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.

Parry defends the ambiguous record of Victorian Liberal governments on empire. Liberal policies wavered between resisting imperial expansion and attempting to educate and improve the conditions of the governed – not entirely successfully in the context of an expanding electorate that supported imperialism.  He also defends the cautious approach to fully democratic national government.  Liberals believed in creating an educated citizenship, but also in maintaining constitutional constraints over popular (and populist) enthusiasms. 

He passes over the barren interwar years with regret for the bitter Asquith-Lloyd George split and the reflection that national politics focussed on class and economic issues left Liberals stranded, in spite of the intellectual efforts of Keynes and others.  Grimond however picked up and redefined core Liberal themes, from international cooperation and education to decolonization and social reform.  ‘At the core of Grimond’s thinking was active citizenship and political participation, which he envisaged as checking central bureaucratic power.’  And, for Liberal Democrats frustrated at our exclusion from power for so long, he emphasises instances of influence over the direction of national policy since then: action as well as influence on social reform, from David Steel’s abortion act to Lynne Fetherstone’s same-sex marriage; a prominent role in carrying the UK into the European Community and the 1975 referendum, although a series of missteps in in the chaos that surrounded Brexit. And he reminds us of the Cook-Mclennan Agreement of 1997, which led at last to home rule for Scotland and Wales, although Jack Straw and others resisted the moves towards a more proportional national voting system which it promised.  

This is an interpretation of the record of Liberal politics over two centuries of which we can be proud.  Parry reminds us that resistance to centralization of power, opposition to vested interests (now far more of multinational corporations than of the great landowners), commitment to civil liberties and human rights, to education for all and to universal social welfare, concern for the environment and the promotion of international cooperation against nationalism,  remain core Liberal themes.  But he ends on a critical note.  ‘The party has no shortage of detailed policies…but has shied away from bolder statements of intent about national renewal.’ 

‘Whenever the opportunity arises for Liberals again to make a bold activist case for their creed, there is no shortage of history to help them do so.’    Over successive generations, ‘Liberals have tried to make the case that politics is a duty and an opportunity: to help us stumble towards a better balance between local, national and international power structures, the creativity of liberal capitalism, and the humanity and dignity of the individual.’                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.