reviews

Even if Liberal Democrat negotia- Even if the dramatic effect of learning how 6 See UK Debt Management Office, tors had given themselves more wrong certain people were at various Annual Report 2009–10. time, properly discounted the risk Liberal points of the negotiations. The best 7 G. Akerlof and R. Shiller, Animal of an early second election and example is Laws’ account of Paddy Spirits (Princeton NJ: Princeton UP, taken care to compare the deals Democrat Ashdown’s desperate attempts to enlist 2009) offered to them as a whole, the a globetrotting Tony Blair to inter- 8 The Liberal Democrat negotiating fundamental problem would have negotiators vene with Gordon Brown to persuade team declined opportunities offered remained that, without a perma- him to facilitate Lib–Lab negotia- by the Cabinet Secretary to be brow- nent leader, Labour fell apart to had given tions. Only when we turn to Wilson’s beaten by officials, but only because the extent that it was incapable of themselves account do we learn that Blair opposed they were in no further need of making any deal stick. It was not any deal with the Liberal Democrats persuasion. even clear how it would decide to more time, and told Brown so. Any parallels with 9 One explanation is that many of lead- accept or reject any deal. There is 1997–98 are far from coincidental. As ing Lib Dem MPs were themselves an important lesson here. Unless properly Conrad Russell once remarked about economists by background, with a we can discover how to bind a Paddy Ashdown’s relationship with bias to the City rather than the uni- leaderless party to a coalition deal, discounted Blair, ‘Love is blind.’ versities (Laws, Huhne, Cable, plus it is incompatible to call for a party 3 See Laws’ Appendix 5, paragraph PPE graduate Alexander). Perhaps leader to resign and still to expect the risk of an 1.4.3. ‘Reallocate a proportion of any they felt that consultation with mere the party to negotiate a coalition. identified in year 2010-11 savings to academia was unnecessary. But that still leaves the choice early second the promotion of growth and jobs.’ 10 Aeneid Book VIII, lines 485-499. As between full coalition and con- Notice only ‘a proportion’. Vergil says, this is ‘tormenti genus’. fidence and supply with the election and 4 Interestingly until the very last stage 11 The two parties later negotiated a set Conservatives. More time, better of the negotiations with the Conserv- of institutional arrangements whose estimation of the risks of a second taken care to atives all parties seem to have agreed main characteristic is that they place election and careful consideration to four-year fixed terms. The idea of an immense burden on the leader of a greater range of institutional compare the a five-year fixed term appeared very of the Liberal Democrats, a burden arrangements could have pro- late – possibly as a knock-on effect of that seems incompatible with his duced a different outcome. It deals offered agreeing a five-year deficit elimina- retaining substantive departmental may be, however, that the Liberal tion timescale. responsibilities. Democrats would have chosen full to them as a 5 J. Attali, Tous ruinés dans dix ans? 12 Three were absent: Martin Horwood, coalition anyway, consciously sac- (Paris: Fayard, 2010) at pp. 127-130. Chris Huhne and Sir Bob Smith. rificing their poll ratings, and even whole, the their entire future as a party, in fundamental exchange for greater influence. But at least they would have made that problem choice with their eyes open. would have Lloyd George and Wales David Howarth is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge; University Reader remained J. Graham Jones, Lloyd George and Welsh Liberalism in Private Law, University of Cam- (National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2010) bridge; Associate Fellow of the Centre that, without for Science and Policy, University of Reviewed by Kenneth O. Morgan Cambridge; Electoral Commissioner; a perma- former MP for Cambridge and Leader s Voltaire might have said, meanders through mid-Wales. But of Cambridge City Council, Liberal nent leader, if John Graham Jones did a meeting with the deeply learned, Democrat shadow cabinet member Anot exist he would have if deceptively modest, Dr Jones is 2007–10; Federal Policy Committee Labour fell had to be invented. As head of the always vaut le détour. For the first member 1990–2000. Welsh Political Archive established time, after selflessly helping other apart to at the National Library of Wales in scholars for three decades, he has 1 They are: a pre-election Liberal 1983, he has become an irreplace- branched out with a major work of Democrat draft ‘confidence and sup- the extent able figure in the scholarly life of his own. It consists of twenty-eight ply’ agreement for use with either that it was Wales. He has a unique knowledge chapters – all of them essays that other party, the Conservatives’ and of the rich collections under his have been previously published Labour’s opening proposals from Sat- incapable of care (many of them housed in in local Welsh historical journals urday 8 May, the Conservatives’ draft Aberystwyth as a direct result of save for one that appeared in this of a ‘confidence and supply’ agree- making any his own energy and initiative) and journal. The focus is on Welsh poli- ment from the following Monday, he has been a generous adviser tics between the late 1880s and the their later written offer of a referen- deal stick. to other scholars working on the 1940s. In itself, this is a fascinating dum on electoral reform, Labour’s archival riches deposited in that theme, on which previous scholars revised coalition offer of the same monumental Cymric Parthenon have written during the resurgence day and the final coalition agreement overlooking the tranquil waters of of modern Welsh history over the between the Conservatives and the Cardigan Bay. Travelling to this past half-century. But since the Liberal Democrats of the evening of Welsh copyright library is a lengthy main emphasis is on episodes in the Tuesday 11 May. business, demanding a large volume career of David Lloyd George, that 2 There is also a case for reading Laws’ to while away the time on David ever-present magnet for legions of narrative before Wilson’s, if only for Davies’ Cambrian railway as it authors from Beriah Gwynfe Evans

Journal of Liberal History 70 Spring 2011 45 reviews

1979 devolution referendum and depicted, and perhaps the two most beyond. interesting chapters are the first The emphasis is overwhelm- two. We read of the emergence of ingly on elections and by-elections the young rural firebrand in the – indeed, excessively so – rather backwoods politics of Caernar- than on the social composition, fonshire and Merioneth in the late economic interests or political eighties, and of the affinities of ideology of Welsh Liberals. These Lloyd George and Tom Ellis with Liberals, too, are overwhelmingly Michael Davitt, both as an Irish from rural, Nonconformist Welsh- nationalist and even more as a land speaking North and mid-Wales nationaliser. – Caernarfonshire, Anglesey, Davitt, an agrarian socialist, Denbighshire, Merioneth, Cardi- was to make his last appearance in ganshire, Montgomeryshire, and Wales speaking for Keir Hardie in also from Carmarthenshire in the Merthyr in 1906. A full account of south during the 1920s – signifi- the Caernarfon Boroughs general cantly all of them counties which election contest in 1892 illus- voted for the continued Sunday trates the various cross-tensions closure of pubs in the local ref- between the six boroughs in the erendum in 1961. This is all very constituency (there was a major fascinating, but it is only part of the gulf between the cathedral-bound reality of Welsh Liberalism. The world of Bangor and Calvinist cosmopolitan urban centres of the Methodist Criccieth and Pwll- south – Newport, Cardiff, Barry heli), and the uncomradely sniping and Swansea – seem an alien world, within the chapels at the free- while we hear little of Merthyr or thinking Campbellite Baptist who the mining valleys or indeed of the had captured the seat by eighteen Labour movement in any respect. votes in a dramatic by-election in to Roy Hattersley, the book has a The maverick coalowner, D. A. 1890. Lloyd George’s seat was a particular appeal for historians of Thomas, Lord Rhondda (who is distinctly marginal one down to twentieth-century British politics, mistakenly said to have been ‘an 1906 and this article graphically and especially of the fortunes of the uninterested observer’ moored on illustrates why. Later chapters offer Liberal Party and its renamed suc- the sidelines of Welsh politics after material, of varying importance, cessors. Scholars will thus give Gra- 1896) is a bit player, while the great bearing on some of Lloyd George’s ham Jones’ book a warm welcome. mining Lib-Lab patriarchs like later activities in national British The value of this book lies in the ‘Mabon’ and Brace, are absentees, as politics, including his pioneer- rich local political material that it are the socialist ILP and the notori- ing work at the Board of Trade contains. Dr Jones is a wonderful ous Chief Constable of Glamorgan, in 1905–8 (a formative period archivist, and his work pivots on Lionel Lindsay. This was the violent which still needs close examina- the bulky manuscript collections era of Taff Vale and Tonypandy, tion), the People’s Budget, the under his custody, which he him- after all, yet no strike is discussed, suffragettes (where many Welsh self is often able to work on before not even the traumatic events in Liberals responded with a disgrace- other scholars may do so. In par- Thomas’s own Cambrian Combine ful exhibition of violent bigotry), ticular, his work is inspired by four pits in 1910, nor the railwaymen the 1916 conscription crisis which recent major Lloyd George collec- shot down by troops at Llanelli divided the party so fatefully, the tions which he has collected and in 1911. The South Wales Liberal post-war coalition of ‘hard-faced catalogued since 1990: the archive Federation gets many mentions; the men’, the Green Book and other of L.G.’s younger brother, William, South Wales Miners’ Federation, campaigns in the twenties, the who selflessly kept the show on the like the 225,000 workforce, does Council of Action for Peace and road in Caernarfon Boroughs and not feature in the index even once. Reconstruction crusading for eco- ran the family solicitors; the papers Most of the articles are solid nomic renewal in 1935, the Abdica- of Lloyd George’s second daughter, and well constructed: about half tion crisis in the following year Lady Olwen; the large collec- a dozen, though, consist of the (Edward VIII’s backers included, tion of papers of Lloyd George’s reprinting of documents of lim- variously Lloyd George, Churchill ambitious private secretary, A. J. ited value almost for the sake of it, and, remarkably, Aneurin Bevan) Sylvester; and a small residue of including some typically manic and the crisis of May 1940. It cannot material retained by Lloyd George’s comments by Margot Asquith in be said that earlier interpretations secretary-mistress and eventual the twenties. In short, this book are challenged on these issues, but second wife, Frances Stevenson. covers some, though by no means we understand them in more detail But there are also many other col- all, key aspects of Welsh Liberalism after the material that Dr Jones has lections which Dr Jones has been from the late-Victorian period, but accumulated. through, some long established in it does so through generous docu- These articles reflect once again the National Library, such as those mentation set out by a uniquely the vibrant culture that was late- of Tom Ellis and D. R. Daniel, expert guide. As a source book, nineteenth and early-twentieth- some of far more recent provenance therefore, it is of much value. century Wales. It was truly an and taking the story down to the Lloyd George’s life odyssey is well Antonine Age of political vitality,

46 Journal of Liberal History 70 Spring 2011 reviews economic enterprise, revival- dedicated public figure who could university and, finally, campaign- ist religion, cultural innovation work well with Lloyd George. Alan ing for the League of Nations and and growing national awareness. Taylor’s dismissive judgement of world peace. Dr Jones also tells us of From its All-Black-beating rugby Lloyd George – ‘He had no friends Llewelyn Williams, the visionary team to the revival of the national and did not deserve any’ – was, like Oxford-bred ‘Young Wales’ Liberal eisteddfod, it was the Welsh Golden other of my old mentor’s epigrams, who broke with Lloyd George over Age. Its monuments still dominate vividly compelling but deeply conscription in 1916 and fought the the nation today, one being the untrue. We are told of Sir Alfred Coalition despairingly in a historic National Library at Aberystwyth Mond, deeply engulfed in Welsh by-election in Cardiganshire in itself, located there to balance the politics for all his involvement with February 1921. Unfortunately, Dr museum set up in faraway Cardiff. his metallurgical empire, a bold Jones’s relentless emphasis on party Attention, however, was far Lloyd Georgian reformer before the politics and by-elections leads him from monopolised by Lloyd George, war, but a case of Liberalism laps- to neglect Williams’s wider role political colossus though he was. ing into a crude anti-socialism after as a rare kind of Welsh Thomas There are other dramatis personae, 1922. We encounter David Davies Davis, a cultural nationalist, writer vivid and compelling. Thus we of Llandinam, a Welsh Andrew of charming children’s stories read of the public-spirited Her- Carnegie, millionaire industrial- and a scholarly historian of Tudor bert Lewis, who illustrates – as do ist, but also a philanthropic idealist Wales with a revisionist view of the C. P. Scott, Seebohm Rowntree or who spent millions on combating Act of Union. Welsh Liberalism H. A. L. Fisher – the kind of honest, lung disease, endowing the national could have done more like Llew. RESEARCH IN PROGRESS If you can help any of the individuals listed below with sources, contacts, or any other information — or if you know anyone who can — please pass on details to them. Details of other research projects in progress should be sent to the Editor (see page 3) for inclusion here.

Letters of Richard Cobden (1804–65) the national decline of the party with the reality of the situation on Knowledge of the whereabouts of any letters written by Cobden in the ground. The thesis will focus on three geographic regions (Home private hands, autograph collections, and obscure locations in the UK Counties, Midlands and the North West) in order to explore the situation and abroad for a complete edition of his letters. (For further details of the Liberals found themselves in nationally. Research for University of the Cobden Letters Project, please see www.uea.ac.uk/his/research/ Leicester. Supervisor: Dr Stuart Ball. Gavin Freeman ; [email protected]. projects/cobden). Dr Anthony Howe, School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ; [email protected]. The Liberal Party in the West Midlands December 1916 – 1923 election Focusing on the fortunes of the party in Birmingham, Coventry, Walsall The political career of Edward Strutt, 1st Baron Belper and Wolverhampton. Looking to explore the effects of the party split Strutt was Whig/Liberal MP for Derby (1830-49), later Arundel and at local level. Also looking to uncover the steps towards temporary Nottingham; in 1856 he was created Lord Belper and built Kingston reunification for the 1923 general election.Neil Fisher, 42 Bowden Way, Hall (1842-46) in the village of Kingston-on-Soar, Notts. He was a Binley, Coventry CV3 2HU ; [email protected]. friend of Jeremy Bentham and a supporter of free trade and reform, and held government office as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ‘Economic Liberalism’ and the Liberal (Democrat) Party, 1937–2004 and Commissioner of Railways. Any information, location of papers or A study of the role of ‘economic liberalism’ in the Liberal Party and the references welcome. Brian Smith; [email protected]. Liberal Democrats. Of particular interest would be any private papers relating to 1937’s Ownership For All report and the activities of the Liberal Unionists Unservile State Group. Oral history submissions also welcome. Matthew A study of the Liberal Unionist party as a discrete political entity. Help Francis; [email protected]. with identifying party records before 1903 particularly welcome. Ian Cawood, Newman University Colllege, Birmingham; i.cawood@newman. The Liberal Party’s political communication, 1945–2002 ac.uk. Research on the Liberal party and Lib Dems’ political communication. Any information welcome (including testimonies) about electoral Liberal policy towards Austria-Hungary, 1905–16 campaigns and strategies. Cynthia Messeleka-Boyer, 12 bis chemin Vaysse, Andrew Gardner, 17 Upper Ramsey Walk, Canonbury, London N1 2RP; 81150 Terssac, France; +33 6 10 09 72 46; [email protected]. [email protected]. The political career of David Steel, Lord Steel of Aikwood Recruitment of Liberals into the Conservative Party, 1906–1935 David Steel was one of the longest-serving leaders of the Liberal Party Aims to suggest reasons for defections of individuals and develop an and an important figure in the realignment debate of the 1970s and ‘80s understanding of changes in electoral alignment. Sources include that led to the formation of the Liberal Democrats. Author would like to personal papers and newspapers; suggestions about how to get hold of hear from anyone with pertinent or entertaining anecdotes relating to the papers of more obscure Liberal defectors welcome. Cllr Nick Cott, 1a Steel’s life and times, particularly his leadership, or who can point me Henry Street, Gosforth, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE3 1DQ; [email protected]. towards any relevant source material. David Torrance; davidtorrance@ hotmail.com . Beyond Westminster: Grassroots Liberalism 1910–1929 A study of the Liberal Party at its grassroots during the period in which it The Lib-Lab Pact went from being the party of government to the third party of politics. The period of political co-operation which took place in Britain between This research will use a wide range of sources, including surviving 1977 and 1978; PhD research project at Cardiff University.Jonny Kirkup, 29 Liberal Party constituency minute books and local press to contextualise Mount Earl, Bridgend, Bridgend County CF31 3EY; [email protected].

Journal of Liberal History 70 Spring 2011 47 A Liberal Democrat History Group evening meeting 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, two senior party figures and two well- known academics will rescue their own forgotten heroes from the twlight of history and tell us how their champions’ public lives can influence today’s Liberal Democrats.

Speakers: Lady Floella Benjamin; Lord Navnit Dholakia; Dr Matt Cole; Dr Mark Pack.

The meeting will also mark the launch of Matt Cole’s new biography, Richard Wainwright, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats; copies will be available for sale.

6.30pm, Monday 20 June David Lloyd George Room, National Liberal Club, 1 Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE

The Lloyd George legacy in after 1918. It was always sternly only 0.5 per cent on a low poll). all his fellow Liberals loyally its different guises is shown anti-socialist. Lloyd George’s Wales was not Ireland, not even backed up his People’s Budget in the later careers of Megan, quasi land nationalisation Scotland. It sought national to promote social welfare and a genuine radical who joined manifested in the ‘cultivating equality within the United redistributive direct taxation, Labour, and Gwilym, who tenure’ proposed in his Green Kingdom not exclusion from it. set up children’s allowances, became a hyphenated Tory, and Book in 1925 left Alfred Mond Lloyd George, far from being and invest in national develop- a Home Secretary who retained apoplectic. Significantly, the the Parnell of Wales, became ment to generate employment. capital punishment. Truly their New Liberalism flourished prime minister of Great Britain Today, after George Osborne’s father’s house contained many in urban centres in England, and a belligerent, even racial- anti-working-class budget has mansions. notably L. T. Hobhouse’s Man- ist, head of the Imperial War taken precisely the opposite What general conclusions chester, not in Wales, where Cabinet. Even today, the Welsh path on all these issues, Liber- can we reach about Welsh Lib- the prevailing tone was Old Assembly lags well behind its als in Wales and elsewhere are eralism in its era of greatness Liberalism – just as it was to be counterpart in Edinburgh. voting haplessly to undermine and glory? This book shows, Old, not New, Labour eighty Finally, and of current rel- Lloyd George’s legacy. It is a of course, the centrality of years on. Above all, there is evance, coalition was always mournful comment on the glo- popular Nonconformity in the significantly little here on ideas bad news for Liberalism. Lloyd ries of the Edwardian Liberal public life of the nation, leading of home rule, even the most George’s ‘couponed’ peacetime high noon that John Graham ultimately to the downfall and modest forms of devolution. It coalition with the Tories after Jones’s fascinating book so even discredit of the chapels was not a major theme in Welsh 1918 led to massive internal movingly describes. as religious communities. Lib- history before Kilbrandon in divisions, and left Coalition eralism emerges as invincibly 1973. Lloyd George’s great Liberalism in the valleys an Kenneth O. Morgan is Fellow of bourgeois, even with its popu- defeat at Newport in 1896, open target for Labour. The the British Academy, honorary fel- list grass roots, its shipowners when the quasi-nationalists so-called National govern- low of The Queen’s and Oriel Col- and coalowners, preachers and of Cymru Fydd were shouted ment after 1931 was even more leges, Oxford, and a Labour peer. teachers, journalists and the down, left a dark shadow over divisive, with only Lloyd He is the author of several books on inevitable lawyers all increas- movements for devolution, still George’s family group of four modern history, most recently Ages ingly out of touch with Labour, evident in the referendum of left as a rump of independent of Reform: Dawns and Down- leading to a calamitous elec- 1979 (and even in 1997 when Liberalism. But, at least in falls of the British Left (I. B. toral collapse in the valleys the ‘Yes’ vote triumphed by Lloyd George’s day, almost Tauris, 2010).