South Ayrshire Liberal Party

The Liberal Party in Britain was formed on 6 June 1859 from a gradual amalgamation of Whigs, Radicals and Peelites, and for much of the following thirty years the Liberals governed the country. William Gladstone (1809-1898), Liberal leader and four times Prime Minister, dominated British politics during that period. The question of Home Rule for Ireland weakened the Liberal Party however and from 1886 it stayed out of power for the next twenty years. The weak leadership of Lord Rosebery (1847-1929), Gladstone's successor, and the continuing squabbles in the party over Ireland kept it in the doldrums into the opening years of the twentieth century.

A landslide victory in 1906 brought the Liberals back to power, partly as a result of an electoral pact with the new-born Labour Party which helped the latter to take a number of Conservative seats in north-west England. Under the Prime Ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836-1908) and Herbert Asquith (1852-1928), the Liberal governments from 1906 to 1915 broke the power of the House of Lords and laid the foundations of the modern welfare state, introducing old age pensions and the national insurance system. However, industrial unrest, the issue of votes for women, Ireland, factionalism within the party, and the demands of the First World War demoralised the Liberals between 1910 and 1915, and Asquith acceded to a coalition government led by the Conservatives.

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