The Liberal Party emerged in mid-Victorian Britain from a combination of Whigs and Peelite Tories. The party of Gladstone, Asquith and Lloyd George, it was a dominant force in Britain, and the world, at the height of the power of the British Empire. Split by Gladstone's Home Rule Bills, it nevertheless returned to power in Edwardian England and held it until after the outbreak the First World War, with Lloyd George heading a National Government from 1916-22. Riddled by internal divisions and with its traditional ground increasingly occupied by the Labour Party, the party lost ground in Parliament, becoming little more than a rump for many years. With the foundation of the Social Democrats in 1981, and their subsequent merger with the Liberals as Liberal Democrats in 1988, a modern version of the party emerged, under Paddy Ashdown and now Charles Kennedy as a significant third force in British politics.
Roy Douglas is Emeritus Reader, University of Surrey. He is author of a number of historical books, including Taxation in Britain since 1660 and Liquidation of Empire: The Decline of the British Empire.
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