Liberal Unionist Party - Formation

Formation

The Liberal Unionists owe their origins to the conversion of William Ewart Gladstone to the cause of Irish Home Rule (i.e. limited self government for Ireland). 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 independence for Ireland and the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which they could not countenance. Seeing themselves as defenders of the Union, they called themselves 'Liberal Unionists' though at this stage most of them did not think it was going to be a permanent split from their former colleagues. Gladstone preferred to call them 'dissentient Liberals' as if he believed they would eventually come back like the 'Adullamites', Liberals who had opposed the extension of the franchise in 1866 but had mostly come back to the main party after the Conservatives had passed their own electoral reform bill in 1867. In the end it didn't matter what the Liberal Unionists were called, the schism in the old Liberal party grew wider and deeper within a few years.

The majority of Liberal Unionists, including Hartington, Lord Lansdowne, and George Goschen, were drawn from the Whig faction of the party and had been expected to split from the Liberal Party anyway, for reasons connected with economic and social policy. Some of the Unionists held extensive landed estates in Ireland and feared these would be broken up or confiscated if Ireland had its own government, while Hartington had suffered a personal loss at the hands of Irish Nationalists in 1882 when his brother was killed during the Phoenix Park Murders.

The anti-Home Rule Liberals formed a 'Committee for the Preservation of the Union' in early 1886 and were soon joined by a smaller radical faction led by Joseph Chamberlain and John Bright. Chamberlain had briefly taken office in the Gladstone government which had been formed in 1886 but resigned when he saw the details of Gladstone's Home Rule plans. As Chamberlain had previously been a standard bearer of radical liberalism against the Whigs, his adherence to the alliance against the Gladstonian Liberals came as a surprise. When the dissident Liberals eventually formed the Liberal Unionist Council, which was to become the Liberal Unionist party, Chamberlain organised the separate National Radical Union in Birmingham. This allowed Chamberlain and his immediate allies to distance themselves from the main body of Liberal Unionism (and their Conservative allies) and left open the possibility that they could work with the Liberal party in the future.

One person who could have joined the National Radical Union at this stage was David Lloyd George (later Prime Minister), who was then a keen supporter of Chamberlain's social agenda. Lloyd George had been due to go to the first meeting of the National Radical Union in Birmingham but got his dates mixed up and arrived on the wrong day. Years later, in 1901, Lloyd George was to go to Birmingham once more but as a fierce critic of Chamberlain and the Boer War.

In 1889 the National Radical Union changed its name to the National Liberal Union and remained a separate organisation from the main Liberal Unionist Council.