There is a strong case for describing 1918 as the worst year in the Liberal Party’s history. The Liberals approached the General Election of that year as two separate organisations: one led by Lloyd George and allied to the Conservatives, who gave a free run to any Liberal candidates in possession of the ‘coupon’ – a joint message of support from Lloyd George and Tory Leader Andrew Bonar-Law; the other led by the previous Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, whose candidates fought independently against candidates from the Conservatives and the newly strengthened Labour Party. These were reduced to thirty-six seats, Asquith himself...

During the 1930s, distance from parliamentary and electoral politics was no misfortune for Liberals, for the recovery of 1929 descended into another decade of division and despair. The Party broke into three factions, and was left by the outbreak of the Second World War with fewer than twenty MPs, under 7 per cent of the vote and a perilously weak national organisation. On leaving Shrewsbury, Wainwright surveyed these developments from the detached circumstances of Cambridge University.

Lloyd George’s success in leading the Liberals to win nearly a quarter of the vote, fifty-nine seats and the balance of power in the...

‘War’, Winston Churchill observed prophetically in 1906 ‘is fatal to Liberalism.’¹ Churchill had already witnessed the damaging effect on liberal values and Liberal fortunes of the Boer War: the Party had been split between ‘Liberal Imperialists’ supporting the Conservative Government’s campaign in South Africa, and those such as Lloyd George who were bitterly opposed, resulting in a heavy defeat at the 1900 General Election. The First World War caused a fundamental schism amongst Liberals, with Cabinet resignations and backbench rebellions from the outset and, emerging from the War, two separate Liberal organisations which struggled to reunite throughout the inter-war period....

By summer 1946 Wainwright, aged twenty-eight, had returned to Leeds and to civil society with characteristic purpose and careful planning. The way in which this happened reflects not only Wainwright’s personality but also the traditional flavour of his upbringing, and the dynamic relationship between these two aspects of his life. The foundations of his adult life laid during the next two years were vital in Wainwright’s political career.

Firstly Wainwright resumed his position at Beevers and Adgie, the Leeds accounting firm in which his father was a partner. This had not been inevitable, nor was it work for which he...

One of the institutions which nourished the Liberal Party’s roots in the community during its darkest days was the local Liberal Club – and Wainwright was aware of the support it could provide. Re-opening one Club in 1981 he declared that ‘if it wasn’t for Clubs such as this, the whole Liberal movement would die, for they embody the momentum and spirit of the Party.’¹ In Colne Valley political clubs had been vital to the survival and growth of Labour and the Liberals,² and Wainwright helped to revive both the fortunes of the Clubs and their relationship with the Liberal Party...

Like most politicians of his generation, Wainwright was raised as a Christian; but Wainwright’s faith was a more significant element in his life, his politics and the politics of his Party than for most of those contemporaries. The particular form of his Christianity – Methodism – had practical and electoral implications for Wainwright, and in particular invested him with a sense of duty to do God’s work in the mortal world.

The strong links between religious belief – especially Non-conformist Christianity – and the fortunes of the Liberal Party need only an outline re-iteration here. Dissenters, barred from public office until the repeal of...

In an era when newspapers were the chief source of political information, the support of the press at national and local levels was often a significant factor in winning elections. Editorial support for the Liberal Party amongst major news titles went into decline after 1945, and was effectively non-existent by 1962. However, Richard Wainwright was keenly aware of the importance of communication, and particularly of press support: he had contributed to the student press at Shrewsbury and Cambridge, and had briefed the nationals as part of his duties for the FAU. Later he wrote occasionally for Party publications such as...

As his retirement approached, Wainwright received a letter from a supporter recalling the first time she and her husband had seen him, speaking at a meeting in Leeds before he was married, ‘a very young man who made a simply wonderful speech. Neither of us could get you out of our minds.’ She recalled her husband saying on the way home, ‘there is a young man who is going far in the Liberal Party’. ‘What wonderful times we all had. The excitements, often very hard work – but, the splendid friendships! It has all added to the colour of life.’¹

Wainwright...

It is common in the biographies and autobiographies of politicians with a national profile to make only a handful of passing references to their constituency; the people who send politicians to Parliament are too often regarded as incidental to the things those politicians do once there.¹ No serious account of Wainwright’s life could give other than a vital role to his constituency, for he chose it as much as it chose him, and both sides of the relationship were strengthened by it.

All constituencies can claim to be distinctive, but Colne Valley truly deserves to be called unique. Its history,...

Wainwright’s 1959 election campaign took place in a context of a Conservative Government enjoying sustained popularity and a divided Labour Party. An appeal to doubting Conservatives to support Wainwright as the best means of beating a dangerous Labour movement was likely in these circumstances to fall on deaf ears. The Liberal task therefore was to establish a bridgehead and determine the core Liberal vote upon which Wainwright could build, making a positive case for Liberal principles, the effectiveness of the Party nationally and its substance locally. The preliminary nature of the campaign was indicated by Wainwright to his own Association...

The Parliamentary Liberal Party as it existed from the end of the Second World War until the Liberal Party’s merger with the Social Democrats forty-three years later was a distinctive political body whose type is unlikely to be recreated, and Wainwright was an excellent example of the way it operated. It was said, with varying degrees of accuracy, to be distinctive in three ways: its size, its composition and its behaviour.¹

The limited size of the Parliamentary Liberal Party is beyond dispute. Though twelve MPs were elected as Liberals in 1945, they were, in the words of one of their...

In 1976 the Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe resigned office amid allegations that he had had an affair with a male model, Norman Scott, that he had paid Scott to keep the affair from the public, and later that Thorpe and several associates had arranged to have Scott murdered. The alleged attempted killing was bungled, and Scott survived to see Thorpe and his co-accused stand trial for Conspiracy to Murder at the Old Bailey. Thorpe and his co-accused were all acquitted in 1979, but the trial was the subject of fierce controversy and the episode opened up a view of Thorpe’s...

Shortly after the immediate repercussions of Jeremy Thorpe’s resignation were over, with David Steel in place as Leader, a new political dilemma confronted the Liberals. James Callaghan’s Labour Government lost its wafer-thin majority¹ and in March 1977 faced a Commons motion of ‘No confidence’ tabled by Leader of the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher. Callaghan needed a formal agreement to secure his position, and the obvious partners for this agreement were the thirteen Liberal MPs.

Steel had always believed in the potential benefits of co-operation between the Liberals and other parties. His arguments for an arrangement to support the Labour Government were...

For the remainder of Wainwright’s parliamentary career, the main continuing issue for the Liberal Party concerned its relationship with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), formed following the breakaway from Labour of twelve MPs, later joined by a further seventeen after the new Party had become established. The SDP was at first founded and led by former Labour Cabinet minister Roy Jenkins, who had spent the previous five years as President of the European Commission. In November 1979, Jenkins gave the Dimbleby lecture, in which he called for a realignment of British political parties around the ‘radical centre’, with a new...

The fundamental fault lines in the Alliance were not policy issues but organisational and strategic questions. Moreover, they did not usually cut cleanly between the Liberals and the SDP, but ran across them, dividing both. The subjects of recurrent argument had included which of the other two parties Alliance leaders would be most likely to go into government with in the event of no party having an overall Commons majority: ex-Labour Social Democrats were more hostile to their former tribe, and David Owen in particular had seemed to warm to elements of Thatcherism, whereas Liberals, though like Wainwright committed to...