Unit 6B: Ideological Development in the UK
Rodney Barker
Professor at Government Department of the London School of Economics writes for BBC Parliament |
 The Liberal Democrats are not the only party to espouse liberal ideas |
Liberalism has had a double history in the United Kingdom: as a tradition in its own right at the beginning and end of the twentieth century and as an element in all the other ideological traditions in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
At the start of the twentieth century, liberalism as an ideology stood for individual liberty, markets and laissez faire, political democracy, and a state which, if it regulated or intervened in society, did so principally in order to give greater power to individuals.
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In the nineteenth century one of the two Parliamentary parties was the Liberal Party, and there was a broad, though not exact, correspondence between the doctrines of liberalism and that party's policies and rhetoric.
This alliance of party and ideology eroded as the Liberal Party itself split into factions and its electoral support faded.
But whilst the Liberal Party had, well before the outbreak of the Second World War, ceased to be a significant part of politics in the United Kingdom, liberal ideas continued to flourish and to influence both political thinking, and the policies and rhetoric of Parliamentary politics.
Conservatives took on board many of the economic doctrines of liberalism:-
Respect for the existing distribution of property
Suspicion of state regulation of the economy
Belief in the beneficial functioning of markets. Socialists inherited other liberal beliefs:-
in individual moral, cultural, religious and intellectual freedom
liberal suspicion of any state regulation of the thoughts, publications, or social relations of individuals. In the last quarter of the twentieth century the advocacy of the economic side of the liberal tradition, separated from its cultural and political aspects, formed a major element in the New Right.
This was often referred to as "neo-liberalism", though a more correct if less euphonious, title, would have been "neo-economic-liberalism".
Liberal beliefs
The liberal belief in civil liberties informed the radical protest movements of the 1960s, whilst the liberal belief in personal freedom, though with substantial developments, was sustained in the feminist arguments which became increasingly important from the 1960s onwards.
The liberal belief in individual autonomy was extended, often accompanied by criticism of much traditional liberal thinking, to argue against inequalities between men and women in the household, in paid employment, and in politics and government.
The liberal belief in the value of self-government fed into the demands for constitutional reform by organisations such as Charter 88, many of which were carried out by the Labour Government after 1997.
On the one hand, the powers of the state were to be limited by human rights legislation, on the other political representation was to be given extra dimensions by the reform of both regional and local government.
So whilst the Liberal Party had lost its position as one of the two great Parliamentary parties, liberal ideas in various combinations or singly, were to be found across the political spectrum.
� Rodney Barker 2004
Department of Government
London School of Economics & Political Science
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