National Liberal Party (UK, 1931)
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National Liberal Party
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|---|---|
| Leader |
Sir John Simon 1931-40 Ernest Brown 1940-45 |
| Founded | 1931 |
| Dissolved | 1968 |
| Split from | Liberal Party |
| Merged into | Conservative Party |
| Ideology |
Liberal conservatism National liberalism |
The National Liberal Party, known until 1948 as the Liberal National Party, was a liberal political party in the United Kingdom from 1931 to 1968. It broke away from the Liberal Party, and later merged with the Conservative Party.
The Liberal Nationals evolved as a distinctive group within the Liberal Party when the main body of Liberals were maintaining in office the second Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald, who lacked a majority in Parliament. A growing number of Liberal MPs led by Sir John Simon declared their total opposition to this policy and began to co-operate more closely with the Conservative Party, even advocating a policy of replacing free trade with tariffs, anathema to many traditional Liberals. By June 1931 three Liberal MPs — Simon, Ernest Brown and Robert Hutchison (a former Lloyd George ministry-supporting coalitionist of the earlier National Liberal Party) — resigned their party's whip and sat as independents.
When the Labour Government was replaced by a makeshift, emergency (though to prove long-lasting) National Government in August 1931, dissident Liberals were temporarily reconciled with the rest of their party within it; but in the next two months the party's acting leader, Herbert Samuel, came close to resigning from the government over the National Government's proposal to call a snap general election, fearing that it would lead to a majority for the Conservatives and the abolition of free trade. However, he was undermined by the willingness of those Liberals such as Simon - who in extremis would support protectionism - to continue to support the National Government and even to take the vacant offices to ensure it retained a broad party base. Samuel was welcomed back into the new National Government subject to an agreed concession to fight the general election on a separate Liberal Party manifesto, but staunch supporters of the National Government were prepared to repudiate free trade.
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