Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was a liberal political party which was one of the two major parties in the United Kingdom in the 19th and early 20th century.

The party arose from an alliance of Whigs and free-trade Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. By the end of the nineteenth century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite splitting over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to power in 1906 with a landslide victory and introduced the welfare reforms that created a basic British welfare state. H. H. Asquith was Liberal Prime Minister between 1908 and 1916, followed by David Lloyd George whose premiership lasted until 1922 when the coalition the party had formed with the Conservative Party in World War I came to an end.

By the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Tories' main rival. The party went into decline and by the 1950s won no more than six seats at general elections. Apart from notable by-election victories, the party's fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. At the 1983 General Election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but only 23 of the 650 seats it contested. At the 1987 General Election, its vote fell below 23% and the Liberal and Social Democratic parties merged in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. A small Liberal Party was formed in 1989 by party members opposed to the merger.