The Liberal Party

by G. R. Searle

"In the course of the 1920s the Liberal Party disappeared as a serious party of government, though its demise followed hard upon one of its greatest periods of success. For many years historians have struggled to make sense of this strange story, and this second edition of a classic text brings the debate right up to date. Some see the Party's collapse as a consequence of a deep moral or ideological crisis, a loss of belief in Liberalism as a creed; the impact of the Great War, in particular, is said to have done irreparable damage to its adherents' self-confidence. Other historians think that the Liberals were replaced by Labour as a direct consequence of the growing importance of class divisions, though there is no clear agreement about when this important transition took place. Yet another approach is to emphasise matters of accident and individual personality. Would the Liberal Party, for example, have floundered so badly in the 1890s but for Gladstone's sudden adoption of Home Rul