Liberal Unionist Party (UK)
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Liberal Unionist Party
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| Leaders |
Duke of Devonshire, Joseph Chamberlain, Earl of Derby, Marquess of Lansdowne |
| Founded | 1886 |
| Dissolved | 1912 |
| Split from | Liberal Party |
| Merged into | Conservative Party |
| Headquarters | London, England |
| Ideology |
Liberalism British Unionism |
| Political position | Centre-right |
| International affiliation | None |
The Liberal Unionist Party was a British political party that was formed in 1886 by a faction that broke away from the Liberal Party. Led by Lord Hartington (later the Duke of Devonshire) and Joseph Chamberlain, the party formed a political alliance with the Conservative Party in opposition to Irish Home Rule. The two parties formed the ten-year-long, coalition Unionist Government 1895–1905 but kept separate political funds and their own party organisations until a complete merger was agreed in May 1912.
The Liberal Unionists owe their origins to the conversion of William Ewart Gladstone to the cause of Irish Home Rule (i.e. limited self-government for Ireland). The 1885 General Election had left Charles Stewart Parnell's Irish Nationalists holding the balance of power, and had convinced Gladstone that the Irish wanted and deserved Home Rule. Some Liberals believed that Gladstone's Home Rule bill would lead to independence for Ireland and the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which they could not countenance. Seeing themselves as defenders of the Union, they called themselves 'Liberal Unionists' though at this stage most of them did not think it was going to be a permanent split from their former colleagues. Gladstone preferred to call them 'dissentient Liberals' as if he believed they would eventually come back like the 'Adullamites', Liberals who had opposed the extension of the franchise in 1866 but had mostly come back to the main party after the Conservatives had passed their own electoral reform bill in 1867. In the end it did not matter what the Liberal Unionists were called, the schism in the Liberal party grew wider and deeper within a few years.
The majority of Liberal Unionists, including Hartington, Lord Lansdowne, and George Goschen, were drawn from the Whig faction of the party and had been expected to split from the Liberal Party anyway, for reasons connected with economic and social policy. Some of the Unionists held extensive landed estates in Ireland and feared these would be broken up or confiscated if Ireland had its own government, while Hartington had suffered a personal loss at the hands of Irish Nationalists in 1882 when his brother was killed during the Phoenix Park Murders.
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