HH Asquith, William Beveridge, Violet Bonham Carter, Henry Campbell
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H. H. Asquith, William Beveridge, Violet Bonham Carter, Henry Campbell- Bannerman, Richard Cobden, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, IN SEARCH OF THE Charles James Fox, W. E. Gladstone, Jo Grimond, Roy Jenkins, J. M. Keynes, David Lloyd George, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, 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 ELiberal (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 Brighton. 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 Charles Bradlaugh, reforming governments. History Group’s John Bright, John Burns, George The Yorkshire-born barrister executive committee Cadbury, Winston Churchill, was elected Liberal MP for East Charles Dickens, W. E. Forster, Fife 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 Home Secretary in 1892–95, York Membery. Nancy Seear and Adam Smith. 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 welfare 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 National Insurance Act and to lay the foundations of a redis- premiership by Lloyd George. the 1916 Unemployment Insur- tributive welfare state, 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 London 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 Oxford. 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 Tory 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- House of Lords, 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. pensions, 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 Full Employment 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 Helena 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 original position. 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.