Vernon Bogdanor: What history teaches us about the Tory-Liberal love-in
[Vernon Bogdanor is professor of government at Oxford University and the author of "The New British Constitution".]
"If I am to die, I would rather die fighting on the left," said David Lloyd George when, in 1931, he explained why he would not be joining most of the Liberal Party in coalition with the Conservative-dominated National Government.
The present coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats has long antecedents. The Conservatives were in coalition with dissident Liberals in 1895, when the Liberal Unionists joined them to resist Home Rule; from 1916 to 1922, when a group of Liberals led by Lloyd George joined with the Conservatives to win the First World War and secure postwar reconstruction; and again, in 1931, in the National Government.
Indeed, it was this government which, in order to retain Liberal support, invented the "agreement to differ", whereby ministers were allowed to retain their own views on the relative merits of free trade or an imperial tariff. This expedient will be copied by the present government if and when there is a referendum on the Alternative Vote system.
But, in 1931, the "agreement to differ" did not work well. The House of Commons faced the interesting spectacle of the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, insisting that a tariff was needed to save the country, while the home secretary, Sir Herbert Samuel, his Liberal colleague, also speaking from the front bench, warned that it represented the road to ruin. The "agreement" did not last. Adopted in January 1931, it collapsed the following August when the Liberals refused to accept the Ottawa agreements extending the tariff, and resigned from the government.
The Liberals have formed coalitions with the Conservatives, but they have never been in a peacetime coalition with Labour. Though it may be a bit much to conjure the ghost of Ramsay MacDonald, as John Reid and David Blunkett did during the fraught period that led to the creation of the new government, it should be rememberered that the Liberals have supported minority Labour governments - in 1924, 1929-31 and during the Lib-Lab pact in 1977-78.
Yet coalition government has always benefited the Conservatives. It enabled them to hold power with the aid of satellite parties, splinters from their opponents such as the Liberal Unionists and Liberal Nationals, at times when they might not have been able to win on their own. Three times in the 20th century they won landslide majorities, which they could scarcely have managed unaided, with support from outsiders - Joseph Chamberlain in 1900, Lloyd George in 1918 and Ramsay MacDonald in 1931.
“The last purely Conservative government," Harold Macmillan wrote in 1975, perhaps with his tongue in his cheek, "was formed by Mr Disraeli in 1874 - it is the fact that we have attracted moderate people of Liberal tradition and thought into our ranks which makes it possible to maintain a Conservative government today. A successful party of the right must continue to recruit its strength from the centre, and even from the left centre. Once it begins to shrink into itself like a snail it will be doomed . . ."
In the 1950s, supporters of the Churchill government, such as the "radio doctor" Charles Hill, stood not as Conservatives but under the label "Liberal and Conservative". Others stood as "National Liberals". When the leader of the Liberals, Clement Davies, wrote to Churchill attacking him for subterfuge, the Conservative leader replied, with superb insouciance, that "I should not presume to correct your knowledge of the moral, intellectual and legal aspects of adding a prefix or suffix to the honoured name of Liberal". The last "National Liberal" stood in 1966, after which the party merged with the Conservatives, as the Liberal Unionists had done in 1912.
Coalitions have been of less benefit to the Liberals. In fact, they have always led to, or have been the product of, a party split - for example, with the Liberal Unionists, who split from the Liberals over Home Rule in 1886, and the Liberal Nationals in the 1930s. One wing of the party would subsequently be swallowed up by the Conservatives, while the other wing remained independent. In 1932, when one group of Liberals left the National Government over free trade, the Liberal Nationals (later National Liberals) remained, and, under the leadership of Sir John Simon, became even more enthusiastic appeasers of Nazi Germany than the Conservatives. A similar split could easily occur today, with the right wing of the Liberal Democrats under David Laws merging with the Conservatives, while the left, under Vince Cable and Simon Hughes, deserts the coalition, perhaps to seek an arrangement with Labour.
There is, however, one fundamental and crucial difference between past Conservative-Liberal coalitions and the present one...
Read entire article at New Statesman (UK)
"If I am to die, I would rather die fighting on the left," said David Lloyd George when, in 1931, he explained why he would not be joining most of the Liberal Party in coalition with the Conservative-dominated National Government.
The present coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats has long antecedents. The Conservatives were in coalition with dissident Liberals in 1895, when the Liberal Unionists joined them to resist Home Rule; from 1916 to 1922, when a group of Liberals led by Lloyd George joined with the Conservatives to win the First World War and secure postwar reconstruction; and again, in 1931, in the National Government.
Indeed, it was this government which, in order to retain Liberal support, invented the "agreement to differ", whereby ministers were allowed to retain their own views on the relative merits of free trade or an imperial tariff. This expedient will be copied by the present government if and when there is a referendum on the Alternative Vote system.
But, in 1931, the "agreement to differ" did not work well. The House of Commons faced the interesting spectacle of the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, insisting that a tariff was needed to save the country, while the home secretary, Sir Herbert Samuel, his Liberal colleague, also speaking from the front bench, warned that it represented the road to ruin. The "agreement" did not last. Adopted in January 1931, it collapsed the following August when the Liberals refused to accept the Ottawa agreements extending the tariff, and resigned from the government.
The Liberals have formed coalitions with the Conservatives, but they have never been in a peacetime coalition with Labour. Though it may be a bit much to conjure the ghost of Ramsay MacDonald, as John Reid and David Blunkett did during the fraught period that led to the creation of the new government, it should be rememberered that the Liberals have supported minority Labour governments - in 1924, 1929-31 and during the Lib-Lab pact in 1977-78.
Yet coalition government has always benefited the Conservatives. It enabled them to hold power with the aid of satellite parties, splinters from their opponents such as the Liberal Unionists and Liberal Nationals, at times when they might not have been able to win on their own. Three times in the 20th century they won landslide majorities, which they could scarcely have managed unaided, with support from outsiders - Joseph Chamberlain in 1900, Lloyd George in 1918 and Ramsay MacDonald in 1931.
“The last purely Conservative government," Harold Macmillan wrote in 1975, perhaps with his tongue in his cheek, "was formed by Mr Disraeli in 1874 - it is the fact that we have attracted moderate people of Liberal tradition and thought into our ranks which makes it possible to maintain a Conservative government today. A successful party of the right must continue to recruit its strength from the centre, and even from the left centre. Once it begins to shrink into itself like a snail it will be doomed . . ."
In the 1950s, supporters of the Churchill government, such as the "radio doctor" Charles Hill, stood not as Conservatives but under the label "Liberal and Conservative". Others stood as "National Liberals". When the leader of the Liberals, Clement Davies, wrote to Churchill attacking him for subterfuge, the Conservative leader replied, with superb insouciance, that "I should not presume to correct your knowledge of the moral, intellectual and legal aspects of adding a prefix or suffix to the honoured name of Liberal". The last "National Liberal" stood in 1966, after which the party merged with the Conservatives, as the Liberal Unionists had done in 1912.
Coalitions have been of less benefit to the Liberals. In fact, they have always led to, or have been the product of, a party split - for example, with the Liberal Unionists, who split from the Liberals over Home Rule in 1886, and the Liberal Nationals in the 1930s. One wing of the party would subsequently be swallowed up by the Conservatives, while the other wing remained independent. In 1932, when one group of Liberals left the National Government over free trade, the Liberal Nationals (later National Liberals) remained, and, under the leadership of Sir John Simon, became even more enthusiastic appeasers of Nazi Germany than the Conservatives. A similar split could easily occur today, with the right wing of the Liberal Democrats under David Laws merging with the Conservatives, while the left, under Vince Cable and Simon Hughes, deserts the coalition, perhaps to seek an arrangement with Labour.
There is, however, one fundamental and crucial difference between past Conservative-Liberal coalitions and the present one...