riDinG tHe tiGer tHe Liberal experience of coalition Government ‘There was a young lady of Riga Who smiled as she rode on a tiger; They returned from the ride With the lady inside, And the smile on the face of the tiger.’ Coalitions between unequal partners can end up like the relationship between the tiger and the young lady of Riga. In March 2011 the Liberal Democrat History Group and British Liberal Political he story begins with Britain] does not love coalitions.’ Studies Group organised Disraeli’s famous com- But whether England or Britain ment in the House does or does not love coalitions, two seminars to learn of Commons on 16 we have had three peacetime from the Liberal December 1852, in the coalitions in the last 120 years: Tmidst of a thunderstorm, in which the 1895 coalition between the experience of coalition he said this: Conservatives and the Liberal Unionists; the Lloyd George coali- The combination may be success- governments. Vernon tion between the Conservatives and ful, a coalition has before this been one wing of the Liberal Party; and successful, but coalitions, though Bogdanor introduces the National Government of 1931. successful, have always found All have been coalitions between this special issue, this – that their triumph has been Conservatives and Liberals, or brief. containing papers from between Conservatives and one ‘This, too, I know,’ he concluded, wing of the Liberal Party. In the the seminars. ‘that England [he meant, I suppose, case of the Lloyd George coalition 4 Journal of Liberal History 72 Autumn 2011 riDinG tHe tiGer tHe Liberal experience of coalition Government and the National Government, and the past three: the 2010 coali- In the current, coalition, if the there were also other small par- tion is the only one that occurred Liberal Democrats were to decide ties involved. But there have been after a hung parliament. After the to leave the government, there does no coalitions between the Liberals 1895, 1918 and 1931 elections, the not, admittedly, in consequence of and the Labour Party, although the Conservatives, had they wished to the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, Liberals have supported Labour do so, could have governed with- have to be a general election. But governments from the outside – in out the support of any other party. there would be a different sort of what would now be called a confi- Clearly, after 2010, that could not government – either a Conservative dence and supply agreement – in the have been the case. But, after previ- minority government or, possibly, a 1929 Labour government and, with ous hung parliaments, including the coalition of the left. That, of course, the Lib–Lab pact of 1977–78, the next most recent, in February 1974, makes it easier for the Liberal Callaghan government. the outcome was not coalition but Democrats to leave the coalition. There is, however, a fundamen- minority government. The fact that If the three previous coalitions tal difference between the three the 2010 coalition was, as it were, did not owe their existence to a previous peacetime coalitions and a coalition of necessity, alters its hung parliament, to what did they the present one. It is that the past dynamics very considerably. In pre- owe their existence? If one had to three coalitions were formed before vious coalitions the non-Conserv- grossly oversimplify and answer general elections and endorsed by ative elements were expendable. In in one word, that word would be the electorate in those general elec- 1918, Bonar Law, the Conservative ‘fear’. In 1895, the fear was of Irish tions – by landslide majorities, in leader, told his followers: home rule, which many otherwise fact. They were not, as the current intelligent people felt would mean by our own action we have made coalition has been, formed after a the disintegration of the United Mr Lloyd George the flag-bearer general election. In 1895, 1918 and Kingdom, and a surrender to ter- of the very principles on which 1931, governments went to the rorism and violence. The 1895 coa- we should appeal to the country. It country as coalitions and electors lition was founded on a negative is not his Liberal friends, it is the knew that they were voting for a proposition concerning home rule; Unionist Party which has made coalition. In 2010, the voters did not as soon as the coalition had to con- him prime minister and made it vote for a coalition and had to guess sider a positive policy, tariff reform, possible for him to do the great what coalition might ensue in the it began to disintegrate. work that has been done by this event of a hung parliament. Many In 1918, there was a positive government.1 guessed wrong, including The element as well as a negative – to Guardian, which advocated a vote But, if the Conservatives could create a new world after the First for the Liberal Democrats to create make Mr Lloyd George, they could World War, with a new alignment a progressive coalition of the left. also break him, as in fact they did Left: David of parties in a society in which This is important since it means that in 1922. Similarly, after 1932, the Cameron and the old issues – church disestab- the 2010 coalition lacks the legiti- Conservatives could have got rid of Nick Clegg at lishment, free trade, home rule, macy of the past three peacetime Ramsay MacDonald, but decided the formation etc. – had disappeared. But there coalitions. to keep him as a fig leaf to cover up of the coalition was also a negative element – fear There is a further interesting what might otherwise appear as a government, of the trade unions, fear of a gen- difference between this coalition nakedly Conservative government. May 2010 eral strike, and, above all, fear of Journal of Liberal History 72 Autumn 2011 5 riDinG tHe tiGer: tHe Liberal experience of coalition Government ‘Bolshevism’, sometimes equated, It was this element of fear that it was this personalities, and were in large part odd though it may seem today, with helped the Conservatives in 1895, responsible for breaking up the coa- the Labour Party. But, following 1918 and 1931, because, of course, element of litions in which they were domi- the Russian revolution in 1917, and when people are frightened, they nant. In Baldwin’s famous words, Communist uprisings in many of tend to vote Conservative. Indeed, fear that used at the Carlton Club meeting in the countries of central and eastern the Conservatives have benefited 1922, Lloyd George was a ‘dynamic Europe, there was a feeling, how- more than Liberals from coalitions. helped the force’ and a dynamic force was ‘a ever, misplaced, amongst mem- The Conservatives might well have very terrible thing’. There is a strik- bers of the governing class, few of won the elections of 1895, 1918 conserva- ing contrast with Baldwin him- whom had any close understanding and 1931 even without their coali- self, who, as leader of the National or knowledge of the labour move- tion partners, but their partners tives in 1895, Government in the 1930s proved an ment, that Britain too might be on strengthened them, enabling them 1918 and 1931, emollient figure capable of holding the brink of revolution, and that to win seats in areas that were not the disparate elements of a coalition the forces of order should combine naturally Conservative. because, of together. A coalition does better together to defeat this threat. In As late as 1965, John Nott, who with an emollient head of govern- February 1920, the Deputy Cabinet was to become a minister in the course, when ment rather than a dynamic one. Secretary, Thomas Jones, recorded governments of Edward Heath and The Liberal Democrats hope that a meeting of Lloyd George with Margaret Thatcher, came to be: people are the 2010 coalition will institutional- his advisers at which the Home ise recognition of a multi-party pol- selected as the National Liberal Secretary ‘outlined his proposals itics in which they can play a hinge and Conservative candidate for St frightened, to raise a special temporary force role, as the Free Democrats used to Ives – not the Conservative candi- of 10,000 soldiers for the national they tend do in Germany. But previous coali- date. I was told by the local associ- emergency’, the existing police tions proved to be a prelude, not to ation that St Ives could not be won force being inadequate. ‘There are’, to vote con- multi-party politics, but to realign- by a Conservative – but that as the the Food Controller insisted, ‘large ment and the restoration of a new National Liberals had supported groups preparing for Soviet gov- servative. two-party system of a different sort, the Conservatives and had done so ernment’. Walter Long, the First helping primarily the Conservative since 1931, I should not fret about Lord of the Admiralty, was wor- indeed, the Party. In 1975, Harold Macmillan the label. ried that ‘The peaceable manpower declared, perhaps with tongue in of the country is without arms. I Nott did not drop the National conserva- cheek: have not a pistol less than 200 years Liberal label until the general The last purely Conservative old’. Bonar Law, the Conservative election of 1974, even though the tives have government was formed by Mr leader, summed up the discussion party wound itself up in 1968. The benefited Disraeli in 1874. It is the fact that saying that ‘All weapons ought to accumulated funds of the party, we have attracted moderate peo- be available for distribution to the amounting to £50,000 were then more than ple of a liberal disposition and friends of the Government’.