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117-791: It was formed as Shardlow rural district under the Local Government Act 1894 , mainly from the Derbyshire part of the Shardlow rural sanitary district (the Leicestershire part becoming Castle Donington Rural District , and most of the Nottinghamshire part becoming Stapleford Rural District ). It also administered the parishes of Ratcliffe on Soar and Kingston on Soar in Nottinghamshire – these became part of Leake Rural District in 1927. The district

234-591: A Liberal (1904–1924) authored Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909). The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs , who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II and the early 19th century Radicals . The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of Parliament . Although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves,

351-489: A Liberal base were deeply split. Ensor notes that, "London society, following the known views of the Queen, practically ostracized home rulers." The new Liberal leader was the ineffectual Lord Rosebery . He led the party to a heavy defeat in the 1895 general election . The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906. It contained numerous contradictory and hostile factions, such as imperialists and supporters of

468-399: A chairman and councillors. The councillors were elected for a three-year term in a similar way to councillors in urban districts. They were elected for parishes or groupings of parishes, and were also the representatives for those areas on the board of guardians. In a few cases a parish or handful of parishes were administered by a rural district council in a neighbouring county. In this case

585-425: A chairman at its annual meeting. The parish councils were given the following powers and duties: Parish councils were generally limited to a rate of three pence in the pound, although this could be increased to sixpence in the pound with the permission of the parish meeting. Loans could not be obtained without the permission of both the parish meeting and the county council. Borrowing for certain specified purposes

702-584: A dangerous rival, and rejoiced at the chance to destroy her. They meant to fight a hard-headed war by ruthless methods; they condemned Liberal 'softness' before the war and now. The Liberals insisted on remaining high-minded. Many of them had come to support the war only when the Germans invaded Belgium. [...] Entering the war for idealistic motives, the Liberals wished to fight it by noble means and found it harder to abandon their principles than to endure defeat in

819-512: A decision had been made that all those with a population of 300 or more were to have a parish council. This limit had been chosen as the Local Government Board already possessed powers to group parishes below this population for the election of guardians. There were approximately 6,000 small parishes in this category. Parish councils were to be limited in their expenditure, and were to be confined to charging rates of one penny in

936-596: A dominion beyond. Gladstone finally retired in 1894. Gladstone's support for Home Rule deeply divided the party, and it lost its upper and upper-middle-class base, while keeping support among Protestant nonconformists and the Celtic fringe. Historian R. C. K. Ensor reports that after 1886, the main Liberal Party was deserted by practically the entire whig peerage and the great majority of the upper-class and upper-middle-class members. High prestige London clubs that had

1053-410: A freer voice will be given to the community than it has ever had before. New depths of life will have been stirred in the most neglected portions of our community, and we shall find among the labourers of the fields, as we have found among the artisans of the towns, a resolution that the condition of our people shall, so far as laws can better it, be bettered ... The Earl of Kimberley explained to

1170-592: A government. Historian Robert Blake explains the dilemma: [T]he Liberals were traditionally the party of freedom of speech, conscience and trade. They were against jingoism, heavy armaments and compulsion. [...] Liberals were neither wholehearted nor unanimous about conscription, censorship, the Defence of the Realm Act , severity toward aliens and pacifists, direction of labour and industry. The Conservatives [...] had no such misgivings. Blake further notes that it

1287-601: A landslide victory in the 1906 general election . Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state . Although Asquith was the party leader , its dominant figure was David Lloyd George . Asquith was overwhelmed by his wartime role as prime minister and Lloyd George led a coalition that replaced him in late 1916. However, Asquith remained as Liberal Party leader. The split between Lloyd George's breakaway faction and Asquith's official Liberal faction badly weakened

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1404-681: A lesser role in party affairs after 1900. The party, furthermore, also included Irish Catholics, and secularists from the labour movement. Many Conservatives (including Winston Churchill ) had recently protested against high tariff moves by the Conservatives by switching to the anti-tariff Liberal camp, but it was unclear how many old Conservative traits they brought along, especially on military and naval issues. The middle-class business, professional and intellectual communities were generally strongholds, although some old aristocratic families played important roles as well. The working-class element

1521-713: A massive victory: Labour increased their position slightly, but the Asquithian Liberals were decimated. Those remaining Liberal MPs who were opposed to the Coalition Government went into opposition under the parliamentary leadership of Sir Donald MacLean who also became Leader of the Opposition . Asquith, who had appointed MacLean, remained as overall Leader of the Liberal Party even though he lost his seat in 1918. Asquith returned to Parliament in 1920 and resumed leadership. Between 1919 and 1923,

1638-520: A meeting in Reading : The Tories cannot conceal from themselves the fact that all over the land – in the towns, in the villages, in the country districts, in the urban districts - there is a resolute determination that Parliament shall put its hand in earnest to the great work of social regeneration ... parish councils may sound dull and mechanical, we know that they will go to the very root of national life, and that when we have achieved these reforms

1755-563: A meeting in Walworth that the party wanted to create: ... a complete hierarchy of councils popularly elected and with full powers belonging to such bodies. The Liberals tried to amend the Agricultural Smallholdings Act 1892 as it passed through parliament, seeking to add clauses creating parish councils which would have the power to buy and sell land in order to increase the number of smallholdings. In rejecting

1872-448: 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 the greatest election victory in their history. This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right. Although he presided over a large majority, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably H. H. Asquith at

1989-400: A parish council varied from 5 to 15 members, the number being fixed by order of the county council. The entire council was elected annually on 15 April. To be eligible for election to the council, a person was required to be resident within the parish, or within three miles of it, for at least twelve months prior to the election. The entire council was elected annually. The parish council elected

2106-523: A provisional government and armed resistance in Ulster . The Ulster Protestants had the full support of the Conservatives, whose leader, Bonar Law , was of 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

2223-465: A rather desperate manner to hold on to power. The result was a catastrophic split in the Liberal Party, and heavy defeat in the 1886 election at the hands of Lord Salisbury , who was supported by the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party . There was a final weak Gladstone ministry in 1892, but it also was dependent on Irish support and failed to get Irish Home Rule through the House of Lords. Historically,

2340-475: A strong appeal to the nonconformist middle-class Liberal element, which felt liberated by the departure of the aristocracy. A major long-term consequence of the Third Reform Act was the rise of Lib-Lab candidates. The Act split all county constituencies (which were represented by multiple MPs) into single-member constituencies , roughly corresponding to population patterns. With the foundation of

2457-564: A strong, welfare-oriented, and interventionist state. After the historic 1906 victory, the Liberal Party introduced multiple reforms on a range of issues, including health insurance , unemployment insurance , and pensions for elderly workers, thereby laying the groundwork for the future British welfare state . Some proposals failed, such as licensing fewer pubs, or rolling back Conservative educational policies. The People's Budget of 1909, championed by David Lloyd George and fellow Liberal Winston Churchill , introduced unprecedented taxes on

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2574-399: Is administered is as admirable as it is possible for the ingenuity and humanity of man to devise", and he called on the government to drop the proposals. Sir Charles Dilke , from the government's own benches, was unhappy that county councils would have the power to divide or group parishes. He felt that they were susceptible to influence by local landowners whose wishes might overcome those of

2691-623: Is that the British people were so deeply divided over numerous issues, but on all sides, there was growing distrust of the Asquith government. There was no agreement whatsoever on wartime issues. The leaders of the two parties realized that embittered debates in Parliament would further undermine popular morale and so the House of Commons did not once discuss the war before May 1915. Taylor argues: The Unionists, by and large, regarded Germany as

2808-558: Is to be within one county, that the district of every District Council is to be within one county, and that the County Councils shall have the duty of readjusting the existing overlapping areas and divisions. We think the County Council far the best tribunal to undertake this duty. They understand the localities, and how the districts can best be divided. They are to have 12 months in which to discharge their duty; and if at

2925-623: The 1918 general election , Lloyd George, hailed as "the Man Who Won the War", led his coalition into a khaki election . Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates—this " coupon ", as it became known, was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself. The coalition won

3042-474: The Charity Commissioners could provide for the parish council to become the trustees. Annual accounts of the charity were to be laid before the parish meeting. A parish council, or one-tenth of the electors of a parish, could apply to the county council for the division of the parish into wards. This was to be done where "the area or population of the parish is so large, or different parts of

3159-564: The Commons on 21 March 1893, Fowler set out the complicated system of local government that was in need of reform. England and Wales were divided into: 62 counties, 302 Municipal Boroughs, 31 Improvement Act Districts, 688 Local Government Districts, 574 Rural Sanitary Districts, 58 Port Sanitary Districts, 2,302 School Board Districts ... 1,052 Burial Board Districts, 648 Poor Law Unions, 13,775 Ecclesiastical Parishes, and nearly 15,000 Civil Parishes. The total number of Authorities which tax

3276-683: 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

3393-714: The Hertfordshire County Council split the parishes of Bushey and Watford into Bushey Urban and Watford Urban parishes in Watford Urban District and Watford Rural and Bushey Rural parishes in the Watford Rural District . The county council could also group small parishes under a joint parish council. The act specified that the first elections to the district councils and reconstituted boards of guardians would take place on 8 November 1894, or such other date that

3510-661: The 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 (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

3627-517: The Labour Party not to come till 1906, many trade unions allied themselves with the Liberals. In areas with working class majorities, in particular coal-mining areas, Lib-Lab candidates were popular, and they received sponsorship and endorsement from trade unions . In the first election after the Act was passed (1885), thirteen were elected, up from two in 1874. The Third Reform Act also facilitated

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3744-620: The Liberal Unionists in 1886 (they eventually joined the Conservative Party); the faction of labour union members that joined the new Labour Party ; the split between factions led by Asquith and that led by Lloyd George in 1918–1922 ; and a three-way split in 1931. Many prominent intellectuals were active in the party, including philosopher John Stuart Mill , economist John Maynard Keynes , and social planner William Beveridge . Winston Churchill during his years as

3861-717: The Second Reform Act was passed by agreement between the parties), Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government. The establishment of the party as a national membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. The philosopher John Stuart Mill was also a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868. For the next 30 years, Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Gladstone served as prime minister four times (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94). His financial policies, based on

3978-661: The pound unless they had the consent of both the parish meeting and the district council. Turning to the government of towns he explained: We shall convert the Improvement Commissioners and Local Boards into Urban District Councils; we shall abolish all plural voting; we shall propose to abolish all qualifications, for we think the only qualification a man ought to possess is the confidence of his constituents; and we propose to make women capable of serving on these District Councils. He then turned to reform of rural authorities: Then as regards rural districts,

4095-610: The 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 when the remaining Peelites, Radicals and Whigs agreed to vote down the incumbent Conservative government. This meeting was held at the Willis' rooms in London on 6 June 1859. This led to Palmerston's second government. However,

4212-459: The 1890s "became Conservative in all but name." The government could force the unwilling king to create new Liberal peers, and that threat did prove decisive in the battle for dominance of Commons over Lords in 1911. The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of New Liberalism within the Liberal Party, which advocated state intervention as a means of guaranteeing freedom and removing obstacles to it such as poverty and unemployment. The policies of

4329-709: The 650 seats it contested. At the 1987 general election , its share of the vote fell below 23% and the Liberals and the SDP merged in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), who the following year were renamed the Liberal Democrats . A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989. The Liberals were a coalition with diverse positions on major issues and no unified national policy. This made them repeatedly liable to deep splits, such as that of

4446-469: The Act was 692. All but three of 118 additional districts were caused by the breaking up of cross-county rural sanitary districts (for example Monks Kirby Rural District was the part of Lutterworth RSD that was in Warwickshire , with the rest forming Lutterworth Rural District .) Where new rural districts were created due to boundary changes the county council were to provide names. In some areas

4563-556: The Boers; near-socialists and laissez-faire classical liberals ; suffragettes and opponents of women's suffrage ; antiwar elements and supporters of the military alliance with France . Nonconformists – Protestants outside the Anglican fold – were a powerful element, dedicated to opposing the established church in terms of education and taxation. However, the non-conformists were losing support amid society at large and played

4680-523: The Commons completed its consideration of the bill on 8 January 1894. The passage of the bill through the House of Lords was completed on 12 February. The Lords made two amendments to the bill, the first raised the population for forming a parish council back to the original figure of 300, the second amendment provided that parochial charities would only transfer to the administration of a parish council with

4797-523: The Conservatives' main rival. By the 1950s, the party had won as few as six seats at general elections. Apart from a few notable by-election victories, its 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 won only 23 of

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4914-523: The Conservatives. 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), ) while claims were made that "five-sixths of the Liberal party are left wing." Other historians, however, have questioned

5031-498: The English ratepayers is between 28,000 and 29,000. Not only are we exposed to this multiplicity of authority and this confusion of rating power, but the qualification, tenure, and mode of election of members of these Authorities differ in different cases. He explained that the government had chosen the civil parish as the basic unit of local government in rural areas. He estimated that there were approximately 13,000 rural parishes and

5148-589: The Exchequer, 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

5265-522: The Government has not dared to challenge the nation to rise above itself, is one among many signs. [...] The war is, in fact, not being taken seriously. [...] How can any slacker be blamed when the Government itself is slack. Asquith's Liberal government was brought down in May 1915 , due in particular to a crisis in inadequate artillery shell production and the protest resignation of Admiral Fisher over

5382-681: The Guardians a popularly elected body, we do not propose to disturb the existing machinery. We take the Rural Sanitary Authority as it now exists, but elected and qualified under new conditions, and we continue that as the Rural District Council. Therefore, the Rural District Council will be the old Rural Sanitary Authority altered, and, I think, very much improved ... Then we propose to abolish all separate Highway Authorities in rural districts and to transfer

5499-406: The Liberal Party. In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he ordered the occupation of Egypt by British forces in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War . His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law

5616-647: The Liberal coalition before the war broke out that it marked the Strange Death of Liberal England . However, most historians date the collapse to the crisis of the First World War. The Liberal Party might have survived a short war, but the totality of the Great War called for measures that the Party had long rejected. The result was the permanent destruction of the ability of the Liberal Party to lead

5733-697: The Liberals lost office to the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel , but their period in opposition was short because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws , a free trade issue; and a faction known as the Peelites (but not Peel himself, who died soon after) aligned to the Liberal side on the issue of free trade. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of

5850-537: The Local Government Board should fix. In the event, the electoral register was not complete until late November, and elections did not take place until December. Over 729,000 women were now eligible to vote in local elections in England and Wales (some of whom could already vote in local elections under the Municipal Franchise Act 1869 ). Liberal Party (UK) The Liberal Party was one of

5967-569: The New Liberalism are now known as social liberalism . The New Liberals included intellectuals like L. T. Hobhouse , and John A. Hobson . They saw individual liberty as something achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed that these conditions could be ameliorated only through collective action coordinated by

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6084-608: The Party and into a third party called Liberal Unionism on the Irish issue. It collaborated with and eventually merged into the Conservative party. The Gladstonian liberals in 1891 adopted The Newcastle Programme that included home rule for Ireland, disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales , tighter controls on the sale of liquor , major extension of factory regulation and various democratic political reforms. The Programme had

6201-473: The Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party while it was dominated by aristocrats and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party. This was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government (during which

6318-479: The Whigs' demise. The admission of the middle classes to the franchise and to the House of Commons led eventually to the development of a systematic middle-class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's retirement, the party was led first by Lord Melbourne , a fairly traditional Whig, and then by Lord John Russell ,

6435-521: The act was the fact that all electors had a single vote, and thus county councillors were popularly elected. The members of other local bodies were elected by a system of weighted voting, with those owning more property having multiple votes. The original Local Government Bill of 1888 had included provisions for creating district as well as county councils. However the President of the Local Government Board , Charles Ritchie , had some difficulty in having

6552-571: The administrative county, and to ensure that no parish or district extended into another county. Also parishes that crossed district boundaries were to be divided. Hundreds of orders were made by county councils, and it was not until 1898 that the process was complete. Many county councils took the opportunity to "tidy up" their boundaries with neighbouring authorities, and it was not uncommon for blocks of parishes to be exchanged. The division of parishes led to many ancient parishes being split into "urban" and "rural" portions. As an example, an order of

6669-504: The amendments, Henry Chaplin , President of the Board of Agriculture , claimed the government intended: ... on a proper and fitting occasion, when opportunity arises, to deal not only with the question of District Councils, but the question also of parochial reform. Parliament was dissolved in June 1892, and a general election called. The Liberals made the introduction of district and parish councils part of their programme. Following

6786-402: The anti-Lloyd George Liberals were called Asquithian Liberals, Wee Free Liberals or Independent Liberals . Lloyd George was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party who numerically dominated the coalition. In 1922, the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing, in particular, Lloyd George's plan for war with Turkey in

6903-621: The approval of the Charity Commissioners . Both were agreed to. The act received the royal assent on 5 March 1894. In 1893 there were 688 urban Sanitary districts outside boroughs. These had various titles such as Local Government District or Local Board of Health District or Improvement Commissioners' District . Each of these variously titled entities became urban districts in 1894/5. Urban districts continued to be formed, and by 1927 there were 785. Municipal boroughs , while being classified as urban districts, had neither their titles nor constitutions altered. The governing body of

7020-432: The area was the urban district council. All councillors were popularly elected for a three-year term. There were to be no ex officio or appointed members as had existed in some of the predecessor bodies. In order to be eligible for election, a candidate was required to be on the electoral register, and to have resided in the district for twelve months prior to the election. Women were permitted to be councillors. One-third of

7137-452: The area was too small to become a separate rural district, which was required by the act to have at least five councillors. These areas were to "be temporarily administered by the district council of an adjoining district in another county with which it was united before the appointed day" . The councillors elected for these areas were entitled to sit and act as members of the rural district council, although separate accounts were to be kept for

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7254-549: The area. These arrangements were usually ended within a few years of the act's coming into force, with the areas being transferred by alteration in either county or rural district boundaries. Some persisted until the 1930s, however, when county districts were reorganised under the Local Government Act 1929 . Exceptionally, the parish of Pennal , Merionethshire, was administered by Machynlleth Rural District in Montgomeryshire until 1955. Rural district councils inherited

7371-445: The aristocracy was divided between Conservatives and Liberals. However, when Gladstone committed to home rule for Ireland, Britain's upper classes largely abandoned the Liberal party, giving the Conservatives a large permanent majority in the House of Lords. Following the Queen, High Society in London largely ostracized home rulers and Liberal clubs were badly split. Joseph Chamberlain took a major element of upper-class supporters out of

7488-416: The bill also. Among the Liberal rank and file, several Gladstonian candidates disowned the bill, reflecting fears at the constituency level that the interests of the working people were being sacrificed to finance a costly rescue operation for the landed élite. Further, Home Rule had not been promised in the Liberals' election manifesto, and so the impression was given that Gladstone was buying Irish support in

7605-417: The bill dealt with poor law guardians and district councils. Among its provisions were that: The third part of the bill detailed the duties of the county council in dealing with divided areas and small parishes. The county council had the power to name divided parishes and to combine areas. The fourth and fifth parts of the bill dealt with the first election of councils and transitory provisions. Speaking in

7722-523: The bill on a number of grounds. He defended the ex-officio guardians who had "proved themselves the most efficient and the most useful members of the Board ;... you will find that the most regular attendants have been the ex officios, and that they have made the best Chairmen and the best members." He believed the reform of boards of guardians was unwarranted as "the system under which the Poor Law

7839-403: The capitalist market, this legislation nevertheless, marked a significant shift in Liberal approaches to the state and social reform, approaches that later governments would slowly expand and that would grow into the welfare state after the Second World War. What was new in these reforms was the underlying assumption that the state could be a positive force, that the measure of individual freedom...

7956-479: The citizenship of their native land. The new Liberalism, while pursuing this great political ideal with unflinching energy, devotes a part of its endeavour also to the removing of the immediate causes of discontent. It is true that man cannot live by bread alone. It is equally true that a man cannot live without bread. The Liberals languished in opposition for a decade while the coalition of Salisbury and Chamberlain held power. The 1890s were marred by infighting between

8073-429: The consequences of the Third Reform Act (1884) was the giving of the vote to many Irish Catholics . In the 1885 general election the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power in the House of Commons and demanded Irish Home Rule as the price of support for a continued Gladstone ministry. Gladstone personally supported Home Rule, but a strong Liberal Unionist faction led by Joseph Chamberlain , along with

8190-451: The council was elected on 15 April each year. UDCs could, by a resolution passed with a two-thirds majority, change to a system of elections of the whole council every three years. The council elected a chairman at their annual meeting, who was, during their term of office, a justice of the peace for the county. There were 574 rural sanitary districts in 1893, many of them crossing county boundaries. The number of rural districts formed by

8307-433: The county boundaries were so complicated that rural districts were in more than one administrative county. For example, Gloucestershire , Warwickshire and Worcestershire had many outlying detached parishes surrounded by other counties. Accordingly, the rural districts of Shipston on Stour , Stow on the Wold , Tewkesbury and Winchcombe included parishes in two or three counties. Rural district councils consisted of

8424-468: The demise of the Whig old guard; in two-member constituencies, it was common to pair a Whig and a radical under the Liberal banner. After the Third Reform Act, fewer former Whigs were selected as candidates. A broad range of interventionist reforms were introduced by the 1892–1895 Liberal government. Amongst other measures, standards of accommodation and of teaching in schools were improved, factory inspection

8541-498: The disastrous Gallipoli Campaign against Turkey. Reluctant to face doom in an election, Asquith formed a new coalition government on 25 May, with the majority of the new cabinet coming from his own Liberal party and the Unionist (Conservative) party , along with a token Labour representation. The new government lasted a year and a half and was the last time Liberals controlled the government. The analysis of historian A. J. P. Taylor

8658-654: The election the Liberals under William Ewart Gladstone formed an administration with the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party . The Local Government Bill (also referred to as the Parish Councils Bill) was published by H. H. Fowler , the President of the Local Government Board, on 26 March 1893. The bill consisted of 71 clauses arranged in five parts. The first part dealt with rural parishes, and provided that: The second part of

8775-475: The end of that period they have not made this readjustment, it will devolve upon the Local Government Board to interfere and carry the matter out. The bill returned, in amended form, for a second reading in November 1893. In reintroducing the bill to the Commons, Fowler outlined the objections that had been made, and the government's response. Walter Long , the opposition spokesman on local government attacked

8892-429: The existing urban and rural sanitary districts . Many of the latter had lain in more than one ancient county, whereas the new rural districts were to be in a single administrative county . The act also reorganised civil parishes , so that none of them lay in more than one district and hence did not cross administrative boundaries. Although the Act made no provision to abolish the hundreds , which had previously been

9009-431: 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. Nevertheless, important junior offices were held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and Fabian collectivists," and much legislation

9126-493: The field. The 1915 coalition fell apart at the end of 1916, when the Conservatives withdrew their support from Asquith and gave it instead to Lloyd George, who became prime minister at the head of a new coalition largely made up of Conservatives. Asquith and his followers moved to the opposition benches in Parliament and the Liberal Party was deeply split once again. Lloyd George remained a Liberal all his life, but he abandoned many standard Liberal principles in his crusade to win

9243-511: The first year. Since the Liberals ran the war without consulting the Conservatives, there were heavy partisan attacks. However, even Liberal commentators were dismayed by the lack of energy at the top. At the time, public opinion was intensely hostile, both in the media and in the street, against any young man in civilian garb and labeled as a slacker. The leading Liberal newspaper, the Manchester Guardian complained: The fact that

9360-573: The future of the party, says historian Trevor Wilson, was its repudiation by ideological Liberals, who decided sadly that it no longer represented their principles. Finally, the presence of the vigorous new Labour Party on the left gave a new home to voters disenchanted with the Liberal performance. The last majority Liberal Government in Britain was elected in 1906. The years preceding the First World War were marked by worker strikes and civil unrest and saw many violent confrontations between civilians and

9477-525: 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

9594-403: The last of the Whigs, Hartington, opposed it. The Irish Home Rule bill proposed to offer all owners of Irish land a chance to sell to the state at a price equal to 20 years' purchase of the rents and allowing tenants to purchase the land. Irish nationalist reaction was mixed, Unionist opinion was hostile, and the election addresses during the 1886 election revealed English radicals to be against

9711-399: The legislation passed by Parliament, and dropped the district council clauses for fear that the entire bill might be lost due to opposition from the government's own backbenchers. The Liberal opposition berated the government for failing to create district councils. At the same time they put forward proposals for establishing councils at parish level. John Morley , MP for Newcastle , told

9828-472: The manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many Liberals were Nonconformists ), avoidance of war and foreign alliances (which were bad for business) and above all free trade . For a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals. In 1841,

9945-477: The more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor Earl Grey . After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832. The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about

10062-613: The notion of balanced budgets , low taxes and laissez-faire , were suited to a developing capitalist society, but they could not respond effectively as economic and social conditions changed. Called the "Grand Old Man" later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class. Deeply religious, Gladstone brought a new moral tone to politics, with his evangelical sensibility and his opposition to aristocracy. His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including Queen Victoria ), and his heavy-handed control split

10179-564: The number of elected Guardians, but there is required to be one Guardian for every constituent parish. There is a property qualification and plural voting, and voting by proxy. We could not ask the House to continue the existing powers in, much less to confer new powers upon, an authority so constituted and so irresponsible ... We therefore propose to abolish, firstly, all ex officio or non-elective Guardians ... there shall be no plural voting, no proxy voting , and no voting papers, but voting by Ballot and One Man One Vote ... Having made

10296-494: The only widely used administrative unit between the parish and the county in size, the reorganisation displaced their remaining functions. Several ancient hundred names lived on in the names of the districts that superseded them. The Local Government Act 1888 ( 51 & 52 Vict. c. 41) had introduced elected county councils. The passing of the act had been part of the price for Liberal Unionist support for Lord Salisbury's minority Conservative administration. An innovation in

10413-493: The parishioners. The bill then entered the committee stage. Arguments over the population at which parish councils should be established continued to be made, with amendments proposing limits of 100, 200, 500, 600 and 1,000. The figure finally reverted to the government figure of 200. Major Leonard Darwin , Liberal Unionist MP for Lichfield unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to create parish councils in urban districts containing more than one parish. After 34 days of debate,

10530-545: 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

10647-489: The party. The coalition government of Lloyd George was increasingly dominated by the Conservative Party, which finally ousted him as prime minister in 1922. The subsequent Liberal collapse was quick and catastrophic. With 400 MPs elected in the 1906 election; they had only 40 in 1924. Their share of the popular vote plunged from 49% to 18%. The Labour Party absorbed most of the ex-Liberal voters and then became

10764-469: The passage of the Parliament Act 1911 . As the price of Irish support, Asquith was now forced to introduce a 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

10881-636: The police and armed forces. Other issues of the period included women's suffrage and the Irish Home Rule movement. After the carnage of 1914–1918, the democratic reforms of the Representation of the People Act 1918 instantly tripled the number of people entitled to vote in Britain from seven to twenty-one million. The Labour Party benefited most from this huge change in the electorate, forming its first minority government in 1924 . In

10998-539: The population so situated, as to make a single parish meeting for the election of councillors impracticable or inconvenient, or that it is desirable for any reason that certain parts of the parish should be separately represented on the council" . Separate elections of councillors for each ward would then be held. The responsibility for defining the areas of the districts was given to the county councils established in 1888 . County councils were supposed to have regard to areas of existing sanitary districts and parishes in

11115-560: The powers of both the rural sanitary authority they replaced and any highway board in their area. In all rural parishes with a population of 300 or more, a parish council had to be elected. In parishes with more than 100 but less than 300 population, the parish meeting could request the county council to make an order to establish a parish council. Urban parishes (those within an urban district) were not given separate parish councils, but were directly administered by their urban district council or municipal borough council. The membership of

11232-653: The reorganization of the judiciary in the Judicature Act . Regarding Ireland, the major Liberal achievements were land reform, where he ended centuries of landlord oppression , and the disestablishment of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland through the Irish Church Act 1869 . In the 1874 general election , Gladstone was defeated by the Conservatives under Benjamin Disraeli during a sharp economic recession. He formally resigned as Liberal leader and

11349-416: The son of a Duke but a crusading radical, and by Lord Palmerston , a renegade Irish Tory and essentially a conservative , although capable of radical gestures. As early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality, his party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden , who represented

11466-404: The third quarter of the century drew to a close, the essential bastions of Victorianism still held firm: respectability; a government of aristocrats and gentlemen now influenced not only by middle-class merchants and manufacturers but also by industrious working people; a prosperity that seemed to rest largely on the tenets of laissez-faire economics ; and a Britannia that ruled the waves and many

11583-465: The three principal successors to Gladstone, party leader 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

11700-536: 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 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

11817-576: The two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party , in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs , free trade –supporting Peelites , and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century, it had formed four governments under William Gladstone . Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule , the party returned to government in 1905 and won

11934-400: The union is the administrative area with which we have to deal. Except in 25 cases, in which, if I may use the expression, the union consists of a single parish, the union is an aggregation of parishes. There are 648 unions altogether. There are 137 in two counties and 32 in three counties. The Guardians by whom the union is administered are elected or ex officio. The Local Government Board fixes

12051-603: The war at all costs. He insisted on strong government controls over business as opposed to the laissez-faire attitudes of traditional Liberals. in 1915–16 he had insisted on conscription of young men into the Army, a position that deeply troubled his old colleagues. That brought him and a few like-minded Liberals into the new coalition on the ground long occupied by Conservatives. There was no more planning for world peace or liberal treatment of Germany, nor discomfit with aggressive and authoritarian measures of state power. More deadly to

12168-474: The wealthy in Britain and radical social welfare programmes to the country's policies. In the Liberal camp, as noted by one study, "the Budget was on the whole enthusiastically received." It was the first budget with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public. It imposed increased taxes on luxuries, liquor, tobacco, high incomes, and land – taxation that fell heavily on the rich . The new money

12285-520: The whole powers of the Highway Board or the highway parish to the Rural District Council. Finally he described how the boundaries of the districts and parishes were to be arrived at: At present we have rural sanitary districts, partly within and partly without the county, and we have parishes partly within and partly without rural sanitary districts. We have 174 rural sanitary districts and some 800 parishes so situate. We propose that every parish

12402-538: Was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London . The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level under the Local Government Act 1888 ( 51 & 52 Vict. c. 41). The 1894 legislation introduced elected councils at district and parish level. The principal effects of the act were: The new district councils were based on

12519-603: Was made more stringent, and ministers used their powers to increase the wages and reduce the working hours of large numbers of male workers employed by the state. Historian Walter L. Arnstein concludes: Notable as the Gladstonian reforms had been, they had almost all remained within the nineteenth-century Liberal tradition of gradually removing the religious, economic, and political barriers that prevented men of varied creeds and classes from exercising their individual talents in order to improve themselves and their society. As

12636-403: Was moving rapidly toward the newly emerging Labour Party. One uniting element was widespread agreement on the use of politics and Parliament as a device to upgrade and improve society and to reform politics. All Liberals were outraged when Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to block reform legislation. In the House of Lords, the Liberals had lost most of their members, who in

12753-443: Was not how much the state left people alone, but whether it gave them the capacity to fill themselves as individuals. Contrasting Old Liberalism with New Liberalism, David Lloyd George noted in a 1908 speech the following: [Old Liberals] used the natural discontent of the people with the poverty and precariousness of the means of subsistence as a motive power to win for them a better, more influential, and more honourable status in

12870-511: Was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and welfare. 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 election . The election resulted in a hung parliament , with the government left dependent on

12987-620: Was renamed South East Derbyshire in 1959. It was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972 , with the parishes of Breadsall , Breaston , Dale Abbey , Draycott and Church Wilne , Hopwell , Little Eaton , Morley , Ockbrook , Risley , Sandiacre , Stanley , Stanton by Dale and West Hallam going on to form part of the new Erewash district, with the rest becoming part of a new South Derbyshire district. 52°53′N 1°23′W  /  52.89°N 1.38°W  / 52.89; -1.38 Local Government Act 1894 The Local Government Act 1894 ( 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73)

13104-403: Was subject to the approval of the Local Government Board. No right of way could be extinguished or diverted without the permission of both the parish and rural district council. Parish councils could take over the maintenance of public footpaths within their parish, other than those along the edge of highways. Where a charitable trust (other than an ecclesiastical charity) existed in a parish,

13221-525: Was succeeded by the Marquess of Hartington , but he soon changed his mind and returned to active politics. He strongly disagreed with Disraeli's pro- Ottoman foreign policy and in 1880 he conducted the first outdoor mass-election campaign in Britain, known as the Midlothian campaign . The Liberals won a large majority in the 1880 election . Hartington ceded his place and Gladstone resumed office. Among

13338-537: Was the Elementary Education Act 1870 ( 33 & 34 Vict. c. 75), which provided England with an adequate system of elementary schools for the first time. He also secured the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the British Army and of religious tests for admission to Oxford and Cambridge ; the introduction of the secret ballot in elections; the legalization of trade unions ; and

13455-429: Was the Liberals, not the Conservatives who needed the moral outrage of Belgium to justify going to war, while the Conservatives called for intervention from the start of the crisis on the grounds of realpolitik and the balance of power. However, Lloyd George and Churchill were zealous supporters of the war, and gradually forced the old peace-orientated Liberals out. Asquith was blamed for the poor British performance in

13572-405: Was to be made available for new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. In 1911 Lloyd George succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act , making provision for sickness and invalidism, and this was followed by his Unemployment Insurance Act . Historian Peter Weiler argues: Although still partially informed by older Liberal concerns for character, self-reliance, and

13689-440: Was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms. As prime minister from 1868 to 1874, Gladstone headed a Liberal Party which was a coalition of Peelites like himself, Whigs and Radicals. He was now a spokesman for "peace, economy and reform". One major achievement

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