Free-thinking Democratic League

The Free-thinking Democratic League (Dutch: Vrijzinnig Democratische Bond, VDB) was a progressive liberalpolitical party in the Netherlands. The VDB played a relatively large role in Dutch politics, supplying one Prime Minister, Wim Schermerhorn. The League is a predecessor of two of the major Dutch political parties, the conservative-liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the social-democratic Labour Party (PvdA). The social-liberal Democrats 66 also claims that it and the VDB are ideologically connected.

The VDB is a merger of two groups; one, the Radical League, was founded in 1892 as an Amsterdam secession of the Liberal Union; they left the Union over the issue of universal suffrage. The second group was the Free-thinking Democratic political club (Dutch: Vrijzinnig Democratische Kamerclub, VD-kamerclub). This was a club of Liberal Union MPs (in 1901 it had about twenty-five members, out of thirty-five Liberal Union MPs and one hundred MPs in total). The second group left the Union over the same matter. In 1901 the board of the Liberal Union, supported by the VD-kamerclub, proposed that all its candidates would stand on a platform of universal suffrage. The party congress rejected this proposal. In reaction to this the party's board, some of the members of the VD-kamerclub, and some of the party caucuses left the party.

The two groups, the Radical League and the VD-kamerclub, merged in 1901 to form the Free-minded Democratic League. In the 1901 elections they won nine seats. The party always remained rather small, but because of their strategic position and quality of their MPs the party was very influential.

Although the VDB had split from the Liberal Union and the other liberal split, the League of Free Liberals, was against universal suffrage, they still needed each other to form a liberal alternative to the Christian-democratic coalition. In many districts there was only one liberal candidate supported by all three liberal parties.

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