Book Description

The First World War led to a fundamental realignment of British politics. A Liberal government of glittering talent and great achievement was swept away. The coalition that replaced it was in turn overthrown by a cross-party movement led by David Lloyd George, who came to power as the Liberal Prime Minister of a largely Conservative coalition in December 1916. In the post-war general election the historic Liberal Party was split in two and was replaced as the main party on the left by the reorganised and revitalised Labour Party. This penetrating study by John Turner explores this process of political change at a moment of crisis in British political history. Turner describes how the Lloyd George coalition first grappled with military disaster and the threat of economic collapse and then faced a further threat to political stability as the desire for a negotiated peace grew in the factories, in the corridors of Westminster, and even in the British army in France. He relates how Lloyd George and his Conservative allies, fearing political chaos as much as defeat in the field, tried to reconstruct the party system to suit themselves. The author examines the struggle for power among leading politicians, showing how that struggle was driven by the overwhelming problems of governing a society at war and anticipating the uncertainties of peace. He anatomises British political society to explore how the war accelerated pre-war political developments and diverted the course of change. He exposes paradoxes in political values, especially in attitudes toward the state, and reassesses the major personalities. His concluding study of the results of the 1918 election offers a unique picture of the emerging political geography of twentieth-century Britain. The book sheds new light on such familiar topics as the decline of Liberalism, the rise of Labour, the growth of the state, and the clash between civil and military authority, and it poses new questions about the British political system. It will be indispensable to an understanding of modern Britain.