Editing Liberal Unionist Party (section)

===Protectionism vs Free trade===
[[File:Joseph ('Joe') Chamberlain by John Singer Sargent.jpg|200px|thumb|Joseph Chamberlain, head of the "tariff" faction of the party (1896).]]
From the start, there was tension within the Liberal Unionists between the moderate Whigs, such as Devonshire, and the more radical Chamberlainites. While both factions opposed Home Rule, there was little else that united them, and a separate Liberal Unionist identity was hard to define in the politics of the late 1890s. Weak local party associations were encouraged to amalgamate with their Conservative allies, though Devonshire's wish to merge fully was rejected by Chamberlain.<ref>John D. Fair, "From Liberal to Conservative: The Flight of the Liberal Unionists after 1886." ''Victorian Studies'' (1986): 291–314.</ref>

Despite these tensions, the Liberal Unionists more or less managed to stay together until 1903, when in a surprise move, Chamberlain dramatically launched [[protectionism|tariff reform]] with a speech in his Birmingham political homeland. This departure from [[Free trade]] (i.e. no tariff barriers) caused immediate problems within the Unionist alliance, but especially with the Devonshire section of the Liberal Unionists. Rejecting tariff reform, Devonshire and other supporters of Free Trade left the Liberal Unionist Association in May 1904 in protest. Chamberlain took over the party's leadership, but this did not stop a large number of disgruntled Liberal Unionists, including a few MPs, migrating back to the Liberal Party. As for Devonshire and his allies, they put their political efforts into the Unionist [[Free Trade League]] (also called the Free Food League) which included a sizeable minority of Conservative [[Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)|Members of Parliament]] (MPs) including, for a few months, Conservative MP [[Winston Churchill]] before he too defected to the Liberals in 1904. Most of them eventually left the party while Devonshire ended his political career estranged from both main parties and appears to have sat in the House of Lords as a [[crossbencher]].<ref name="Cawood"/>

In the [[1906 United Kingdom general election|1906 general election]], the Liberal Unionists (both Free Traders and Tariff Reformers) shared the same fate as their Conservative allies, with a big reduction in their parliamentary strength. They now numbered only 23 MPs (or 25 according to other calculations){{clarify|date=November 2018}} in a combined Unionist alliance of just 157 in the new House of Commons – though in Birmingham the Liberal Unionist and Conservative candidates won all the seats available.

With a few exceptions, the remaining Liberal Unionists were now firm supporters of tariffs, as were now the majority of the Conservative MPs. Indeed, for a short period in early 1906, Chamberlain was the de facto leader of the Unionist alliance in the House of Commons, as the Conservative party leader, and former Prime Minister, [[Arthur Balfour]] had lost his seat in the election (though he soon managed to return to parliament after a conveniently-arranged by-election).<ref>James Louis Garvin and Julian Amery, ''The Life of Joseph Chamberlain'' (Vol. 6. 1969).</ref>

It was possible that at this stage Chamberlain could have become leader of all the surviving Unionists (at least all those in favour of tariff reform) and force Balfour to resign. However, even protectionist Tories were reluctant to choose Chamberlain as their leader, not having forgotten how, as a Liberal, in the 1880s, he had been one of their sternest critics. Also, in an age when religious identification still mattered, Chamberlain was not a member of the established [[Church of England]] but belonged to the minority [[Unitarianism|Unitarians]].

Chamberlain could, perhaps, have led the Unionists despite these drawbacks, but in July 1906 he suffered a stroke, which left him physically crippled. He remained semi-politically active and continued as the official leader of the Liberal Unionists, but his son [[Austen Chamberlain]] and Lansdowne effectively acted on his behalf in both the party and the Tariff Reform League.

Devonshire died in 1908 but, despite the loss of the party's two most famous standard bearers, the Liberal Unionists were still able to increase their parliamentary representation in the two [[1910 United Kingdom general election (disambiguation)|1910 general elections]] to 43 and then 49 MPs. <ref name="Ferris, Wesley 2011"/>