Archive for liberal democrat history group
VIDEO: Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and Julian Glover on the Liberal Democrats, recession and The Guardian
You can now watch again in full one of the best fringe meetings from the party conference, which saw Paddy Ashdown, Shirley Williams and the then Guardian editorial writer Julian Glover launch a new history of the party and its predecessors, Peace, Reform and Liberation.* Julian Glover gave a very funny speech about his newspaper’s [...]
Forgotten heroes for a governing party: Monday 20 June
Some forgotten figures of Liberal history may deserve their obscurity, but most remain an unmined source of reference, quotation and inspiration for the contemporary Liberal Democrat – especially now, when the party is participating in national government for the first time in more than a generation. On Monday 20th June, for this year’s Liberal Democrat [...]
Forgotten heroes for a governing party
Some forgotten figures of Liberal history may deserve their obscurity, but most remain an unmined source of reference, quotation and inspiration for the contemporary Liberal Democrat – especially now, when the party is participating in national government for the first time in more than a generation. At this year’s Liberal Democrat History Group summer meeting, [...]
Lords Reform 1911-2011: watch the conference meeting
The 1911 Parliament Act, introduced in the wake of the rejection by the House of Lords of Lloyd George’s People’s Budget and the two general elections of 1910, was the first successful reform of the powers of the upper house and gave constitutional supremacy to the elected House of Commons. One hundred years after the [...]
The 2010 election in historical perspective
The following meeting report appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Liberal History – sent free to members of the Liberal Democrat History Group: Conference fringe meeting, 19 September 2010, with Professor John Curtice, Professor Dennis Kavanagh and James Gurling. Chair: Tony Little. Report by Dr Mark Pack. It has become a Liberal Democrat [...]
The Great Reform Act of 1832: its legacy and influence on the Coalition's reform agenda
That’s the title for the next Liberal Democrat History Group meeting, on Monday 24 January, for which I’m one of the speakers. Here are the details: The Great Reform Act of 1832: its legacy and influence on the Coalition’s reform agenda Soon after becoming Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg promised “the most significant programmes of [...]
The flawed strategy of the SDP
From the Liberal Democrat History Group email list: Now available for free download is Journal of Liberal History 45 (winter 2004-05), with articles including an analysis of the careers of the Liberals and social reformers Joseph and Seebohm Rowntree; ‘The flawed strategy of the SDP’; ‘Richard Cobden and British imperialism’; an appreciation of the life [...]
What's left of Gladstonian Liberalism in the Liberal Democrats? (25 January)
From the Liberal Democrat History Group’s email list: Since the publication of The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism edited by David Laws and Paul Marshall in 2004, there has been an ongoing discussion in the Liberal Democrats about whether the party needs to return to the nineteenth-century Gladstonian inheritance of non-interventionism in economic and social affairs, [...]
Support the Liberal Party’s 150th anniversary plaque appeal
On 6 June 1859, at Willis’s Rooms in King Street, St James, London, three groups of MPs – Radicals, Whigs and Peelites – met to formalise their parliamentary coalition to oust the Conservative government of Lord Derby and bring in a new administration under Lord Palmerston. Thus was born the first Liberal government, and the [...]
