The Liberal Nationals, 1931–1940: the problems of a party in ‘partnership government’

Abstract

In outline, at least, the history of the Liberal National party is familiar enough to students of twentieth-century British politics. The Liberal Nationals were essentially a parliamentary grouping whose members, amongst whom Sir John Simon was the most prominent, parted company with what they saw as an increasingly left-leaning Liberal party in the early I930s. In accounts of the period, they flit across that well-trodden stage marked 'decline of the Liberal party', united by their negative distrust of Lloyd George and of socialism, to find their natural home in the Conservative-dominated National governments. Clinging to office after September I932, when the government's abandonment of free trade had caused the resignation of Sir Herbert Samuel's more principled Liberals, they became docile clients of the Conservative party. Their eventual union with the Conservatives, in the Woolton-Teviot agreement of May I947, is seen simply as the logical formalization of a process which had been going on almost from the party's inception. Most studies of politics in the I930S tend to follow the harsh contemporary judgement of Viscount Snowden, who resigned from the National government along with the Samuelite Liberals. In his autobiography Snowden wrote that 'the Simonite-Liberals had by this time become quite indistinguishable from the Tories, so that with the withdrawal of Sir Herbert Samuel and Sir Archibald Sinclair ... the National Government was transformed into a Tory Government'.' Samuel's own verdict on his erstwhile Liberal colleagues was no less pointed. He considered that from the time of the I93I general election, the Liberal Nationals 'were, in our opinion, indistinguishable in policy and in action, then and thenceforward, from Conservatives'. 2 Most historians of the period have concurred in denying the claim of the Liberal Nationals to a political identity of their own. Trevor Wilson argues that, by the time of the I 935 general election, 'the Simonites may be fairly classified with the Conservatives'.3 Robert Skidelsky's critical account of the events which led to the formation of the first National government includes the comment that the Liberal Nationals 'stayed on to become Tories' after the resignation of the free traders.4 Roy Douglas, whose history of the Liberal party contains one of the fullest published