returning to Liberalism and would only be changed once more in 1945 in the Labour Party electoral landslide of that year. It also remained a profound influence on Chamberlain's sons Austen and Neville Chamberlain - who when he was elected leader of the Conservative Party and thus became Prime Minister in 1937 - told an audience how proud he was of his Liberal Unionist roots. This isn't surprising - Chamberlain never actually stood for Parliament as a Conservative - his local political association preferred to call themselves 'Unionist' during this time period and it privately suited Chamberlain as well . He confided to his own family how he always regarded the Conservative party label as 'odious' and thought of it a barrier to people joining what he thought could be a non-socialist but a reforming party.
- Marquess of Hartington 1886-1891
- Joseph Chamberlain 1891-1912
- Earl of Derby 1886-1891
- Duke of Devonshire 1891-1903
- Marquess of Lansdowne 1903-1912
- George Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll
- Francis Russell, 9th Duke of Bedford
- John Bright
- Chichester Parkinson-Fortescue, 1st Baron Carlingford
- Austen Chamberlain
- Joseph Chamberlain
- Jesse Collings
- Edward Stanley, 15th Earl of Derby
- George Goschen
- Lord Richard Grosvenor (later Lord Stalbridge)
- Spencer Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington (later Duke of Devonshire)
- Sir Henry James (later Lord James of Hereford)
- Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne
- Thomas Baring, 1st Earl of Northbrook
- Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne
- William Waldegrave Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne
- George Otto Trevelyan (rejoined the Liberals in 1887)
- Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster
In addition, the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stood unsuccessfully twice as a Liberal Unionist parliamentary candidate in 1900 and 1906 for the Scottish seats of Edinburgh Central and Hawick Boroughs respectively. Also standing in 1906 as a Liberal Unionist was the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton for one of the two member Dundee seats. Despite his fame - Shackleton lost. Leo Amery who is best known for his later career as a senior Conservative politician and British Cabinet minister was originally elected as a Liberal Unionist in 1911 in a by-election - mainly because he was a strong supporter of Joseph Chamberlain and Tariff Reform.
In Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest there is an exchange between Jack Worthing and Lady Bracknell about his suitability as a match for her daughter Gwendolen.
LADY BRACKNELL : [Sternly.]... What are your polities?
JACK: Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.
LADY BRACKNELL : Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate...
The play was first performed at the Queen's Theatre London on 14th February 1895 and ran for 83 performances. Jack Worthing's declaration that he was in essence apolitical but - if pressed - would say Liberal Unionist was a joke that would have appealed to the audiences that saw the play in that period.
Since 1895 the then topical 'Liberal Unionist' reference has caused some problems with later productions of the play. Usually the line is retained - despite its reference to a long dead political issue but it was certainly changed or altered in at least two film versions of the play.
In The Importance of Being Earnest (1952 film) directed by Anthony Asquith (the son of a former British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith ) Jack answers that he is a 'Liberal'. Lady Bracknell's answer remains the same - suggesting the Liberals are virtually identical with the Tories except she won't have them round for lunch. This is an ironical re-reading of the passage which suggests Lady Bracknell agreed with the Marxist Social Democratic Federation and their leader H.H.Hyndman who thought the same about the two main British parties then. However , in 1952 this comment was oddly true about the then Liberal party whose continued political representation in parliament was largely due to the Conservative party avoid splitting the 'anti-socialist' vote. So perhaps Asquith was making a political point for the 1950s.
Since then - other adaptations of the play for TV or theatre have usually left this brief mention of a largely forgotten political party intact. However in the The Importance of Being Earnest (2002 film) which starred Judi Dench, Colin Firth, Rupert Everett and Reese Witherspoon - the lines were dropped even though this film re-incorporated episodes and characters in an earlier version of the play that Wilde had been encouraged to drop before the play's first performance.