The Liberal Party and the Economy, 1929–1964. By Peter Sloman.

Abstract

The Liberal Party has been fortunate in its historians and in the biographers of its leaders, including those leaders who led the party after Lloyd George. Peter Sloman has made a substantial addition to this literature. He examines a major theme of Liberal Party history and in so doing makes a major contribution to the history of the party as a whole in 1929–64. It is a well-researched and lucid monograph. The book is centred on the Liberals’ policies and attitudes towards economic issues from free trade to economic planning in the early 1960s. It is a study both of intellectual thought and of policymaking. In parts it enters well-trodden ground, made familiar by such economic historians as Alan Booth, Roger Middleton, Neil Rollings, Tim Rooth and Jim Tomlinson. In terms of intellectual thought, it follows on from the work of Peter Clarke, Stefan Collini, Michael Freeden, Ben Jackson and Frank Trentmann. Dr Sloman’s work adds much to theirs, not just because it deals with the Liberal Party’s vicissitudes after 1935. Early on, Sloman discusses the extent to which the Liberals drew on mainstream economists of the late nineteenth century, such as W. S. Jevons and Alfred Marshall, as well as interwar figures such as A. C. Pigou. As for Keynes, his influence on the Liberals in the 1920s is well-known. However, as Dr Sloman observes of Keynes’ The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), it ‘largely passed the political world by’ (p. 126), even if it influenced policy makers’ approaches to economic issues. The author also examines a wide range of Liberal economic policy statements and books on policy by leading Liberals. Inevitably, one theme in the development of Liberal economic policy is the painful disengagement from free trade in the 1930s, with free trade only being taken out of the Liberal Party’s constitution in 1969.