Liberal views

RICHARD TOYE is intrigued but ultimately unconvinced by a detailed account of the state of British liberal politics in the first years of the 20th century

- RICHARD TOYE

This massive account of British politics in the pre-First World War period is rich in detail but only partially successful in its efforts at evaluation. The title is a tribute to - or criticism of - The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935) by the journalist George Dangerfield. In that brilliant, breezy telling, progressive, free-trade Liberalism was "reduced to ashes" by the end of 1913.

Historians have spent decades debunking this argument. Indeed some have previously noted the "strange survival" of liberal values (if not a healthy Liberal Party) into the interwar era and beyond. For example, the great liberal economists John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge gained their greatest influence on economic and social policy at a time when the parliamentary Liberal Party appeared in terminal decline.