Challenge: Keep the Liberals as main opponent of the Tories

Over the course of the 20th century, Labour displaced the Liberal Party as the main opponent of the Conservatives, for various reasons. There was even a time that a Liberal parliamentary party meeting could take place in the back of a taxi! So your challenge is to keep the Tories-Liberal diarchy as dominant, with Labour effectively serving the same purpose as the non-coalition Lib Dems today.
 
I think that the answer is fairly simple: no First World War and the Lloyd George/Asquith spilt it entailed. In 1918, the Labour party was confined to industrial working-class areas and was an ancillary to the Liberal party in Parliament. Without the outbreak of war, I could envisage Asquith comfortably winning a general election in 1915 on a platform of extended social reform whilst the Conservatives remained divided over tariffs, with the Lib-Lab pact surviving. It is true that even before the war industrial tensions were rising, but if Labour try and break away from the pact they would probably suffer badly, as MacDonald himself realised. In the long-term it may be possible that Labour becomes integrated within the Liberal party, with more radical elements breaking off and fading into obscurity.
 
I agree with Wigmagnet-the best way to do this is to prevent the Asquith/Lloyd-George split. Even without World War I, Lloyd-George could have easily been at the wrong place at the wrong time when he was protesting against the Boor War and Asquith was a pretty heavy drinker from what I here-especially with the stresses of war taking their toll on him. That prevents any split by default-and in the case of Asquith dying early in 1916, you can prevent butterflies until then.

Even post-split it can be done:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=128222

Enjoy!
 
British Liberals play the same card that American Democrats historically did, and adopt most of the, bourgeois-friendly at least, policies of the progressive/labor movement.
 
Over the course of the 20th century, Labour displaced the Liberal Party as the main opponent of the Conservatives, for various reasons. There was even a time that a Liberal parliamentary party meeting could take place in the back of a taxi! So your challenge is to keep the Tories-Liberal diarchy as dominant, with Labour effectively serving the same purpose as the non-coalition Lib Dems today.

As others have said preventing WW1 helps.

OTOH I'm not sure what the Liberals could have done to continue to persuade large sections of the working class to continue backing them as socialism spread through Europe and attracted more people.

Labour were growing quickly before the war although they had a small setback in the second 1910 election (possibly a shortage of funds after fighting one election earlier that year).

I think they would have continued to grow until they reached the point that they divided the anti Tory opposition (as the SDP/Libs did in the 1980s) to the point where the Liberals couldn't win power alone. Also the more Labour grows the more right wing Liberals would be frightened into joining the Tories.

Eventually some kind of Lib/Lab coalition government would have been elected. Then the left wing Liberals jump over to Labour.
 
Lloyd George doesn't get involved in that "cash for honours" scandal. That really dented the credibility of the Lib Dems.
 
Thought this was about Canada at first. Though that would probably be recent enough to be in Polchat.:eek:
 
As others have said preventing WW1 helps.

OTOH I'm not sure what the Liberals could have done to continue to persuade large sections of the working class to continue backing them as socialism spread through Europe and attracted more people.

Labour were growing quickly before the war although they had a small setback in the second 1910 election (possibly a shortage of funds after fighting one election earlier that year).

I think they would have continued to grow until they reached the point that they divided the anti Tory opposition (as the SDP/Libs did in the 1980s) to the point where the Liberals couldn't win power alone. Also the more Labour grows the more right wing Liberals would be frightened into joining the Tories.

Eventually some kind of Lib/Lab coalition government would have been elected. Then the left wing Liberals jump over to Labour.

I'm very skeptical of the view that the twentieth century experienced a universal explosion of working class consciousness and therefore a dramatic rise in support for socialist parties. Even if this class-based interpretation is assumed to be true, the British working-class was fragmented and relatively apolitical. Also, the Liberal party by 1914 had adapted well to an emerging focus on social issues, as Peter Clarke's classic Lancashire and the New Liberalism showed. I don't think that the Labour party were growing that quickly before the war, most of the evidence used to support this view originates from local election results which were very variable and often totally unrepresentative of Labour's performance at a constituency level.

More importantly, the idea that British politics was dominated in the early twentieth century by "class consciousness" is flawed. There was no straightforward link between political activity and objective economic conditions or interests, as much of the "New political history" work has convincingly shown. Labour did not passively benefit from social change but made its own success, it was very fortunate to be in a position to take advantage of the Liberal schism and adapted well to the mass media in the 1920s to reach out to a wide range of social interests. I can't really see Labour breaking through without a significant political development such as the Asquith/Lloyd George spilt or a social upheaval such as the First World War. It's possible that Labour may still displace the Liberals, but I find it unlikely, at least in the short-term.
 
Would, by chance, averting the German invasion of Belgium, and subsequent UK entry into the war, be enough?

I'm not an expert on the purely military and diplomatic aspects of the First World War, it may be the case that if the neutrality of Belgium is not broken Britain still views a potential Central Powers victory against France and Russia as damaging to its geopolitical interests and decides to enter the war anyway. But I think the important point is that it was in no way inevitable that a world war was going to occur in 1914.
 
Britain isn't going to allow Germany to become the dominant power of Europe. But there is a big difference between a million men dead on the Somme and saying to Germany, "we'll stay out but no annexations in the West".
 
Possibly no Gladstone-Macdonald pact in 1903 which paved the way for Liberals standing down for Labour candidates in the 1906 election, and vice versa. It will mean that the Unionists have a bigger contingent in the 1906 - 1910 Parliament but on the other hand, the Labour group will be far smaller and will therefore have more difficulty putting down local roots.
 
If the Liberal Party had adopted more working class parliamentary candidates. The first Labour reprewsenatives elected in 1874 were Liberals and the number was slowly rising with 12 in 1885 but began to stagnate and Lib Labrry only really developed in mining areas in England ansd Wales. Had it expanded to around 50 or so in the 1890s the Lib-Labbers may have managed to keep the TUC in the Liberal fold and strangle the Labour Party at birth.
 
I think that there were at least two crucial points of departure that could have seen the Liberals remain the second party of government.

Firstly Herbert Gladstone's electoral pact with the Labour Representative Committee fails to get off the ground. In 1903 with a flailing Conservative government and the prospect of a general election the Liberal Chief Whip became worried that an increasingly successful Labour party might split the anti Conservative vote.
Consequently Herbet Gladstone entered into an electoral pact with the Labour Representative Committee (an umbrella organisation for the various stripes of socialist candidate) that the two parties would not oppose each other in key constituencies.
This resulted in a record 29 Labour MPs which allowed them to build a coherent parliamentary structure and shadow major government departments. had this pact not occurred the Liberals may have lost a dozen seats to the Conservatives but such was the Liberal tide Labour would probably not have won more than a handful of seats.
This would have delayed their rise by a few elections or so and perhaps deprived them of their most ministrable MPs such as Phillip Snowden. At the turn of the century there was very little difference between moderate socialists and radical Liberals and it's conceivable that many would have given Labour up as a bad job if they failed to break through quickly. In hindsight the electoral pact was something of a cuckoo in the nest for the Liberals.

Secondly the Liberals might have taken a very different course in 1923. Briefly after the 1923 election Stanley Baldwin's Conservative Party had suffered a massive loss of seats to both Labour and the Liberals meaning that no party could form a government.
Labour were still the second party in terms of seats but the Liberals edged them very close and were briefly united in defense of free trade. The Liberal leadership judged that their moderating influence would allow the Labour Party to govern for the first time in safe conditions so they voted against the Conservative budget and then supported a Labour minority government.

The Liberal party never came that close to matching Labour again. It was suggested at the time that the Liberals could vote against both a Conservative and Labour budget meaning that no party could form a government.
Whilst undoubtedly the third party the Liberals had a very talented front bench and many Conservatives were desperate to avoid a socialist government. It is just conceivable that the King might have sent for Asquith and tasked him with forming a minority government which would deal with the Conservatives and Labour on an ad hoc basis.
If the Labour Party flunked it's first chance to government it's more moderate supporters might have returned to the Liberals as a more realistic means of getting what they want.


Wow sorry for the long post! I'm reading a biography of Phillip Snowden at them moment so all of this is on my mind.
 
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