The Liberal Party was a liberal political party in the United Kingdom that was active from 1859 to 1988.
The party was founded during Lord Palmerston's second government, combining the mainly aristocratic Whigs with increasing numbers of middle-class members and members of the Radicals. The first unequivocally Liberal government was that formed by William Ewart Gladstone in 1868, under whose leadership the various elements of the movement became a cohesive political party. Gladstone's Liberals were embraced by the urban middle-classes and industrial capitalists, as well as the working-class. Working-class voters, especially newly-enfranchised urban laborers, tended to favor Gladstone's Liberals, who championed reforms like the Factory Acts and supported organized labor. The urban professional and commercial middle-classes were a key battleground between the Liberals and the Conservative Party, with Disraeli's one-nation conservatism appealing to their patriotic and paternalistic sensibilities and Gladstone's championing of reforms like the secret ballot empowering the middle classes politically. Among the industrial upper-class, the industrial capitalists and business elites were divided in their loyalties. Many supported Gladstone's emphasis on free trade and laissez-faire economics, but Disraeli worked to cultivate support among them by offering them political influence in exchange for their backing. Meanwhile, farmers formed a traditional Conservative stronghold, as Gladstone's land reform proposals caused unease in the farming community. The aristocracy saw Gladstone's reformist programme as threatening their power and privilege, and they favored Benjamin Disraeli's Conservative Party over Gladstone's Liberals. Generally, the Liberals' chief support groups were lawyers, doctors, journalists, and other urban professionals; nonconformist religious groups (such as Methodists and Baptists), industrial workers and trade unionists, and intellectuals and academics.
The party held power for 12 years between 1868 and 1894, and it succeeded in establishing a national system of education, voting by secret ballot, the legalization of trade unions, the enfranchisement of the working class in rural areas, reconstruction of the army, and reform of the judicial system. In 1886, the party was weakened by the split of the Liberal Unionists, who allied themselves to the Conservative Party, and it would ironically be a Conservative split that returned the moribund Liberals to power in 1906. The period from 1906 to 1915 was the last period in which the Liberals would hold power independently, and they formed a wartime coalition government with the Conservatives in 1915 during World War I. In the years that followed the war, factionalism divided the Liberals, and the Labour Party soon became the champion of reform. Their last experience of national government was in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition of 1940-5 during World War II, and their nadir came in the 1950s, when they held as little as 2.5% of the popular vote. From 1956 to 1967, under Jo Grimond, the party was reborn, enjoying by-election successes in the early 1960s. In 1974, the party won almost 20% of the popular vote in the general elections. During the 1970s, the party was allied to Labour, but the "Lib-Lab" coalition foundered in 1978. During the early 1980s, the Liberals allied with the UK Social Democratic Party splintergroup from Labour, and the alliance won 25% of the popular vote in 1983. In 1988, the Liberals and the larger part of the SDP merged to form the UK Liberal Democrats.
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