Towards a more perfect political union: a TL from 1920

There was strong support in the Liberal/Conservative Coalition cabinet formed by David Lloyd George in January 1919, and among Coalition Liberal and Conservative backbenchers for a fusion of their two parties. In April 1919, a New Members' Coalition Group of Conservatives and Liberals
was formed in the House of Commons.

Fusion was energetically advocated by Lloyd George and proposed a name - 'the United Reform Party'.

The POD is that after the by-election in the double-member constituency on 27 March 1920 which was won by a Conservative and Coalition Liberal running in harness (as in OTL), a fusion agreement was signed by leading members of both parties on 4 April.
 
The title for this TL is taken from the following sentence in the book Consensus and Disunity: The Lloyd George Coalition Government 1918-1922 by Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
Editors like Garvin, political ideologues like Philip Kerr, regarded a more permanent and more perfect union as the spiritual as well as the practical answer to the divisive pressures of post-war Britain.

Morgan is here referring to a union between the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals.

The fusion agreement was signed by five Conservatives and five Liberals. The Conservatives were as follows: Andrew Bonar Law; Austen Chamberlain; Arthur Balfour; Sir Robert Horne and Sir George Younger. The Coalition Liberal signatories were: David Lloyd George; Winston Churchill; Edward Shortt; Christopher Addison and Edwin Montague.
 
In 1920 Easter Sunday fell on the 4th April, so the fusion agreement between Coalition Liberals and Conservatives would not have been signed on that date. Instead it was signed on Tuesday 13th April.

Several names for the fused Coalition Liberal/Conservative Party were canvassed. The three most popular were Centre Party, United Reform Party, and Liberal Conservative Party. The Liberals insisted that the word 'Liberal' was part of the title of the new party, so it was called the Liberal Conservative Party.

The terms Conservative and Unionist were used interchangeably at that time, so the new party was also called the Liberal Unionist Party. This enabled Austen Chamberlain and his half-brother Neville, to appeal to the Liberal Unionist tradition of progressive social reform as shown in the establishment of elected County Councils in 1888, free primary education in 1891, and legislation creating allotments. Home Rule for Ireland, the reason for the Liberal Unionist split from the Liberal Party in 1886, had been neutralised as a subject of dispute by 1920 with both wings of the new party accepting Home Rule in Ireland with the option of withdrawal by six counties in Ulster. All that is except for right-wing Tories or die-hards, as they were also called.
 
Having needed to refer this TL this morning, I noticed that in my first post I omitted to state that the by-election on 27 March 1920 was in the double-member constituency of Stockport.
 
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