Tag Archives: jonathan parry

Editor’s note: Jonathan Parry will be discussing his ideas at the Journal of Liberal History Fringe at the Durley Suite in the BIC at 8:15 pm. 

Liberal Democrats have come to the party by all sorts of routes – some through specific campaigns, others through local activities, through parental encouragement or through education and persuasion. All of us within our broad church, whatever path brought us here, will benefit from Jonathan Parry’s short history, ‘Liberalism’ (Agenda Publishing 2025), which has been written to remind us of the continuities of ‘the ideas and visions put forward by Liberal politicians’ since the term ‘Liberal’ began to be applied to Whigs and Radicals in the 1830s. – emphasising the political practice of Liberals in politics rather than the theorists who have written on Liberal philosophy.   ‘We cannot hope to find one single “Liberal ideology”, in the sense of a theoretically coherent set of principles.’  But he does trace a number of broad themes that have shared for nearly 200 years.

He argues that the continuity of British Liberalism is best defined as resistance to the concentration of power, either in central government or in vested interests, such as landowners, corporations or the established church.  Liberalism promoted local government against central direction, pluralism in religion and education, and civil liberties against state direction.  Today’s Liberal Democrats should take pride from the efforts their 19th century predecessors put into developing schools, sanitation, better housing and public transport, against Tory opposition, before moving under the 1906 Liberal Government to introduce pensions and national insurance through central taxation. He also tells us that the Liberals also legislated in 1906 to allow local authorities to provide free school meals. 

‘Most of the confusion in discussing political liberalism comes from economics.’  Parry argues that laisser faire free market economics never persuaded leading Liberals to shrink the state – although after World War Two some outsiders were attracted to the party by the hope that it would adopt such an approach.  Cobden and Bright saw free trade as a means to international cooperation, and retrenchment of central government expenditure as opposition to spending on war and government sinecures.  Similarly, he argues that political liberals never preferred negative liberty – freedom from state interference – as more important than positive liberty – participation in public life and citizenship.  He sees the domestic policies in Chamberlain’s 1891 Newcastle Programme as pointing towards the great reforms of the 1906 government, though blocked in Gladstone’s last government by the overwhelming problem of Ireland.