In a US Presidential election year, we examined the history of the Liberal tradition in North America. The Canadian Liberal Party is one of the most successful liberal parties in the world, in terms of winning elections – why? And who were the liberals in the United States?

Professor Ben Pimlott (Warden of Goldsmiths College and biographer of Hugh Dalton) and Dr David Dutton (biographer of Sir John Simon) reviewed relations between Liberals and Labour during the key period when Labour established itself as the main opposition party to the Conservatives.

Liberals and Nationalists have sometimes shared common aims. But how close are they? Are their basic philosophies compatible with each other? How has cooperation worked in practice? Why did nineteenth-century Liberals support nationalist movements while their twentieth-century counterparts have tended to oppose them?

What have Liberal Democrats today to learn from Liberal heroes of the past? Who contributed most to the development of the party and of Liberalism? What common themes bind them together? Two speakers offered their choices: Bill Rodgers (Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank), one of the SDPs “Gang of Four” and leader of the Liberal…

In the centenary year of Gladstone’s death, this meeting looked at three crucial aspects of the life of the most famous Liberal Prime Minister. Conrad Russell, historian and Liberal Democrat front bencher in the Lords, looked at what the Liberal Democrats could learn from Gladstone. John Maloney, lecturer in economics at Exeter University, will look…

Reform of the House of Lords was one aspect of the new governments manifesto which it seemed in no hurry to implement. The meeting discussed attempts at reform in the twentieth century: the Parliament Act of 1911 and Labour’s attempts to reform the Lords in the 1960s; together with some thoughts on the future of…

“Social Insurance and Allied Services – report by Sir William Beveridge” was published in December 1942, and its proposals were passed into legislation by Attlee’s government between 1945 and 1948. As Addison put it, “the historian of social administration finds in the Beveridge Report the blueprint of the postwar welfare state in Britain”. Along with…

“The Liberal policy”, stated one nonconformist minister late last century, “makes for the establishment of the Kingdom of God”. Our two speakers examined the role that religion and religious movements played in the history of the Liberal Party. Jonathan Parry (Pembroke College, Cambridge; author of The Rise and Fall of Liberal Government in Victorian Britain)…

After almost thirty years of continuous decline, the leadership of Jo Grimond, and byelection and local election victories, seemed to herald a new era for the Liberal Party. Why did it all go wrong? William Wallace (Lord Wallace of Saltaire), Lords spokesman on defence and reader in international relations at the LSE, examined the record.

Michael Kandiah, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary British History, spoke on Liberal-Conservative relations in the 1940s and 1950s. He looked at both the national negotiations which concluded in the offer of a cabinet post to Clement Davies by Churchill in 1951, and at the local pacts in Huddersfield and Bolton, which put Liberal…

Massive Tory defeat …. sweeping opposition landslide victory …. major gains by small third party …. but what does the new government stand for other than opposition to unpopular Conservative policies? The outcome of the 1997 general election? No – it happened in 1906, when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman led the Liberal Party to a crushing…

The speaker is a former lecturer at the University of Surrey, several times a Liberal candidate and author of The History of the Liberal Party 1895-1970. The policy of the Liberal Party on the question of the land.

Unity in Europe was a central theme for the Liberal Party since Gladstone’s day, and was an important factor behind the SDP’s breakaway from the Labour Party. Yet continental liberal parties have not always proved so enthusiastic. Our three speakers examined the historical record.

The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 split the Tories for a generation, laid the foundations of the Victorian Liberal Party and ushered in nearly a century of free trade orthodoxy in economic policy. One hundred and fifty years later, the Liberal Democrat History Group discussed this momentous event with one of the period’s…