Liberal Unionist Party - The Political Legacy of Liberal Unionism

The Political Legacy of Liberal Unionism

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 electoral and political 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 represented by the stolid Duke of Devonshire. Another example is Frederick Neville Sutherland Leveson-Gower. The Duke of Devonshire's political partner, the 'radical imperialist' Joseph Chamberlain was from a very different background, a businessman and a Unitarian. Though he had joined the Liberal Unionists late on, he was more determined to maintain their separate status in the alliance with the Conservatives, perhaps hoping and wishing that he would be able to refashion the combination under his own leadership at a later date. Chamberlain's stroke in 1906 robbed him of this chance, though he remained involved in political life until 1914.

Though the Liberal Unionist party disappeared as a separate organisation in 1912 - the Chamberlain legacy helped keep the industrial powerhouse of Birmingham from returning to the Liberal party 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. Neither Neville or Austen actually stood for Parliament as a Conservative candidate, - their local political association in Birmingham preferred to call themselves Unionist rather than Conservative during this time and it also privately suited Neville 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 during the 1930s which he hoped would be called 'National' to include the parties of the National Government coalition in the 1930s.