Talk:List of Liberal Party (UK) MPs

Party splits et al

The addition of William Mabane brings to attention that some of the MPs with "Liberal" in the party label between 1916-1923 and 1931-1947 are very difficult to tie down to the various Liberal parties at the time and some of the lists in circulation over simplify the divisions and treat the different groups as separate parties from Day One. Several problems arise:

1. The label used at elections (and other times) can often bear no relation to the differing parties - for example in the 1931 election the use of the terms "Liberal" and "National" by candidates made it very difficult for voters to tell if the candidate was a Samuelite or a Simonite (indeed Herbert Samuel himself was described on his election address as "the Liberal and National candidate", which from hindsight one would associate more with the Simonites).
2. A lot of local parties remained affiliated to the official Liberal party even if the candidate wasn't taking the whip. Conversely some "official" Liberal MPs were backed by new associations in the area. Some of the local parties backing Liberal National candidates would and did return to the Liberal fold - e.g. Huddersfield, albeit after some tensions in the borough and the MP's defeat (and withdrawal from the area's politics).
3. A lot of MPs sought to eschew the divisions - quite a lot, including Mabane in the early 1930s, would talk about Liberal reunion and seek to avoid (and even repudiate) being publicly labelled in one party or another.
4. Examination of various internal lists of supporters shows that some MPs were claimed by more than one faction.
5. Floor, and sometimes aisle, crossing could often take place without it really being noticed. Some MPs crossed back and forth.
6. At the time the concept of an "official Liberal Party" wasn't the hard and fast thing people would think of today, and many of the other groups would consider themselves (and be considered by others) to be just as legitimately "Liberals" as any others.

For this list to be workable we need some clear standards. I can see several options:

• Only list MPs supporting Asquith in the period 1916-1923 and those supporting Samuel/Sinclair/Davies/Grimond in the period 1931-1968.
  • This has the problem that in 1916-1918 there wasn't a clear split at all, with only really one notable Commons division, and then from 1918-1923 there were a lot of MPs switiching between the two and quite a few giving very mixed signals, not least to avoid rival candidates being run against them. In 1931-1933 both the Samuelites and Simonites supported the National Government and MPs from both groups stayed on the government benches and went onto the Opposition benches in 1933 (and some non-National Liberal MPs continued to sit on the Government benches!). The split was far from clear at the constituency level - in Mabane's case his association was affiliated to the Liberals, not the Liberal Nationals, throughout the 1930s.
• List supporters of both Asquith and Lloyd George in 1916-1923 as Liberals.
• For 1931 onwards:
  • Cut off at the 1931 election and only list the Samuelites after that.
  • List all "Liberal" MPs supporting the National Government up until 1933 when the Samuelites withdrew support.
  • List all "Liberal" MPs in the Commons until the Liberal Nationals merged with the Conservatives in 1947 (with an indication of who was in what group).
  • List all Liberal National MPs until the 1960s, when the party group was wound up.

Timrollpickering 21:24, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

My general thought has been to take a fairly broad view and include supporters of both Asquith and Lloyd George in 1916-23, as both had a reasonable claim to be Liberal Party MPs. It would probably be worth noting which were elected as National Liberals in '22.

For the post-31 National Liberals, it's a much tougher call. I've tended to make '31 the cut-off, while encouraging notes about MPs such as Mabane, believing that this will produce the shortest, most succinct list (and leaving the possibility of a List of National Liberal Party (UK) MPs open). There's clearly an argument for using '33 instead, but as the Nat Libs increasingly identified with the Tories - am I right in thinking that in '45 no Nat Lib candidate opposed a Tory? - I feel it would be confusing to included the post-'33 National Liberals in this list. Warofdreams talk 23:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to check the specifics, but even post 1945 there were times when Conservatives and Liberal Nationals were at the very least threatening to run against each other - in the case of Mabane (I've just been reading an article on him and the Liberal confusion in Northern History) after his defeat by Labour in 1945 (enhanced by the intervention of an avowed Sinclair Liberal) the Conservatives in Huddersfield were pushing to adopt a candidate of their own. Similarly in many other places Conservatives were seeking to re-enter the field after years of standing aside. In 1946 there were negotations for reunification of the two Liberal parties but apart from the organisations reunifying in London (where there no longer anything Liberal MPs) these founded as the Liberal Nationals believed the only way forward was an anti-socialist alliance with the Conservatives whilst the Liberals wanted equidistance between the two parties and to present themselves as an viable independent national political party.

(Ironically both happened in Huddersfield. The "Huddersfield Liberal Association" - Mabane's supporters who had remained affiliated to the Liberal Party Organisation until 1939 and only then affiliating to the Liberal National Council - and the "Borough Liberals" - a Sinclairite organisation formed in 1939 by Liberals who felt the HLA and Mabane were no longer representing Liberalism - had managed to stay out of each other's way in the 1945 borough council elections and formed a tacit alliance in the 1946 locals. Then following both Mabane and his agent leaving the area in 1947 the two groups basically reunified on Borough Liberal terms, affiliating only to the Liberal Party Organisation. However they managed to maintain an anti-socialist accord with the Conservatives, holding the council until the early 1960s and an agreement with the Conservatives to each only contest one of Huddersfield East & West {the seat was split in two} meant the Liberals had an urban English seat to help shore up their claim to be a viable independent national political party in the 1950-1964 period.)

Another notable key date is 1936, when the Liberal Nationals held the first national convention of the Liberal National Organistion. The National Liberal Federation (which, despite the name, was the continuing "official" Liberal extra-parliamentary aparatus) passed a motion against Liberal National associations affiliating to the NLF - before this quite a number backing Liberal National MPs had done so. I'm not sure if the NLF did actually start rejecting affiliations though. Similarly around this time the NLF and regional federations started to crack down on Liberal Nationals holding officer posts (e.g. the Yorkshire Federation not renominating Mabane as a Vice President at this time). Now this was the extra parliamentary party rather than the House of Commons, but it does show the Liberal divide to be rather less than absolute well after the two main groups had settled on different sides on the Commons.

I'd probably go with perhaps the mid 1930s as a general cut-off point, but for all MPs who went off into the Liberal Nationals give all their years as any "Liberal" MP, either in the list itself or the footnotes, and then do a separate page for National Liberals, acknowledging the overlaps.

Oh and for another MP who makes this easy, Gwilym Lloyd George joined Chamberlain's war government in 1939, despite the Sinclair Liberals refusing to do so, and was retained in Churchill's 1945 caretaker government. The Times reporting of the 1945 election results lists him as a "Liberal" but in the government total! He seems to have been Liberal in name only in the 1945 Parliament, sitting on the Opposition frontbench (he told Churchill he would sit as a Liberal and the reply was "And the hell else would you sit as?!"), not attending the parliamentary Liberal Party meetings and apparently even being considered for the Liberal National leadership. Timrollpickering 02:30, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

That's certainly a possibility. What do you think of keeping '31 as the cut-off, adding a note at the top of the article and to note #2 about the situation, and linking to a List of National Liberal Party (UK) MPs with list of their ongoing careers? And thanks for the Lloyd George info; this certainly deserves a footnote. Warofdreams talk 23:24, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Probably the most workable cut-off would be immediately after the 1931 election, when the Liberal whip was offered to all 72 "Liberal" MPs elected in a move to unity, but not accepted. For those who went Lib Nat or Ind Lib, include something in the list itself. This probably covers people like Clement Davies and Edgar Granville who later came back to the Liberals, and more crucially those who were vague on the matter. Some didn't give clearcut answers and others were identified with one group in 1931 but then acted with the other in 1932 (when the official Liberals were allowed to dissent on tariffs from within government; a few months later they withdrew from ministerial posts but stayed as government MPs; the Nat Libs stayed fully supporting the government throughout) and 1933 (the officials departed for the Opposition benches).

The 1933 crossing was somewhat untidy in itself because some Samuelite Liberal MPs remained on the government benches without apparently becoming National Liberals (or if they did that came rather later). Nick Smart's The National Government notes that it's not 100% clear. Of the "Liberals" who did not cross, he reckons there's consensus that Robert Bernays (from recollection I think it's one of Roy Douglas's books that notes that Bernays was told by his local association that he should remain a critic on the government side), Jospeh Leckie, Willaim McKeag and Joseph Payton Maclay were all Samuelite Liberals, but it's more arguable as to whether Joseph Hunter and William Mabane could still be considered as such (if they had been previously). Conversely Aaron Curry, a supposed National Liberal, crossed the floor with Samuel. Timrollpickering 01:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)