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Home , Charles James Fox, John Burns, Jo Grimond, Robert Peel, Violet Bonham Carter, William Beveridge

H. H. Asquith, , , Henry Campbell- Bannerman, , Millicent Garrett Fawcett, in search of the , W. E. , , , J. M. Keynes, , , , Lord John Russell – or someone GREAT LIBERALs else: who was the greatest Liberal?

In 2002 the BBC nclosed with this Feel free to write in your own conducted a search Journal is a ballot suggestions, and vote for them, paper, through which on the enclosed ballot paper. for the greatest Briton you can vote for your The only rules for inclusion are: of all time (Winston choice of the greatest • The individual must have LiberalE (naturally, by the single been active in the Liberal Churchill won). Now, transferable vote). Party, or its predecessors the Liberal Democrat The top four candidates (Whigs, Radicals, etc.) selected through Journal read- or influential on Liberal History Group is ers’ votes will be presented at the thinking. History Group’s fringe meeting • They must have been Brit- offeringJournal readers at the autumn Liberal Democrat ish, or active in Britain. the chance to decide conference in . Leading • They must be dead. politicians and historians will Inclusion in the Dictionary of who is the greatest make the case for each one of Liberal Biography, or Dictionary of British Liberal of the four, and Journal readers and Liberal Thought, is a good guide, conference participants will be but is not a prerequisite. all time. You will able to vote for the final choice find here concise of the greatest Liberal. At this stage, write-in candi- H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) summaries of the lives dates are not only allowed, but Herbert Henry Asquith was not of fifteen potential welcome. As you can imagine, it just one of the longest-serving was not easy to choose the fifteen Prime Ministers (1908–16) of the candidates, selected by presented below, and we consid- twentieth century, he was pre- the Liberal Democrat ered several other candidates, mier of one of Britain’s greatest including , reforming governments. History Group’s , , George The -born executive committee Cadbury, , was elected Liberal MP for East Charles Dickens, W. E. Forster, in 1886 and soon impressed and written by L. T. Hobhouse, Lord Palm- party and Parliament with his erston, Samuel Plimsoll, Lord remarkable debating powers. An Duncan Brack and Rosebery, Joseph Rowntree, able in 1892–95, York Membery. Nancy Seear and . he went on to become a leading

4 Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 in search of the GREAT LIBERALs

Liberal Imperialist, but really child clinics, and much Beveridge had impressive made his name arguing the free- more. He might well have won achievements before his famous trade case against Joseph Cham- the election due in 1915 had war Report. As a civil servant from berlain’s championing of tariff not intervened. Instead, wartime 1908 to 1919, he helped draw reform after 1903. difficulties forced him into coali- up the Labour Exchanges Act As Chancellor of the Excheq- tion with the Conservatives and of 1909, the second part of the uer in 1906–08, Asquith began in 1916 he was ousted from the 1911 Act and to lay the foundations of a redis- premiership by Lloyd George. the 1916 Insur- tributive , taxing The subsequent disastrous split ance Act, extending insurance unearned income more heavily in Liberal ranks enabled Labour to workers involved in war pro- than earned, and using budg- to push the party into third place duction. In 1919, he left govern- ets systematically for social electorally. ment for academia, becoming expenditure. He was the obvious Despite this unhappy end to Director of the School successor to the dying Campbell- his career, we should not forget of Economics and then, in 1937, Bannerman, becoming Prime his real achievements as Liberal Master of University College, Minister in 1908. As command- Prime Minister, in some ways . He also found time to ing a presence on the platform as even more impressive than Glad- participate in Liberal Summer in the House, he went on to win stone’s. Asquith’s programme of Schools. the two elections of 1910 after social and fiscal reform changed When war broke out, he the peers threw out Lloyd the nature of the country – and was put in charge of an inter- George’s ‘People’s Budget’, and of the Liberal Party – for good. departmental inquiry into the finally broke the power of the coordination of the social serv- , which had for ices. He knew ministers were so long been an obstacle to Lib- William Beveridge (1879– trying to marginalise him, eral aspirations. 1963) partly because of his abrasive Asquith’s government con- The welfare state that emerged style, yet it was the report aris- tinued to implement the New in Britain after 1945 owed its ing from this inquiry that was Liberal programme of social foundations to Asquith and to make his name as the father reform, introducing old age Lloyd George, and its implemen- of the welfare state. , national insurance for tation to Attlee – but its design Social Insurance and Allied periods of sickness, invalidity and structure were overwhelm- Services (1942) outlined a vision and unemployment, govern- ingly the work of the great social of society’s battle against ‘the ment grants for maternity and reformer William Beveridge. five giants’, idleness, ignorance,

Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 5 in search of the great liberals disease, squalor and want. The President of the Women’s Lib- The top four party to its greatest electoral suc- report proposed a system of eral Federation in 1923–25 and cess ever. cash benefits, financed by equal 1939–45, in 1945 she became the candidates First elected as MP for Stir- contributions from workers, first female President of the Lib- ling Burghs in 1868, Campbell- employers and the state, together eral Party Organisation. She also selected Bannerman held the seat for with a public assistance safety- stood unsuccessfully for Parlia- through forty years and built a ministe- net. Underlying this system ment twice, in Wells in 1945 and rial career of quiet competence. were three assumptions, further Colne Valley in 1951. In 1964 she Journal read- In 1901, as leader, during the developed in in entered the House of Lords and middle of the Boer War, he a Free Society (1944): a national although by then seventy-seven, ers’ votes will bravely condemned the ‘meth- health service available to all, made an immediate impact. ods of barbarism’ employed in tax-financed family allowances A gifted orator, Lady Violet be presented the concentration camps of the and a commitment to state was a popular and charismatic at the His- Rand; denounced by the jingo action to reduce unemployment. speaker for Liberal candidates press, and many in his own These proposals were to form – including for her son-in-law, tory Group’s party, at the time, people grad- the basis of government policy the Liberal leader Jo Grimond ually came to recognise that he for the next forty years. – throughout her long life. In fringe meet- was right. In 1944, Beveridge was the non-political sphere, she Although as Prime Minister elected to the House of Com- was a Governor of the BBC in ing at the from 1905 to 1908, CB’s legisla- mons as Liberal MP for Ber- 1941–46 and became a frequent autumn tive record was disappointing, wick-upon-Tweed but lost his broadcaster on both television with several initiatives destroyed seat a year later. Upon being and radio. Liberal by the Tory-dominated Lords, made a peer in 1946 he went on She had four children, many of the foundations for later to lead the Liberals in the House including Mark Bonham Carter Democrat successes were laid by ministers of Lords. (himself later a Liberal MP) and in the cabinet he appointed and Laura Bonham Carter (who conference in managed, by all accounts bril- married Grimond). The actress Brighton. liantly. It may have been his Lady Violet Bonham Carter is her successor who finally tamed (1887–1969) granddaughter. the Lords, but it was Campbell- Violet Bonham Carter was the Bannerman’s policy that Asquith daughter of Liberal Prime Min- adopted in place of his own ister H. H. Asquith and his first Henry Campbell-Bannerman . wife, Helen Melland. Despite (1836–1908) Campbell-Bannerman was the lack of a formal education, Sir Henry Campbell-Banner- praised after his death for his she was a woman of formida- man owes his place here to his courage, idealism, shrewdness ble intellect. She was a pas- record as a party manager rather and tenacity, and for his gener- sionate Liberal, and her father’s than to his achievements as a osity and kindness; he was most ‘champion redoubtable’ (to use Liberal Prime Minister. Glad- frequently admired for his com- the phraseology of Winston stone, Asquith and Lloyd George mon sense. In holding his party Churchill): she worshipped him may have achieved more glit- together and holding it to Lib- and he depended upon her. After tering legislative successes, but eralism, he can be judged as one his fall from power she became Gladstone left his party divided the best and most successful Lib- his standard-bearer, discovering and exhausted; between them, eral leaders. her own considerable gifts as an Asquith and Lloyd George tore orator as she fought his election it apart. campaigns in Paisley. She con- By contrast, Campbell-Ban- Richard Cobden (1804–65) tinued after Asquith’s death to nerman brought the party back For over a century, from the be his most resolute defender, from one of the lowest points of 1840s to the 1950s, support for and the voice of Asquithian its pre-1918 history, healed the was virtually syn- . divisions between and onymous with support for the She was also an important , fought off Liberal Party. It was Richard Liberal politician in her own constant sniping from his pred- Cobden who first made it so. right. She was a fervent believer ecessor, Rosebery, constructed a Cobden helped found the in the League of Nations, an political alliance stretching from Anti-Corn Law League in active member of the League of the free-trade wing of the Con- 1839, in protest against the high Nations Union, and a vigorous servative Party to the nascent duties levelled on imports of supporter of Churchill’s anti- Labour Representation Com- grain. Designed to protect Brit- campaign, before mittee, faced down a Liberal- ish agriculture, the embracing the European ideal Imperialist plot to send him to inhibited the growth of the new after the war. the Lords and, in 1906, led his manufacturing industries, which

6 Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 in search of the great liberals were crippled in their ability to win export markets because of foreign grain-growers’ inability to export to Britain. Employing lecturers, public meetings, pam- phlets and direct electoral pres- sure, the League was in many ways the first modern pressure group. It was Cobden’s genius that turned the economic argu- ments of Adam Smith and into a campaign for cheap bread, winning support from workers and manufactur- ers alike. Cobden, however, always saw much more than economic justi- fication for open markets. Abol- ishing protection for agriculture was part of the process of tearing down the remnants of the feudal order and putting an end to the special treatment enjoyed by the land-owners – part of the Liberal assault on privilege. Trade also promoted interdependence and a sense of international com- munity, building links between peoples and nations and render- ing conflict less likely. After the Corn Laws were repealed in 1846, Cobden con- tinued to campaign for peace and free trade, and against high military expenditure and high taxes. Although he negotiated a key trade treaty with France in 1860, he always refused minis- terial office, preferring to stick to his principles. The cause of free trade underlined the Liberal landslide victory of 1906 and reunited a divided party in 1923; the vision of a world governed by principles and rules rather than power is still held by Lib- eral Democrats today. Cobden, more than any other individual, laid the foundations for this con- tinuing story.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929) Millicent Garrett Fawcett was Britain’s most important leader Right, from top: in the fight for women’s suf- Asquith, Beveridge, Bonham Carter frage. Although the militant Far right, from Pankhursts are more generally top: Campbell- ­identified with the struggle, Bannerman, Cobden, Fawcett

Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 7 in search of the great liberals

Fawcett contributed more than Charles James Fox (1749– anyone else to British women 1806) obtaining the right to vote. Charles James Fox provides Valuing rational thought and the link between the Whig her own privacy, she rejected inheritance of adherence to the the cult of personality that sur- supremacy of Parliament and the rounded more dramatic and over the executive, emotional leaders. whether monarchical or aristo- Fawcett began writing and cratic government, and the Vic- speaking on the education of torian Liberal belief in women and women’s suffrage in and dissent. He had the courage 1868. Although only a moderate to proclaim the freedom of the public speaker, she was a superb individual even in the depths organiser, and by the early of the and 1880s had emerged as one of the . leaders of the suffrage move- This is even more remark- ment; she became President of able given Fox’s aristocratic the National Union of Women’s upbringing, early conserva- Suffrage Societies in 1897. She tive attitudes and generally ensured that the movement dissolute behaviour; although was active on a wide variety of this left him with heavy gam- women’s causes, including cam- bling debts, on several occa- paigns against the white slave sions he refused offers of cabinet traffic, for better protection for posts, with their accompanying low-paid women workers, and salaries, out of principle. His for the repeal of the Conta- adherence to the supremacy gious Diseases Acts. Finally, in of Parliament, opposition to 1918, women over thirty were monarchical power and support enfranchised; ten years later, for the rebellion of the Ameri- women received the vote on a can colonists were all decisive in basis of full equality with men. developing a much more radical Fawcett was a Liberal until stance. By the late 1770s he was 1886, when she joined the Lib- consistently one of the more eral Unionists, out of opposition radical Whigs, holding beliefs to Irish . She helped any modern Liberal would rec- to lead the Women’s Liberal ognise – in power stemming Unionist Association until 1903, from the people, in freedom of when she broke with the party conscience and expression, in over its support for tariff reform. peace rather than war and in the In 1919 Fawcett retired from possibility of reform producing active leadership of the suffrage progress. union, and returned to writ- It was Fox’s misfortune to ing. She published two books articulate these beliefs in an on economics, a novel and sev- atmosphere of growing fear and eral biographies and books on repression, as the early ideals the women’s suffrage move- of the French Revolution gave ment. She worked to promote way to the Terror and then to higher education for women, Napoleonic autocracy. Thus his and helped to found Newnham periods in government were College, . brief – he served as Foreign Sec- There are very few women in retary (Britain’s first) in 1782, this list of great Liberals because 1783 and 1806 – and his parlia- until the mid-twentieth century, mentary motions were regularly at least, politics was overwhelm- defeated by large majorities. ingly a male preserve. Fawcett’s He achieved only two impor- career demonstrates a rare degree tant parliamentary measures, a of commitment, perseverance ­resolution pledging the abolition and personal courage – and fur- of the slave trade, and the 1792 From top: Fox, thermore, she achieved her aims. Libel Act. Gladstone, Grimond

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Although one of the best ora- Home Rule – which, despite At this stage, Grimond’s idealism, abil- tors of his time, Fox was not two attempts, he never achieved, ity to communicate and fresh- a profound political thinker. splitting his party in the proc- write-in ness appealed to the younger ­Nevertheless, his instinctive ess. His preoccupation with generation of voters, no longer hatred of oppression, and his moral issues also explains his candidates deferential and class-conscious. courage in sticking to his prin- opposition to radical ‘construc- are not only He made the Liberal Party a ciples, left the Whigs with a tionist’ legislation, which could respectable organisation to join, clear legacy of belief in freedom too easily destroy incentives for allowed, but and attracted experts who con- and civil which was to self-help and . Yet tributed to a real renaissance in become a defining feature of the he was always a government welcome. Liberal thinking – including Liberal Party. activist willing to expand the entry to the Common Market, role of the state, as a regulator Feel free Scottish Home Rule, industrial (for example, in railway regu- to write in democracy, and the abolition W. E. Gladstone (1809–98) lation, or Irish land reform), or of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. was as a provider where voluntary your own Pursuing the realignment of the the political giant of Victorian means were inadequate, such as left, he positioned the party as politics. He defined the Liberal in education. suggestions, a radical non-statist alternative Party of the second half of the In the time left over from to Labour. The stunning by- nineteenth century: the party of office, Gladstone collected and vote for election victory at Orpington in peace, retrenchment, reform and china, wrote on Homer and par- them, on the 1962 seemed to prove his strat- – above all – trust in the people. ticipated in the religious con- egy right, and at the subsequent A minister by the age of troversies of his time. He was a enclosed bal- general election of 1964 the Lib- twenty-five, he left office for man of immense physical and eral vote topped three million the last time at eighty-five. He mental energy, chopping down lot paper. for the first time since the war. served as Prime Minister on no trees and reading books (20,000 Although Labour’s success less than four occasions, three of them, according to Jenkins) in 1966 postponed this hope of them after his ‘retirement’ in for relaxation. He moulded and for fifteen years – and led to his 1875. He was the leading ora- embodied Victorian Liberalism. resignation as leader in 1967 – tor of his age, not only in Par- He was not only a great Liberal; Grimond sowed the seeds of the liament but outside, regularly he was a great human being. realignment of the 1980s. His addressing audiences of 20,000 leadership not only rescued the or more. Liberal Party from seemingly Originally a Tory, he was Jo Grimond (1913–93) inexorable electoral decline, but, converted to the cause of free The most important post-war as put it, estab- trade under Sir Peel. As Liberal leader, Jo Grimond made lished it as the party of choice Chancellor of the Exchequer in a difference not just to the for- for ‘the radicals and thinkers of the 1850s and 1860s, he abol- tunes of his party but to Brit- British politics’. ished tariffs, simplified taxation, ish politics, helping to end the ended paper duties to facili- two-party mould into which it tate the growth of the press and had settled. He took over an ail- Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) established the Post Office Sav- ing party and transformed it into Roy Jenkins was the great ings Bank. With other , a formidable force. A figure of reforming Liberal Prime Min- in 1859 he joined with Whigs great magnetism and intellectual ister Britain never had. A pro- and Radicals to create the Lib- originality, he inspired a rare gressive and effective cabinet eral Party, and nine years later degree of affection amongst vot- minister, he played a key role in became its leader. Under his four ers and activists alike. taking Britain into Europe and premierships, the Irish Church Born in Fife, Joseph Gri- then founding the Social Demo- was disestablished, the secret mond studied law and served in cratic Party. He also found time ballot introduced, the purchase the forces during the war. Mar- to write several elegant political of army commissions abolished, riage to Violet Bonham Carter’s biographies. state primary education estab- daughter, Laura, gave a boost to After wartime intelligence lished and the franchise reformed his Liberal commitment; he was work, Jenkins was elected as and extended. He pursued a for- elected MP for & Shet- a Labour MP in 1948. He took eign policy guided by the ‘love land in 1950 and leader of the the revisionist social-democratic of freedom’ and action through a party in 1956. Despite the party’s side in Labour’s internal strug- ‘concert of nations’. parlous condition – it sank to its gles, and became a leading fig- For Gladstone, politics was, lowest-ever level of five MPs in ure after Labour’s 1964 election above all else, about great moral 1957 – he refused to accept that victory. As Home Secretary issues rather than selfish interests. its long-term aim should not be (1965–67), he was responsible for Hence his conversion to Irish power. reforming the laws on abortion,­

Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 9 in search of the great liberals

homosexuality, race relations and theatre censorship. In 1967 he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, where two years of tough measures restored eco- nomic stability. Jenkins was always a con- vinced European. In October 1971, defying a three-line whip, he led sixty-nine Labour MPs to vote for EEC entry; he was one of the leaders of the ‘yes’ campaign in the 1975 referen- dum. He served as President of the European Commission in 1977–81, where he played a leading role in establishing the European Monetary System. In 1979, Jenkins’s Dimbleby Lecture acted as a rallying cry for all those discontented with British politics. He criticised the false choices, see-saw poli- tics and broken promises of the two-party system and advocated electoral reform. Most crucially, he called for a new grouping to strengthen the ‘radical cen- tre’. Eighteen months later, he founded the SDP, bringing thousands of new activists into politics, and was its leader in 1982–83. After he lost his seat in 1987, he strongly supported merger, and then led the Liberal Democrat peers (1988–98). Jenkins had a glittering political career. He was a styl- ish and eloquent performer in Parliament, on television, and in print. Frequently described as ‘grand’, he saw himself as a ‘perpetual radical’. He could have been a Labour Prime Min- ister if he had not stuck to his vision and principles; instead, he changed the political land- scape of Britain.

John Maynard Keynes (1883– 1946) As well as Liberal politicians, Liberal thinkers have helped to shape government in twentieth- century Britain. Greatest among them was Keynes, the most Far left, from top: Jenkins, Keynes, influential and important eco- Lloyd George nomic thinker of the century, Left, from top: whose ideas came to underpin Locke, Mill, Russell

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Western governments’ post-war The top four beings could live civilised, crea- proposed a radical programme economic strategy. tive and passionate lives. of state intervention in the Primarily a Cambridge aca- candidates economy to reduce unemploy- demic, selected ment. Under his inspirational worked for the government David Lloyd George (1863– leadership, the party enjoyed a in both wars. During the First through 1945) new-found energy and vitality World War he advised Lloyd David Lloyd George is one of the – but was too firmly established George on war finance and the Journal read- greatest and, at the same time, in third place to be able to break Versailles peace settlement, one of the most controversial, through the barriers of the elec- resigning over its punitive terms. ers’ votes will politicians in the history of the toral system. In the Second, he was the leading Liberal Party. He played a cen- One of the most dynamic and economic adviser to the Treas- be presented tral role in the great reformist brilliant politicians ever to lead ury (1940–46), and headed the at the His- administrations of 1905–16. As the Liberal Party and become British delegation to the Bretton party leader (1926–31), he intro- premier, Lloyd George remains Woods talks in 1944, which laid tory Group’s duced to a figure of controversy; but his the foundations for the post-war the Liberal programme and to achievements, first in imple- international financial and trad- fringe meet- British politics. But his period as menting the New Liberal pro- ing system. Prime Minister, from 1916–22, gramme of social reform, and His economic works include ing at the split the party into rival fac- then in ensuring that the Lib- his Tract on Monetary Reform autumn tions, presaging its catastrophic eral Party remained committed (1923) and On Money (1930), still decline. to , are real and regarded as his major works by Liberal Lloyd George grew up in lasting. many monetary economists. His North in humble circum- most famous work, The Gen- Democrat stances, and qualified as a solici- eral Theory of Employment, Inter- tor before winning election as John Locke (1632–1704) est and Money (1936), effectively conference in MP for Caernarfon Boroughs in Often described as the patron invented macroeconomics. He Brighton. 1890. He rapidly earned a reputa- saint of liberalism, John Locke’s showed that the price system tion as a radical, and was promi- beliefs in the natural of could not be relied upon to nent in the opposition to the individuals, limits on the powers achieve an equilibr ium that made Boer War. He entered the cabi- of the state, and the rule of law, full use of human resources, and net first as President of the Board underpin all subsequent Liberal argued that governments should of Trade and then as Chancellor thought. manage the economy to elimi- of the Exchequer. He established Born into a Puritan and Par- nate unemployment, especially himself as a dynamic, radical liamentary family, in 1666 Locke by running budget deficits. The force in the government, intro- became a protégé of the Earl of book reads like a summary of all ducing the major Liberal social Shaftesbury, a leading opponent economics written subsequently reforms, including old age pen- of Charles II and the succession though, like the Bible and the sions, National Insurance and of the Duke of York (later James works of Karl Marx, its very the ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909. II). Locke’s early work set out richness has led to thousands of He served as Minister of the case for constitutional con- articles and books disputing its Munitions and then Secretary straints on executive power, and meaning. of State for War in the first war- the right to resist tyrannical gov- Keynes was also an active time coalition. In December ernment. After Shaftesbury was Liberal. He was a pioneer of the 1916, after mounting concern accused of planning revolution, Summer School movement, a over Asquith’s ineffectual lead- Locke fled abroad to Holland in member of the Liberal Industrial ership, he found himself facing 1683. Six years of exile proved Inquiry, which produced Brit- irresistible pressure to take office fruitful; he had time to complete ain’s Industrial Future, the famous as Prime Minister. He proved an the works published, after the ‘Yellow Book’ (1928), and part- exceptionally able war leader, overthrow of James II in 1688, author of the 1929 Liberal mani- but the split of 1916 gravely as A Letter Concerning Toleration festo and of the accompanying wounded the Liberal Party and (1689) and An Essay Concerning Can Lloyd George Do It?, which led to its eclipse by Labour. Human Understanding (1693). explained the Liberal Party’s Succeeding Asquith as leader The most important statement plans to cure unemployment. in July 1926, Lloyd George used of Locke’s politics is contained Like all great Liberals, Key- his famous Fund (accumulated in the Two Treatises of Government nes was essentially an optimist. from the sale of honours) to (1689). The first treatise argued Through his brilliant insights he finance a series of policy com- that the doctrine of the divine showed how economics could be mittees. These produced, most right of kings had no Biblical used to help create and maintain famously, the ‘Yellow Book’, warrant. The ­second described the conditions in which human Britain’s Industrial Future, which the emergence and limits of

Journal of Liberal History 55 Summer 2007 11 in search of the great liberals legitimate political authority, have used his arguments to 1865–66). He also found time for starting from the notion that all oppose state authoritarianism, many literary works, including men were by nature equal. Given in fact Mill devoted most of the biography, history and poetry. that God did not appoint human work to arguing against middle- Like his hero Fox, Russell authority, there could be no class conformism, which stulti- believed that there was a greater rightful basis for political power fied opposition and a critical cast threat to from the abuse other than consent. Unusually of mind. of power than from the masses. for his era, Locke also argued for In Considerations on Rep- He led the reformist wing of the religious toleration; since per- resentative Government (1861) Whigs in the , and helped sonal salvation was the result of Mill expounded his doctrine draft the Great Reform Act of belief, coercion could never lead of democracy, emphasising the 1832. He distrusted religious to salvation as it was unable to importance of local government. dogma, and was committed to generate genuine conviction. Putting his beliefs into prac- a pluralist politics in which Dis- Locke’s faith in the ennobling tice, he served as Liberal MP for senters, Catholics and Jews had powers of knowledge, and his from 1865 to 1868, full political rights. belief in natural rights, tolera- where he argued for proportional Russell also saw the need for a tion and the limits of legitimate representation and the extension bold and systematic authority justify his reputation of suffrage to women household- to tackle the problems of popu- as the first philosopher of the ers – a stance he developed in lation growth and urbanisation. Enlightenment. In developing The Subjection of Women (1869), As Home Secretary (1835–39) he the Whig ideology of opposi- which remains the only femi- supervised key reforms of the tion to absolutism and defence of nist classic written by a man. He criminal law, policing and pris- , Locke for- maintained that social reform, ons, cut stamp duty to a penny, mulated the classic expression of rather than repression, was the introduced the penny post, and liberalism, which was to inspire cure for civil unrest in , instituted state inspection and not just generations of Whigs and argued for the impeachment support of public education. As and Liberals, but also the shap- of the brutal Governor Eyre of Prime Minister in 1846–52, he ers of the American and French Jamaica. Mill’s defence of civil extended state support for edu- Revolutions. rights and racial equality helped cation and passed important to lose him his seat in 1868. public health and factory reform Mill’s intellectual achieve- measures. John Stuart Mill (1806–73) ments were unmatched in Vic- Sometimes outmanoeuvred Philosopher, economist, jour- torian . His defence of by his Whig colleague Palmer- nalist, political writer, social individual liberty can still set the ston, he shared with the latter reformer, and, briefly, Liberal terms of debate today, for exam- a pride in British liberal consti- MP, John Stuart Mill is one of ple over . This tutional traditions which con- the most famous figures in the helps to explain why On Liberty At this stage, vinced him that political leaders pantheon of Liberal theorists, is the symbol of office of the had a duty to promote Britain’s and the greatest of the Victorian President of the Liberal Demo- write-in libertarian values abroad. His Liberal thinkers. crats and, what is more, the sym- candidates support for Italian unification Eldest son of the Scottish util- bol of liberalism itself. in 1859 provided the catalyst for itarian philosopher James Mill, are not only the coming-together of Whigs, John Stuart’s works have had far Radicals and Peelites to form the more lasting interest. In Princi- Lord John Russell (1792– allowed, but Liberal Party. ples of Political Economy (1848) he 1878) Russell was the archetypal voiced his unease concerning Aptly described as ‘the last Doge welcome. Liberal of the mid-nineteenth the excessive power and influ- of ’, Lord John Rus- Feel free century, imbued with Whiggish ence of the state; people under- sell can equally be considered constitutionalism, a deep sense stood their own business better the first Liberal Prime Minister, to write in of Christian responsibility and than government did. However, embodying in his own attitudes the optimistic belief in progress he acknowledged a clear role for the mid-Victorian transition your own that was such a hallmark of the the state, for example in regulat- from traditional Whiggery to Victorian Liberal outlook. ing natural monopolies. . suggestions, He is best known for his Born into one of the leading and vote for masterpiece, On Liberty (1859), Whig dynasties, Russell entered which emphatically vindicated Parliament in 1813 and remained them, on the Remember to return your ballot paper individual moral autonomy, active for fifty-five years, more by Friday 27 July. You can also sub- and celebrated the importance than half of them as a cabinet enclosed bal- mit your vote by email, to journal@ of originality and dissent. minister, including two spells liberalhistory.org.uk. For full instruc- Although generations of ­Liberals as Prime Minister (1846–52 and lot paper. tions, see the ballot paper.

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