For Want of a Drink

stodge

Ok, the wait is over. The new political TL is at hand but first a taster from the lobby of the House of Commons not too long ago:

Nicholas William Peter Clegg was irritated – his friend was late which was hardly unusual – but Nick also didn’t know where he had to go which of course his friend did.

He recalled the breakfast panic as Miriam got the children ready for school before the taxi arrived to take her to Heathrow for her flight to Brussels and the nanny rushing around getting lunches organised before children were quickly patted, kissed and hurried out the door. Nick had hoped to be back in time to pick them up but he was already running late.

“Excuse me, my dear fellow; can I be of any help?”

Nick turned and looked ahead, then down slightly. He saw an elderly man looking straight at him. There was something vaguely familiar about him which Nick couldn’t place. Nonetheless, the eyes retained intensity, an almost mischievous glint

“Well, I’m waiting for a friend, a colleague actually. I’m trying to find the Whips’ Offices.”

“Ah yes, “the older man replied, “You must be part of the new intake. I was once standing where you are now, it must be nearly fifty years since I first entered these hallowed portals. The world was a very different place then of course, dear boy.”

Nick furtively looked to see if his friend had arrived but, seeing no sign, quickly interrupted the older man, “There must have been some real legends back then?”

“Oh yes, dear boy” the older man continued, “I knew many of them – Churchill, MacMillan, dear Hugh Gaitskell, Jo Grimond of course, Harold Wilson, Edward..”

“You knew Jo Grimond?” asked Nick with some incredulity.

“Oh yes,” replied the older man, “though he had been an MP for a good few years before I first got to know him. I also knew Mark Bonham-Carter as well. Ah, it looks like your friend, the Etonian, has arrived. Excuse me.”

“Uh, how did you…?” said Nick. Suddenly he became aware of David standing next to him.

“Sorry, I’m late, Nick,” said David, “Sam was busy sorting out the children and having to get to the office.”

“Don’t worry, David. I was just talking to this old boy, one of the Crossbenchers I think. He’s been here fifty years or more. He was just standing with me. Frail man but with powerful eyes.”

Norman didn’t hear David reveal his identity to Nick but he had heard the gasp before. It always pleased him to think he still had some influence behind the scenes.

As Nick and David moved away toward the Members’ entrance, Norman glanced over to see his old nemesis, Ralph, deep in conversation with two young men. Ah, his boys, Norman realised. The smaller younger one wouldn’t amount to anything but the taller one, like that young Nick Clegg, was well worth keeping an eye on.

Norman checked his watch. He started to make his way to the Strangers’ Bar where his faithful biographer, Mr Odge, would be waiting. Poor Sebastian Thomas, he mused, he was always keeping him waiting but a double from behind the bar, preferably from one of Sir Russell Johnston’s better malts, would soften his mood.

It always did.
 

stodge

Part One..

The fire had been welcoming, reassuring. It had been a long journey from London and the paperwork was as heavy as ever. Letters from the Party, the constituency, all needing to be read and dealt with.

He had returned to find his wife out – a brief note to say she was staying with her sister. His dinner had long since dried in the oven but he had found the glass and the bottle and, pouring himself a generous measure, sat in his chair staring at the fire.

He was tired, so tired. The Doctor had warned him to cut down his drinking but it helped him get through the interminable meetings and debates. The Prime Minister had written again – he was a good friend and in some ways a kindred spirit.

It was time for bed – he was almost dropping with fatigue but a good night’s sleep would help as it always did. He stared over at the whisky – it seemed almost to be calling to him. One more drink – he poured a generous measure.

One more drink – what harm could it do? He drank and felt the warmth enter his body – he felt his thoughts sliding further into the darkness where there was only peace.

Peace without end…
 

stodge

Thanks...

Thanks as always for the kind words. I won't be able to move this forward until midweek when I will enlighten those who haven't figured it out yet.
 

WelshDude

stodge said:
Thanks as always for the kind words. I won't be able to move this forward until midweek when I will enlighten those who haven't figured it out yet.
Click to expand...

The middle of which week?

Asssuming the TL isn't dead, the politics of the 1950's isn't really my area of expertise, and of course we don't know whether Churchill or Attlee was prime minister. I have trouble think of someone with an alcohol problem and who's death would change the political world. George Brown maybe, but why would the prime minister be writing to him? He plotted to depose Attlee, and I doubt Churchill would even recognise him.
 
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stodge

It's Back - After Three Years

The five men sat in the cavernous Committee Room in the House of Parliament, fully restored after the Luftwaffe attack a dozen years earlier.

They were a motley bunch indeed - all that remained of a once great Liberal Party which, in its heyday, would have filled this room to capacity and effectively ran the Empire. The mood was sombre though the Sun shone and the funeral had been a surprisingly strong evocation of life.

"Poor Clem, still, it was no surprise," muttered the Welshman in the corner. Roderic Bowen had been an old friend of Clement Davies for many years and had taken the old man's death hard. "Aye," agreed Rhys Morris, though it was fair to say he and Davies had never been that close. As parochial as it was, North Wales and Mid Wales did not always sit well together and in any case Morris was the spokesman for the redoubtable Lady Megan.

Neither Arthur Holt nor Donald Wade chose to comment. The two north England MPs owed their seats to local electoral pacts which meant they didn't face Conservative opposition. When Davies had mentioned Winston's idea of merging with the Conservatives they had not been strongly opposed - it would guarantee their seats.

Roderic Bowen looked across to the youngest man in the room - "I think we all know it's up to you now, Jo. There'll have to be a formal meeting of course but none of this wants to or can lead and there's no one else in the House we can call on."

Though not even forty years of age, Joseph Grimond had seen much in his life. The men in front of him looked as beaten as the Germans he had taken into captivity at the end of the War before he went home to try to win the Islands for the Liberals. He had just failed in 1945 but had won in 1950 and the seat now looked safe on paper.

"Gentlemen," he said calmly, "thank you for your support. We have much to do to rebuild and restore this great party of ours and difficult days lie ahead the Assembly now has a group of young, dynamic active members we must call on. We must spread the Liberal message back to every corner of this country."

The applause was mostly sincere though Grimond knew Lady Megan was waiting in the wings. That would be his first order of business.
 

stodge

The Fall of the Liberals

The party which Jo Grimond took over in the spring of 1953 was on its knees, financially, politically and psychologically. The 1951 General Election had seen a derisory 2.5% of the vote and just six seats with other colleagues rolled over by the Conservative-Labour juggernaut.

The Party had stood just 109 candidates and lost four of its nine seats while gaining Donald Wade in Bolton West from Labour in the absence of a Conservative candidate. Hopes the party might have held the balance had been shattered and instead the Liberals had plumbed new depths of irrelevance and weakness.

Grimond's success in 1950 and improvement in 1951 had been one of the few success stories and in truth the party had barely 50 active branches across the whole country and most of those were in Scotland and Wales. Vast areas of England were moribund with small patches of activity yet Grimond had seen at Assembly the emergence of a new young group of activists and it was these men and women who were the future rather than Lady Megan.

Yet he had a long talk with Lady Megan soon after becoming leader. Unlike Davies, Grimond had no issues with Lady Megan and he wanted her to return to the party as Deputy Leader, the post she had held until the previous year. He also wanted her to return to the Commons but would not offer her Davies's old seat of Montgomery.

Lady Megan decided to return as leader of the Liberal Group of Peers and publicly endorsed Grimond and his leadership at the 1953 Assembly.

The Liberal Party had met in better mood following the resounding win of Emlyn Hooson in the Montgomeryshire by-election. Hooson had emerged with a near 8,000 majority over the Conservatives and had enthusiastically joined the Liberal Party Parliamentary group at the tender age of 28.

Grimond had taken to visiting the basement of the National Liberal Club, out of which the Party operated, regularly to enthuse the volunteers and helpers.

At his famous 1953 Assembly speech, Grimond exhorted the delegates to "go out into every corner of our fair land and spread the Liberal word in every street and every avenue". Progress on that was slow - the Liberal candidate at Abingdon got just 10% despite two visits by Grimond to the constituency.

The Party was too weak to stand a candidate in a by-election until Holborn and St Pancras North in December 1953 but the performance was again derisory with just 1,500 votes and a lost deposit with 5% of the vote.

Liberal historians argue repeatedly from the political comfort zone of the 21st Century over the date the Liberal Renaissance began. Some argue for Suez, others for Hereford, others for Inverness but in many ways Ilford North in the bleak midwinter of February 1954 may be the correct answer.

Grimond made several visits to suburban Ilford as did other young activists and it would prove an invaluable learning experience as new methods of campaigning such as street surveys and targeted newsletters were tried for the first time. No one expected the party to win and they didn't - the candidate, George Thornton, came third with just under 18% of the vote, an increase of 11.5% on the 1951 performance and a comfortable saving of the deposit. The Conservatives held the seat on a 2.5% swing from Labour which suggested to Conservative HQ they were on course to increase their majority at the forthcoming General Election.

For the Liberals, Ilford North marked the first sign of progress under the Grimond leadership - as Grimond himself would write much later "Had we lost our deposit in Ilford, I was prepared to consider my position and my path. I was convinced the new style of activist politics was the future but it had to be seen to prosper on the stoniest of ground and Ilford proved that."
 
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stodge

The Long Slow Climb...

For all that Ilford North seemed to promise a return to a more positive footing, the truth was the Liberal Party was still in a desperate condition nearly 12 months after Grimond assumed the leadership.

There were some hopeful signs in terms of the finances, donations and a steady if unspectacular rise in membership. The number of active branches was rising but, especially in England, these were the tiniest islands of activity surrounded by a vast moribund ocean.

Hopes that Harrogate, just five weeks after Ilford North, might spark a northern revival came to nothing as the candidate polled just 4%. Bournemouth West had seen a similar lost deposit and the Party Treasurer warned Grimond the Party risked disaster if it kept putting up candidates and losing deposits. Grimond wanted to fight every by-election everywhere but the resources simply didn't exist to do that in the first half of 1954.

When news of the death of Sir Herbert Geraint Williams, Conservative MP for Croydon East, was announced on July 25th 1954, Grimond immediately decided the seat would be vigorously contested. He cut short his summer break as did a number of senior Liberal activists and they travelled down to the leafy suburbs to try out their "new" campaigning methods.

The Liberals selected a well known local businessman in James Walters and they worked the seat strongly prompting the Conservatives to call the contest on September 30th. Walters polled 21% in a seat where the party had polled 9% in 1950 but had not stood a candidate in 1951.

The Conservatives held the seat with a majority of 6,500 on a small swing from Labour but the Liberal result was hugely encouraging and, more importantly, new branches and members were created. Grimond had promised the 1954 Assembly a "result to cheer from the rooftops". He may have slightly over-egged that particular pudding but it put a spring in the Party as the autumn by election season continued.

However, the promise again proved illusory with deposits lost in Aldershot, Wakefield and in Sutton & Cheam but the closing days of 1954 would bring the biggest test of Grimond's early leadership.

The sudden resignation of Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, Conservative MP for Inverness since 1950, galvanised Jo Grimond. Inverness was, in his view, eminently winnable and he rapidly found the ideal candidate in John Bannerman, who had fought Argyll for the Liberals in 1945 and 1950 and was both a Gaelic speaking farmer and a former Scottish Rugby International.

Grimond dispatched the London HQ team to Inverness and brought his own band of helpers from the islands. The Conservatives woke to the danger and called the by election for December 21st in an attempt to forestall the Liberal challenge.

It was too late - the election took place in atrocious winter conditions but the hardy souls of the Highlands came out to vote. On a turnout of just over 50%, Bannerman took 52% of the vote and a majority of more than 5,000 votes over the Conservatives. It would be the beginning of an uninterrupted period of Liberal dominance in Inverness through Sir Russell Johnston to the current MP, Donald Munro, Bannerman's grandson.

Though the full impact of the result was muted by Christmas, Inverness was the first Liberal by election gain since 1929. The Inverness result would have lasting repercussions on Scottish politics which was far from clear at the time. It was Grimond's baptism of fire - had the Liberals failed to win the seat, there's little doubt questions would have been asked about his leadership.

As it was, after the New Year recess, Grimond welcomed Bannerman as the seventh Liberal MP but, significant though Inverness was for the Liberals, the South Norfolk by-election of January 1955 was to have a different resonance.

The Liberal candidate lost his deposit polling just 5% but the Conservatives claimed his intervention cost the party the seat with Labour winning on a small swing by just 414 votes. The result sent a tremor through Conservative HQ raising questions about the wisdom of a General Election.

1955 looked set to be an election year and a challenging time for all the parties.
 

stodge

1955: A Difficult Year

Jo Grimond's post-Christmas mail bag brought one hugely significant missive - from Rhys Hopkins Morris, Liberal MP for Carmarthen, who announced he would not contest the seat at the forthcoming General Election.

The official reason given was medical - Morris was indeed ill and would pass away in October 1956 - but historians have often argued there was a political undercurrent behind the decision.

Grimond quickly contacted Emlyn Hooson and Roderic Bowen for advice - Hooson favoured a unknown local man called John Davies as candidate while Bowen, to Grimond's surprise, suggested Lady Megan Lloyd George. Morris had a majority of less than 500 and Grimond reasoned the seat needed a high profile candidate in order to stop it slipping to Labour.

A flurry of telephone calls followed and the result was that on January 25th, Lady Megan Lloyd George announced she would be seeking the candidature in Carmarthen - the deal struck with Hooson was, simply, the merger of the North and South Wales parties into a single party which Lady Megan would lead in exchange for her support for Grimond and Hooson's campaigning strategy.

Lady Megan was a staunch anti-Conservative in opposition to her brother but was unimpressed by Attlee in opposition and had begun to despair of Labour regaining power on their own.

The Liberals approached the coming election campaign with cautious confidence though as one sceptical newspaper editor said "The Liberals are off the ground but on their knees" and indeed the sheer limitations of money and manpower severely restricted Grimond's lofty ambitions.

After much negotiation, the Liberals contested 150 seats or rather put up candidates in 150 seats for in truth two thirds of these were names on a ballot paper with no campaigning. The main efforts were concentrated in the seven existing seats with another dozen to be worked hard with a view to challenging in the following election. This "targeted" strategy angered some Liberal activists but it made best use of the limited funds and resources.

Churchill's resignation and Eden's ascension to the Conservative Party leadership had fired the election gun and it was no surprise when Eden called the election for late May.

The Conservatives enjoyed a growing economy and a Labour Party under a tired Attlee which looked like a shadow of post-war austerity. The Liberals were barely mentioned or considered worth mentioning though the News Chronicle and the Manchester Guardian endorsed Jo Grimond who toured the main constituencies making speeches at public meetings.

The Conservatives won just over 48% of the vote, barely changed from 1951 with Labour just under 45% on a swing of just over 2%. The Liberals moved from 2.7% to 5.6%, nearly doubling their share but made no progress in terms of seats though it was noted there were strong swings to the party in Inverness and Carmarthen (which Lady Megan won with a majority of 3,500). Eden had surprisingly maintained the voting pact in Bolton and Huddersfield and the seats were held with swings to the Liberals from Labour.

Elsewhere in England, the Liberals finished second in 14 seats, all bar one of which were Conservative.

The Conservatives increased their majority to 64 which would, in the normal course of events, be comfortable for another 4-5 years.

In truth, the rest of the year was frustrating as the Liberals returned to obscurity and the 1955 Assembly was notably low key. On 28th October, however, news came of the death of the Conservative MP for Torquay. The seat had been fought at the last minute by one Peter Bessell who had polled 19% and run a close third.

Grimond dispatched the by-election team down to the seat in mid November and personally called Bessell to ask him to fight the seat again which he accepted with enthusiasm. The Conservatives were organised and strong in the area and called the vote for December 15th.

Bessell put up a huge fight but lost by 2,900 polling 39% to the Conservative 46% and the Labour 15%. Eden and the Conservatives breathed a sigh of relief and realised they could no longer consider the Liberals an irrelevance.

For Grimond it was a frustrating end to a difficult year. The by election team learned they needed to squeeze the residual third party vote down and persuade them to vote tactically to produce the required result.

Grimond's New Year message was positive but he felt an opportunity had been missed. How wrong he would turn out to be as 1956 would open far more doors than anyone could have imagined.
 

stodge

1956: The New Dawn

Political historians generally agree 1956 was the year the Liberal Renaissance began although, as I've shown, it had begun at least two years earlier and a year after Jo Grimond had become party leader following the tragic death of Clement Davies in early 1953.

With the departure of the wartime goliaths Churchill and Attlee, Grimond was, by early 1956, the longest serving of the new Party leaders. He faced Anthony Eden, fresh from his election victory the previous spring and Hugh Gaitskell, who had won the Labour Party leadership election.

Some political commentators argue successful politicians rely on luck, others argue good politicians make their own luck. The third school of thought is successful politicians flourish on the mistakes of others. Grimond has been cited by all three groups as examples of the validity of their theories and indeed veteran Liberal MP Ludovic Kennedy, who would serve for many years with Grimond would argue the entire Liberal Renaissance was predicated on the most incredible series of fortune encounters, happenstances and blunders by their opponents.

If subscribing to the last of those three, Hereford must be seen as the cause celebre of Conservative blunders. Many counterfactuals have been written with Eden choosing not to accept the resignation of James Thomas and thus preventing the by election and thus preventing the Liberal renaissance and Eden himself claimed in the 1960s that it was Hereford as much as Suez which had broken him.

After a calm and successful first few months in office, Eden was in a mood of extreme, one might even call it hubristic confidence. When Hereford MP and First Lord of the Admiralty James Thomas asked to resign his seat, Eden agreed without much thought. There were however those in Conservative HQ who were immediately worried about the by election and rightly so.

Grimond could hardly believe his good fortune when news of the resignation of James Thomas came through in January 1956. Hereford was one of the 14 English seats where the candidate, the former MP Humphrey Owen, had fought and come a clear second, polling 30% albeit 7,800 behind Thomas.

Grimond immediately declared Hereford a "target" seat and work started in the seat. The Conservatives were quick to see the possibility of a Liberal challenge and moved for a snap poll on Valentine's Day. They believed it would give the Liberals little or no time to mount a challenge in the depths of winter.

The Conservatives, however, had failed to account for two things - first, an unusually mild and benign January and early February (the weather would break with a vengeance three days after the poll) and second, the Liberal candidate. Owen had decided not to contest the seat again after a conversation with Grimond and the Liberals chose a 32-year old barrister and journalist called Robin Day to fight the seat.

Day threw himself into the contest facing the Conservative candidate, a gentleman farmer and landowner from across the border in Radnor. Day sparkled at public meetings and in conversation with voters everywhere.

From the perspective of sixty years later, it's hard to imagine how a political machine like the Conservatives in shire England could have been so thoroughly out-gunned by the Liberals but the latter had always maintained a presence at local level and this was aided by helpers from Wales and London.

It would later be called the "St Valentine's Day Massacre" by the popular press but Day stormed home taking just over half the vote and a majority of 4,800 over the Conservatives with the labour candidate barely keeping his deposit in third.

Day became the eighth Liberal MP and the first from England to win a three corner contest since before the War. On the same day, the Liberal finished a strong second at Gainsborough polling nearly 30% and many Liberals argue if Hereford hadn't been a success, Gainsborough might have been but that's hard to argue.

The Liberals enjoyed their success but it wasn't to be repeated in the year's other contests. Indeed, the party suffered a series of humiliating third places and lost deposits for much of the rest of the year but as Eden blundered into the Suez Crisis in November 1956, there was a strong sense the political mood was shifting.

Suez cost Eden No.10 - Harold Macmillan took over and tried to put the Conservative house back in order after the crisis. Labour was performing better in by elections capturing Lewisham from the Conservatives but the Liberals were sidelined until well into 1957 but for the Liberals the next advance would be in an area which no one had expected.
 

stodge

1957-58 Yellow Dawn

Robin Day's election as the eighth Liberal MP proved to be significant not just electorally but in terms of a critical area of the Party's operation. As a small party with minimal representation, the Liberals had struggled for attention but while Day brought his share of journalistic contacts, it was in the emerging field of television that he had found his forte.

Had he not gone into politics and become an MP, Robin Day has always claimed he would have enjoyed a successful career in television. ITV had launched in 1955 and Day had quickly realised the potential value television could bring to politics. He had seen how politics had embraced television in America and recognised the potential for the Liberals.

Within 6 months of being elected, Day had persuaded Jo Grimond to set up a Media Unit which would produce television and radio broadcasts as well as preparing and co-ordinating Party television appearances. One of his first acts was to set up what would be the first Media Management Training for Grimond and Hooson. A weekend away in a Hertfordshire hotel would prove pivotal to the Liberal Party's emergence through and use of modern mass media techniques and for that Robin Day deserves huge credit.

The fruits of this work took time to come through and while Eden floundered and failed on Suez in the winter of 1956-57, there was little the Liberals could do to project themselves through the Crisis.

The Party had an impact, so the Conservatives claimed, by standing a candidate in the Warwick & Leamington by-election following the resignation of Eden. The Liberal polled 7% and Labour pulled off a sensational win by just 163 votes.

Labour under Gaitskell was flying high and the possibility of a Labour Government caused great debate within the Liberals. The future division within the party over strategy toward Labour was evident as early as 1957 with disagreement within the party over whether the Party could support a minority Labour Government.

Grimond was not enamoured of this introspection and the sudden resignation of William Darling, the Conservative MP for Edinburgh South, changed the discussion completely. Grimond and Bannerman believed the seat winnable especially after the Liberals won a Council by-election.

The candidate was William Douglas-Hume, in his mid-40s, a Scottish aristocrat and a friend of Jo Grimond. Douglas-Hume was considered a loose cannon by Bannerman but would be managed by the ever-growing Scottish Liberal Party.

The Conservatives had held the seat since 1918 but the Liberals had finished second in 1929 and the recent loss of a Council seat had caused alarm in Tory circles but the Liberal ground campaign was still well in front of anything the Conservatives could provide and in particular the Liberals ruthlessly targeted Labour voters and Labour areas.

On 29th May 1957, a fine sunny spring day, Edinburgh South went to the polls and duly elected William Douglas-Hume as the ninth Liberal MP. Douglas-Hume won by 511 votes with Labour losing nearly half their 1955 vote share. The Conservative vote was down but not by as much as MacMillan had feared.

Some Labour historians claim Edinburgh South marked the end of the Gaitskell honeymoon but Labour have never won the seat even in Government. For the Liberals, victory was welcome but Douglas-Hume would turn out to be a difficult member of the team and especially so given his relationship to the Conservative peer and later Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Hume.

The Edinburgh South campaign had largely been left to Bannerman following the news of the death of the North Dorset Conservative MP, Robert Crouch. North Dorset was, like Hereford, an English seat where the Liberals had run a strong second in 1955 and the seat had been nursed by another who would become synonymous with the "Young Turks" of Liberal folklore.

John Alan Emlyn-Jones or J.A Jones as he came to be known, may not have sounded like a name related to North Dorset but his father had been Liberal MP for the seat between 1922 and 1924. At 34, J.A was one of the new breed of young Liberals and he was a close friend of both Robin Day and Emlyn Hooson. The local party had recovered well from the inter-war ravages thanks mainly to the support of the local Portman family and barely four weeks after the unlikely win in Edinburgh South, the Liberal ranks swelled to double figures with J.A Jones trouncing the Conservatives by 7,500 votes on a 12% swing since 1955 and inflicting a lost deposit on Labour.

Yet for all the optimism in Liberal ranks, the party was finding it harder to match Labour in its seats. At Gloucester in early September, the Liberal candidate finished second in front of the Conservative but still 6,000 votes behind Labour. A month later in Ipswich, there was an almost identical result, a strong second place but still well behind Labour.

Grimond was in buoyant mood at the 1957 Assembly but the party was still no match for the Conservative-Labour duopoly - "we were still a guerilla band" Grimond would later recall, "inflicting transitory damage on the enemy by virtue of skirmish but never daring to face full battle".

From a standing start, the Liberal polled 22% in Liverpool Garston but in some ways that was met with a sense of disappointment at the National Liberal Club as a tame end to an otherwise superb year.

On 16th December 1957, veteran Conservative MP for Rochdale, Wentworth Schofield, died. Labour had come within 1,600 votes of winning the seat in 1955 and seemed the strongest of favourites to take this northern town but Labour had reckoned without the media management skills of Robin Day and his friend, the erstwhile Liberal Ludovic Kennedy.

Day got Kennedy selected as the candidate and proceded to run the first "by election by media" campaign. Local television (including the new ITV Region, Granada) covered the campaign including two live debates at which Kennedy ran rings round the veteran Labour candidate Jack McCann. The telegenic Kennedy had posters everywhere and the Conservative vote was ruthlessly targeted in the last days following a straw poll in a local paper which allegedly had Kennedy running neck and neck with McCann.

Many years later, Robin Day would admit the "poll" was a fake planted with a friendly local newspaper editor and then picked up by other news outlets.

Kennedy won by 471 votes over a visibly shocked Labour party with the Conservatives losing their deposit on 9% in third. More than Hereford, Rochdale stunned the Westminster Establishment as it suggested for the first time the revived Liberals could challenge both the Conservatives AND Labour in their heartlands.

Kennedy, along with Day, Hooson and J.A Jones would become known as the "Young Liberal Turks" and would be beloved of activists over two generations. Kennedy was a media natural even without Day's skills and the two would be frequently the voice of the Liberals leaving Jo Grimond to deal with the set piece interviews.

The Liberal Party was on the crest of a wave and it was to the south west that the tide rolled in next when Viscount Lambert died suddenly on 17th February 1958. His son, the MP for Torrington, was automatically ennobled and therefore forced to resign as an MP. A National Liberal, he had held the seat with a large majority but Torrington retained Liberal roots going back to before the war.

The choice of candidate was Grimond's and it was to his brother-in-law, Mark Bonham-Carter, he turned. Bonham-Carter was well known in Liberal circles and Rovin Day and Emlyn Hooson had both seen him as a potential MP. Supported by the formidable by-election machine led by Day which headed to Devon after the briefest of breaks following the Rochdale triumph,

On 27th March 1958, Mark Bonham-Carter became the twelfth Liberal MP by winning Torrington by over 7,000 votes from the Conservatives. His election caused considerable tension in the Parliamentary party as a number of other MPs saw Bonham-Carter as the "preferred successor" to Grimond not that there was any prospect of a leadership vacancy.

In five years, Grimond had, through a combination of hard work and not a little good fortune, taken a broken Liberal Party and re-energised it, doubling its Parliamentary seats, gaining thousands of new members, restoring the party's finances and re-building hundreds of previously moribund branches.

Yet by mid 1958, it was becoming clear the fortunes of the Liberal Party were entering a new, tougher phase. The easy wins of 1956 and 1957 would not easily be repeated and the Conservative and Labour parties were now seeing the Liberals as a serious threat at by-elections in particular.
 

stodge

Of Elections and Other Paths..

In the middle of 1958 Jo Grimond could lack back with a huge sense of satisfaction on the state of the Liberal Party and the journey since he became leader in the spring of 1953.

The Party then was on the cusp of extinction but what would be called the first phase of the Liberal Renaissance had seen the Party's parliamentary strength double to 12 and seen the Party enjoy a strong revival both financially, in terms of members and in terms of activity.

Yet resources were stretched and the Conservative and Labour parties now combined to hold no less than five by-elections on the same day (June 12th) to slow the Liberal advance and in that, on this occasion, they were partly successful.

At Weston-Super-Mare, the Liberal candidate failed by 946 votes and there was another strong second place in Ealing South but the need to fight contests in both Wigan and St Helens at the same day proved too much in the north and in both seats deposits were lost.

However, in Scotland, William McKean captured Argyll from the Conservatives by 219 votes thanks to the hard work of Bannerman and, in a rare display of co-operation and solidarity, Douglas-Hume bussed in 60 activists and put them up at his country estate in the constituency. McKean became the 13th Liberal and fourth Scottish Liberal MP.

Overall, Grimond and Day thought "Mini Election Day", as it had been dubbed in the popular Press, had shown up huge weaknesses in the Liberal camp. Day wrote a highly critical paper emphasising the need for ruthless targeting of resources claiming London activists should have gone to Weston Super Mare. This caused some disquiet at the 1958 Assembly especially as it seemed likely there would be a General Election the following year.

In truth, MacMillan and a buoyant economy had done much to restore Conservative fortunes in the aftermath of Suez and the Conservative vote was proving more resilient than it had in 1956 and 1957.

The autumn and early winter contests of 1958-59 passed without much progress for the Liberals. A strong second place in East Aberdeenshire was considered a disappointment after the Edinburgh South and Argyll triumphs and another second place in Southend West in January 1959 still left the Conservatives with a 10,000 majority.

The Liberal intervention in the controversial Harrow East by-election handed this highly marginal seat to Labour in March 1959 but the swing was nowhere near what Labour needed to be seen to be on course to win the election. In April 1959, the Liberals fell 878 votes short in Galloway despite a strong campaign as the Conservative vote continued to firm. It was that result which persuaded Harold MacMillan to go to the country in the autumn.

With the campaign under way, the traditional Liberal Assembly became an election rally. Grimond was delighted to hear the Party was fielding 248 candidates nationally, more than double the 1955 total but two thirds of these would be effectively paper campaigns. Outside the immediate group of 13 seats there were another 30 where serious work had been and would be put in and another 50 were called "developing" seats with more limited activity but building the base for the next election.

Day oversaw the media campaign which gained the Liberals plaudits from most neutral observers but the likelihood of a re-elected Conservative Government meant the awkward questions about possibly supporting a Labour minority weren't asked.

The country was however content and on October 8th 1959, the Conservatives were duly re-elected and on a swing of 1.3% to the party from Labour. The Liberals polled 11.1% nationally and there were many fewer lost deposits. In terms of seats, however, the picture was less promising. Labour snatched Carmarthen back from Lady Megan Lloyd-George who had run a lacklustre campaign but the Liberals gained Devon North and Bodmin from the Conservatives as well as holding all their other by-election successes often with markedly increased majorities. Day romped home by 12,000 in Hereford while Kennedy held Rochdale by over 8,000.

The Liberals came out of the 1959 election with 14 seats and two new young MPs in the form of Jeremy Thorpe in North Devon and Peter Bessell in Bodmin who would both go on to play key roles in Liberal history.

Mark Bonham-Carter held Torrington by 5,000 votes but ruefully admitted Harold Mac had won the day increasing the majority to 84 and ensuring a full term for the party.

Yet there was much for the Liberals to welcome in the 1959 results - the party was now second in 63 seats in England and were within 10% of the Conservative in 31 of them mostly in the south and west.

The truth was the party once again faced a long slog in many years toward relevance but progress had been made and more would be made as the new decade began.
 

stodge

New Decades, New Challenges..

As the 1960s began, the Liberal Party under Jo Grimond remained very much on the periphery of British politics. The Conservatives had dominated the 1950s, winning three successive General Elections and it seemed the future was theirs as well with the economy in good shape and a confident Harold MacMillan in charge.

Labour toiled under Gaitskell, seemingly unable to persuade much of suburban and rural England it had anything to offer and facing its own internal wars over defence and Europe.

Jo Grimond had led the Liberals since 1953 and had dragged the Party back from the abyss but only into the margins with 14 seats. Nonetheless, the Party appeared the youngest and most dynamic of the three Westminster groupings and approached the new Parliament with some confidence.

1960 started slowly - the Harrow West contest saw Liberal Jim Wallbridge cut the Conservative majority to 7,000 but he never looked like achieving an upset on the scale of Hereford, North Dorset or Torrington. Likewise in Edinburgh North in May, not even the presence of local MP William Douglas-Hume could shift the Conservatives even though, again, the Liberal candidate produced a solid 35% and a strong second place.

A series of successions to the peerage and deaths rocked the Commons in the summer and early autumn of 1960. Conservative party managers, fearing that if the consequent by-elections were held consecutively, the seats would be picked off by the Liberals, decided to hold all six contests on the same day (Labour added a seventh in Ebbw Vale by virtue of the death of its sitting MP).

This "mini General Election", as the newspapers dubbed it, presented a real challenge to the Liberals. The seats were at Tiverton, Petersfield, Ludlow, Carshalton, Bolton East and Mid Bedfordshire. Grimond's view was to target the first three but Day and the by-election team argued the Party would surprise the Conservatives by fighting them all. Grimond pointed out six second places would mean nothing whereas one or two victories would be more significant but the mood from the 1960 Assembly was determined and the London activists gravitated toward Carshalton and Mid-Bedfordshire while Day led the Ludlow team, Mark Bonham-Carter the Tiverton team. Bolton West was led by Kennedy and Petersfield by J.A Jones.

Grimond was seen in every seat giving speeches and appearing on local television and radio.

The contests were held on November 16th 1960 on a cold autumnal day across most of the country.

The first sensational result was from Mid Bedfordshire where local man Wilf Matthews captured the seat by just 108 votes in a tight three-corner contest.

30 minutes later came news Frank Byers had taken Bolton East by 325 votes from the Conservatives in another hugely close contest.

Carshalton was a near-miss with Liberal John Browne falling 2,000 votes short of the Conservative.

Ludlow was the night's third Liberal gain with a majority of just over 1,000 for Denis Rees.

Petersfield again saw the Conservatives just hold on by about 1700 votes but the star performance of the night came from Tiverton where local farmer James Collier, aided by Thorpe's Devon North activists, romped home with a 5,000 majority.

Ebbw Vale saw a less distinguished Liberal performance but the Party still finished third and in front of the Welsh Nationalists.

Grimond could look back on 16th November 1960 with real satisfaction - in one day, the Parliamentary Party had swelled to 18 members and they had cut the Conservative majority by 8. Liberal historians call it "breakthrough day" but it was really the culmination of the work begun in 1954 to rebuild and refocus the party's election image and strategy.

MacMillan was shaken by the results and ordered Conservative HQ to establish a team solely to challenge the Liberals.

The new MPs were a mixed bag of largely inexperienced local men who hadn't expected to win. The exception was Frank Byers, who had been a Liberal MP from 1945-50. Grimond immediately tasked Byers with co-ordinating the newer MPs in terms of their Commons activities and he was appointed (or re-appointed) Chief Whip.

The victories attracted considerable Press coverage which was fanned further by Day and Grimond in terms of interviews and other appearances and an opinion poll in early 1961 put the Liberals nationally on 25%. This raised the awkward question of Party strategy in the event of the next election producing no overall majority. There was a clear split within the MPs as to which way the party could or should jump but also a willingness to allow Grimond to set the agenda and the tone.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, the age of their MPs (some had been elected as far back as 1935) was starting to cause huge problems. By March 1961, there were four new vacancies and MacMillan again tried to weaken the Liberals by holding the contests together and again largely failed.

The four by-elections on March 16th 1961 produced two close second places in Colchester and Cambridgeshire but gains for the Liberals in High Peak and Worcester. At High Peak 31-year old Dennis Wrigley swept home by 4,000 votes and joined the Party's "Young Turks" while Robert Glenton, also in his mid-thirties, captured Worcester by nearly 3,000 votes pushing the Liberals up to 20 MPs.

Again, it was a solid and strong performance by the Party and its activists and meant six gains in six months for Grimond and a rapidly expanding Parliamentary group for Byers to organise.

Just a month later, in one of the biggest upsets of them all, Ian McColl, a Scottish journalist and long-time friend of John Bannerman, captured Paisley from Labour by 650 votes. It was an extraordinary result and while McColl was older than many of his contemporaries, he was a noted journalist and was soon working with Day in the media team.

The party's weakness in English urban Labour seats was still evident with disappointing third places in Warrington, Bristol East and Birmingham Small Heath suggesting the avenue for progress in those areas remained elusive and Labour remained a more potent threat in hundreds of Conservative seats despite the strong Liberal performance in the first part of the Parliament.
 

pipisme

I am enjoying this TL very much. However the by-election was in Bristol South-East, not Bristol East. I assume you mean the election on 4 May1961 caused by the succession of Anthony Wedgwood Benn to the peerage on the death of his father, Viscount Stansgate. Benn contested the election though he was not eligible to stand. He received 69.5 percent of the vote to 30.5 percent for the Conservative candidate. However an election court awarded the seat to the Conservative. The Liberals did not contest the by-election in OTL and I don't think they would have done so in this TL. I don't know if they considered contesting it in OTL.
 

stodge

pipisme said:
I am enjoying this TL very much. However the by-election was in Bristol South-East, not Bristol East. I assume you mean the election on 4 May1961 caused by the succession of Anthony Wedgwood Benn to the peerage on the death of his father, Viscount Stansgate. Benn contested the election though he was not eligible to stand. He received 69.5 percent of the vote to 30.5 percent for the Conservative candidate. However an election court awarded the seat to the Conservative. The Liberals did not contest the by-election in OTL and I don't think they would have done so in this TL. I don't know if they considered contesting it in OTL.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the correction. That is indeed the by-election to which I was referring.

I think in the ATL the Liberals might have fielded a candidate who would have polled under 10% so no material difference.
 
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