Liberal Unionist Party
[2][3] The Liberal Unionists owe their origins to the conversion of William Ewart Gladstone to the cause of Irish Home Rule (i.e. limited self-government for Ireland).
The anti-Home Rule Liberals formed a Committee for the Preservation of the Union in early 1886, and were soon joined by a smaller radical faction led by Joseph Chamberlain and John Bright.
[3] In December 1886, when Lord Randolph Churchill suddenly resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Salisbury offered the position to George Goschen, by far the most conservative of the leading Liberal Unionists.
[8] Though a few Liberal Unionists like Goschen formally joined the Conservatives (by becoming member of the exclusively Tory Carlton Club), the party still continued to maintain a separate identity and to raise their own funds.
Weak local party associations were encouraged to amalgamate with their Conservative allies, though Devonshire's wish to merge fully was rejected by Chamberlain.
[9] Despite these tensions, the Liberal Unionists more or less managed to stay together until 1903, when in a surprise move, Chamberlain dramatically launched tariff reform with a speech in his Birmingham political homeland.
[3] In the 1906 general election, the Liberal Unionists (both Free Traders and Tariff Reformers) shared the same fate as their Conservative allies, with a big reduction in their parliamentary strength.
He remained semi-politically active and continued as the official leader of the Liberal Unionists, but his son Austen Chamberlain and Lansdowne effectively acted on his behalf in both the party and the Tariff Reform League.
Devonshire died in 1908 but, despite the loss of the party's two most famous standard bearers, the Liberal Unionists were still able to increase their parliamentary representation in the two 1910 general elections to 43 and then 49 MPs.
[8] The issue of tariff reform had now become overshadowed by the revived threat of Home Rule for Ireland, as the Parliament Act 1911 effectively stripped the House of Lords of its ability to veto it, while leaving it with delaying powers.
Outside Scotland and the English city of Birmingham, many local Liberal Unionists and Conservatives had already formed joint constituency associations in the previous decade.
Although by 1912 the political distinctions between the two parties had long ceased to have any real meaning, they had been a residual factor in Austen Chamberlain's failure to become the Unionist leader in the House of Commons in 1911.
When Arthur Balfour resigned, Austen Chamberlain and Walter Hume Long both declared themselves as candidates for the leadership of the Unionist Party in the Commons.
In the end, Bonar Law was elected unopposed by Unionist Members, and Austen Chamberlain would have to wait ten years for his chance to lead the united party.
From 1830 to 1886 the Liberals (the name the Whigs, Radicals and Peelites accepted as their political label after 1859) had been managed to become almost the party of permanent government with just a couple of Conservative interludes.
Though not numerous, the Liberal Unionists boasted having the vast bulk of the old Whig aristocracy within their ranks, as represented by the stolid "old money" Duke of Devonshire.
Though he had joined the Liberal Unionists late on, he was more determined to maintain their separate status in the alliance with the Conservatives, perhaps hoping and wishing that he would be able to refashion the combination under his own leadership at a later date.
[18] Jonathan Parry and T. A. Jenkins have separately argued that Gladstone's domineering leadership, his intense religiosity and his pandering to public opinion alienated the more secular and rationalist outlook of many Liberals.
[3] In Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest there is an exchange between Jack Worthing and Lady Bracknell about his suitability as a match for her daughter Gwendolen.
As a party that depended on an electoral pact with the Tories to maintain their MPs in parliament, the Liberal Unionists had to at least appear to be also 'Liberal' in matters not connected with Home Rule including some measures of promoting reform.
Usually the line is retained – despite its reference to a long dead political issue (and also party) but it was altered or omitted in at least two film versions of the play.
