Editing Liberal Party (UK) (section)

=== Liberal zenith ===
{{main|Liberal government, 1905–1915}}
[[File:United Kingdom general election 1906.svg|thumb|The results of the [[1906 United Kingdom general election|1906 election]]]]
[[File:Ten Years of Toryism.jpg|thumb|left|Liberal poster c. 1905–1910, clockwise from the left: [[Joseph Chamberlain]] (satirised as an unmarried mother leaving her baby at a [[Foundling hospital]]) abandons his commitment to old age pensions after failing to reach agreement with the [[Friendly Societies]]; Chancellor [[Austen Chamberlain]] threatens duties on consumer items which had been removed by Gladstone (in the picture on the wall); [[Chinese South Africans#Contracted gold miners (1904–1910)|Chinese indentured labour in South Africa]]; [[John Bull]] contemplates his vote; and Joseph Chamberlain and [[Arthur Balfour]] (who favoured retaliatory tariffs) wearing top hats. The heading "[[ratepayers]] money for sectarian schools" refers to the [[Education Act 1902]].]]
The Liberals languished in opposition for a decade while the coalition of Salisbury and Chamberlain held power. The 1890s were marred by infighting between the three principal successors to Gladstone, party leader [[William Vernon Harcourt (politician)|William Harcourt]], former prime minister [[Lord Rosebery]], and Gladstone's personal secretary, [[John Morley]]. This intrigue finally led Harcourt and Morley to resign their positions in 1898 as they continued to be at loggerheads with Rosebery over Irish home rule and issues relating to imperialism. Replacing Harcourt as party leader was Sir [[Henry Campbell-Bannerman]]. Harcourt's resignation briefly muted the turmoil in the party, but the beginning of the [[Second Boer War]] soon nearly broke the party apart, with Rosebery and a circle of supporters including important future Liberal figures [[H. H. Asquith]], [[Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon|Edward Grey]] and [[Richard Burdon Haldane]] forming a clique dubbed the Liberal Imperialists that supported the government in the prosecution of the war. On the other side, more radical members of the party formed a Pro-Boer faction that denounced the conflict and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Quickly rising to prominence among the Pro-Boers was David Lloyd George, a relatively new MP and a master of rhetoric, who took advantage of having a national stage to speak out on a controversial issue to make his name in the party. Harcourt and Morley also sided with this group, though with slightly different aims. Campbell-Bannerman tried to keep these forces together at the head of a moderate Liberal rump, but in 1901 he delivered a speech on the government's "methods of barbarism" in South Africa that pulled him further to the left and nearly tore the party in two. The party was saved after Salisbury's retirement in 1902 when his successor, [[Arthur Balfour]], pushed a series of unpopular initiatives such as the [[Education Act 1902]] and Joseph Chamberlain called for a new system of protectionist tariffs.

Campbell-Bannerman was able to rally the party around the traditional liberal platform of free trade and land reform and led them to [[1906 United Kingdom general election|the greatest election victory]] in their history. This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right.<ref name="LawrenceODNB">{{cite ODNB|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-95348|title=The general election of 1906|last=Goldman|first=Lawrence|author-link = Lawrence Goldman|date=25 May 2006|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/95348|isbn=978-0-19-861412-8|access-date=9 July 2021}}</ref><ref>A. K. Russell, ''Liberal landslide : the general election of 1906'' (1973).</ref>{{page needed|date=July 2021}}  Although he presided over a large majority, [[Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman]] was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably [[H. H. Asquith]] at the Exchequer, [[Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon|Edward Grey]] at the Foreign Office, [[Richard Burdon Haldane]] at the War Office and [[David Lloyd George]] at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and died soon after. He was succeeded by Asquith, who stepped up the government's radicalism. Lloyd George succeeded Asquith at the Exchequer and was in turn succeeded at the Board of Trade by [[Winston Churchill]], a recent defector from the Conservatives.

[[File:Asquith Q 42036.jpg|thumb|[[H. H. Asquith]]]]
The 1906 general election also represented a shift to the left by the Liberal Party. According to Rosemary Rees, almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the 'New Liberalism' (which advocated government action to improve people's lives),<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YgtH8GFcFSYC&q=New%2520Liberal%2520MPs%25201906&pg=PA42|title=Britain, 1890–1939|last=Rees|first=Rosemary|date=2003-01-01|publisher=Heinemann|isbn=9780435327576|language=en}}</ref>) while claims were made that "five-sixths of the Liberal party are left wing."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K0jw3zg5iOsC&q=majority%2520liberal%2520MPs%2520radicals%2520left-wing%25201906&pg=PA29|title=Britain And the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911: Foreign Policy, Imperialism, And Dissent|last=Bonakdarian|first=Mansour|date=2006-01-01|publisher=Syracuse University Press|isbn=9780815630425|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://wwwbiz.meijo-u.ac.jp/SEBM/ronso/no4_3/HANSEN.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://wwwbiz.meijo-u.ac.jp/SEBM/ronso/no4_3/HANSEN.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live|title=The identification of ʻradicalsʼ in the British Parliament, 1906–1914|last=Hansen|first=P.}}</ref> Other historians, however, have questioned the extent to which the Liberal Party experienced a leftward shift; according to Robert C. Self however, only between 50 and 60 Liberal MPs out of the 400 in the parliamentary party after 1906 were Social Radicals, with a core of 20 to 30.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VcEeBAAAQBAJ|title=Evolution of the British Party System: 1885–1940|last=Self|first=Robert C.|date=2014-07-30|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317877820|language=en}}</ref> Nevertheless, important junior offices were held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and [[Fabian Society|Fabian]] collectivists,"<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2XWGuS25msYC|title=Political Change and the Labour Party 1900–1918|last=Tanner|first=Duncan|date=2003-02-13|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521530538|language=en}}</ref> and much legislation was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours, [[National Insurance]] and welfare.

[[File:Punch cartoon 28 April 1909.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|Cartoonist [[John Bernard Partridge]] depicts Lloyd George as a giant with a cudgel labelled "Budget" in reference to his [[People's Budget]] while "a plutocrat" cowers beneath the table, ''[[Punch (magazine)|Punch]]'' 28 April 1909. The caption, not shown, reads "[[Fee-fi-fo-fum|Fee Fi Fo Phat]], I smell the blood of a plutocrat. Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread,"<ref>Morgan 1974, p.69</ref>]]
A political battle erupted over the [[People's Budget]], which was rejected by the [[House of Lords]] and for which the government obtained an electoral mandate at the [[January 1910 United Kingdom general election|January 1910 election]]. The election resulted in a [[hung parliament]], with the government left dependent on the [[Irish Parliamentary Party|Irish Nationalists]]. Although the Lords now passed the budget, the government wished to curtail their power to block legislation. Asquith was required by King George V to fight a second general election in [[December 1910 United Kingdom general election|December 1910]] (whose result was little changed from that in January) before he agreed, if necessary, to create hundreds of Liberals peers. Faced with that threat, the Lords voted to give up their veto power and allowed the passage of the [[Parliament Act 1911]].

As the price of Irish support, Asquith was now forced to introduce a [[Third Home Rule Act|third Home Rule bill]] in 1912. Since the House of Lords no longer had the power to block the bill, but only to delay it for two years, it was due to become law in 1914. The Unionist [[Ulster Volunteers]], led by Sir [[Edward Carson]], launched a campaign of opposition that included the threat of a provisional government and armed resistance in [[Northern Ireland|Ulster]]. The [[Ulster Protestants]] had the full support of the Conservatives, whose leader, [[Bonar Law]], was of [[Ulster Scots people|Ulster-Scots]] descent. Government plans to deploy troops into Ulster had to be cancelled after the threat of mass resignation of their commissions by army officers in March 1914 (''see [[Curragh Incident]]''). Ireland seemed to be on the brink of civil war when the [[First World War]] broke out in August 1914. Asquith had offered the Six Counties (later to become [[Northern Ireland]]) an opt out from Home Rule for six years (i.e., until after two more general elections were likely to have taken place) but the Nationalists refused to agree to permanent [[Partition of Ireland]]. Historian [[George Dangerfield]] has argued that the multiplicity of crises in 1910 to 1914, political and industrial, so weakened the Liberal coalition before the war broke out that it marked the ''[[Strange Death of Liberal England]]''.<ref>George Dangerfield, ''The Strange Death of Liberal England: 1910–1914'' (1935).</ref> However, most historians date the collapse to the crisis of the First World War.