Aspects of the new liberalism 1895-1914

There is a compulsive dissonance in the response of historians to the Liberal triumph of 1906 and the social legislation which followed. To some, the victory appears adventitious, a testimony to Unionist divisions and Balfour’s ineptitude rather than to Liberal vigour; paradoxically, the victory was evidence of the party's enmeshment In old Issues rather than an assertion of its freshness. Thereafter the governments of Campbell Bannerman and Asquith responded as nineteenth century administrations had done. The legislative achievement was not the fruit of a coherent programme but the product of departmental thinking, of response to organised pressure groups which had brought a reform like Old Age Pensions to the point of general acceptance, and, after 1908, of electoral exigencies and the thrust of energetic, ambitious ministers like Lloyd George and Churchill. Against this stands another view, which sees 1906 as the focus of new aspirations generated In part and made effective by the extension of the franchise in 1867 and 1884. The Liberal party established a rapport with such aspirations because it had itself engaged in the re-definltion of Liberal principle to provide an intellectual base for new Initiatives in policy. Consequently the younger Liberals developed an increasingly collectivist and Interventionist position reflecting ’the process of Internal conversion by which the party came to2 favour an advanced social policy.’ In that process the New Liberals had a crucial role as men whose ’moral commitment and political leverage was expressed in their published work. In a profound sense, the re-appraisal of Liberal principle, the election of 1906 and subsequent legislation represented 'the introduction of a new ethic of social and moral responsibility into politics.'