Our place to talk – an independent website for supporters of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK.

The most-read independent website by and for Lib Dem supporters. Not paid for by trade unions or millionaires.

Advert

Tag Archives: james davidson

A bit of Lib Dem history

By Martin Thomas | Wed 2nd August 2017 - 12:34 pm

Embed from Getty Images

The sad passing of Jim Davidson recently brings back memories, as I write this here in Aboyne in the heart of his former constituency.

“We can’t have another Welshman as leader of the Liberal Party” said Jo Grimond. When Jo resigned as leader in 1967, there were two contestants to replace him: Emlyn Hooson and Jeremy Thorpe. The electorate was the Parliamentary Party of twelve Liberal MPs. Initially, Hooson had the support of six of them which, if he voted for himself, would make him the clear winner.

Jo took aside Jim Davidson, the pleasant and talented recently elected Member for Aberdeenshire West, who was a Hooson supporter. Jo’s wife Laura had not forgiven the Welsh wizard, David Lloyd George, for supplanting her grandfather, Herbert Asquith, as Prime Minister in 1916 and splitting the Party. Another Welshman as Leader was unthinkable. Jim succumbed to Jo’s pressure and with misgivings, as a memoir of Jo and Laura revealed in 2000, promised his vote for Thorpe.

Continue reading »

Posted in Liberal History | Also tagged emlyn hooson and jeremy thorpe | 15 Comments

Most Read

Op-eds

A Proposed Alternative to Coalition: The Reserved Time Confidence Agreement (Owen Driscoll)
ALDC by-election report – 5 November (Charles Quinn)
Tom Arms’ World Review (Tom Arms)
Observations of an Expat: Post Election Worries (Tom Arms)
How Liberal Democrats can ride Britain’s youth wave on the pro-EU shift (Rupinder Singh)

Advert

Recent Comments

Richard Whelan
My concern with these types of agreements is the Supply bit. Can we amend the annual Budget, or even reject it, if it does not fit in with our overall approach...
Mick Taylor
@JasonConnor. We are a parliamentary democracy. We elect MPs to make decisions for us. If a future government gets elected on a platform to join the EU, then co...
Jana
“ …to fix Britain’s broken water industry” Accuracy matters. Andy Burnham should be producing a plan for ‘England’s’ broken water industry....
PM
@ Alex, Of course when we were members of the EU the activities of all MEPs would have been of interest but this was only part of what should have been discu...
Matt (Bristol)
The bottom line is here, there still needs to be a degree of mutual trust and some kind of parliamentary management / policy coordination between minority and p...