Written by Sam Marks
“I am not prepared to lead a party of eunuchs” said Jo Grimond, accepting his new role as party leader at the 1956 Liberal Conference in Southport, UK. His remark cut to the core problem of the party he now led: it was on its last legs. The Liberal Party that Grimond inherited had only six Members of Parliament (MPs) and received 2.7 per cent of the vote share in the 1955 General Election. Once a major UK political party that had been championed by Prime Ministers like William Gladstone and Herbert H. Asquith, by the 1950s the Liberals had descended into irrelevancy in parliament. Their decline had rendered them directionless for nearly three decades and almost a non-entity in British politics.
Following the First World War, the Liberal Party underwent a schism between factions who defected close to the Conservative Party and those who remained independent. The rise of the Labour Party in the 1920s had provided a stronger, more radical leftwing message than the divided Liberals were able to muster. In the span of one decade, they went from the major opposition party to a minor third party with a dwindling vote share. As the Labour-Conservative divide solidified in the Second World War Era, the Liberals continued to spiral without a strong sense of purpose or character as to what their party stood for.
Grimond’s tenure as party leader gave the Liberal Party a new life as a radical, progressive, non-socialist alternative to Labour, a consistent supporter of the U.K. becoming more unified with Europe, and an advocate for greater home rule to Scotland and Wales. Though largely overshadowed by key political figures at the time such as Harold MacMillan, Hugh Gaitskell, and Harold Wilson, Grimond remained a central figure in U.K. politics from the 1950s to 1970s. Dynamic in his presentation and direct in his beliefs, Grimond’s personality was a driving force for the success of the Liberal Party, resulting in it doubling both the vote share it received and its Members of Parliament.
Joseph Grimond was born on 29 July 1913 in St. Andrews and studied at Oxford. While at university, he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and adopted values more associated with British liberalism. He stood and became elected to parliament in 1950, representing the Constituency of Shetland and Orkney. Jo, his wife Laura, and their children moved and permanently resided in Orkney. His residence there saw him travel between the most northern constituency in the country to Westminster an average of seven times a year. He was dedicated to politics both as an MP and as a person, prolifically writing pamphlets and publications about political issues and his views for the country. Far from an ideologue, Jo was ultimately “an ideas man”. He was less focused on creating a world-building political philosophy and more focused on the practical elements of government work.
Jo rose through the ranks of his party, becoming the Whip in 1950, the same year he was elected. Upon the retirement of Party Leader Clement Davies, who had kept the party afloat but dead in the water, Grimond became leader in 1956. He was the youngest of all major U.K. party leaders at the time. Key to Grimond’s success as a leader was the triumph of the Liberals in by-elections, something that had not been achieved since 1929. The Liberals made double-digit victories from Conservative held districts in Torrington (1958), Orpington (1962), and Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (1965). These successes saw greater analysis of the Liberals as signs that the Party’s fortunes may be changing.
In the 1950s under the Conservative governments of Anthony Eden and Harold MacMillan, Grimond effectively modernized the Liberal Party. What began as a largely directionless party, focused on land reform above much else and only carrying a few seats in rural Scotland and Wales was transformed into a formidable, forward-thinking, progressive party. Grimond criticized what he argued were failed promises by the Conservatives and differences between the Labour Party’s opposition campaign and their actions while governing. University students and recent graduates were a key base Grimond campaigned, placing the Liberal party more in line with younger voters and suburban voters.
Of all the people Grimond’s success created angst in the most was the old guard of the Liberal Party. Grimond was unapologetic and bold in his aim to move the party in a more radical direction, causing some established Liberal names to defect to Labour or the Conservatives. The animosity from the old guard did not stop Grimond from moving the Liberal Party in a progressive direction and Grimond’s radicalism inspired future key figures in British politics such as Jeremy Thorpe, David Steel, and Paddy Ashdown to become involved in politics and carry on the new direction.
In the late 1950s, the Liberals consistently campaigned for the nuclear disarmament of Britain and the decolonization of Africa. These positions were also supported by members of the Labour Party while in opposition, leading to some questions on how the Liberal Party was a distinct member of the opposition. In July 1959, prior to that year’s General Election, Grimond appeared at a BBC Parliament Press Conference to bring his position into focus. Above all, Grimond aimed to separate out the Liberals from the dichotomy that had emerged in British politics: “[w]e don’t stand for the interests, either the trades unions or the employers; we stand for the individual.” The Conservatives under Harold Macmillan increased their majority in this election. While not gaining any seats in 1959, the Liberals increased their vote share by 3.2 per cent (from 2.7 to 5.9) and were the only party to do so during this election.
In the 1964 General Election, the Liberals campaigned for home rule (devolution) for Scotland and Wales and became the first major U.K. party to advocate for British membership in the European Economic Union. This election saw the Liberals increase their vote share by 5.3 per cent (11.2 per cent in total) and won three seats for a total of nine MPs. Labour under Harold Wilson won the election but by only four seats. Wilson’s government’s gave Liberals increasing support from those dissatisfied by Labour’s big tent being unable to agree on major policy areas. After Labour won a sizeable majority in 1966, the Liberals won another three seats, increasing their majority to twelve (doubling the six MPs Grimond started with).
By the end of his tenure as leader, the Liberals had doubled to twelve MPs and increased their vote share to 7.5 per cent. While a minor change in the grand scheme of parliament, the series of competitive elections between Labour and Conservative meant the small Liberal cohort in parliament had major bargaining power. Grimond made the Liberals, not just electable again but gave them a sense of purpose that was defined by a radicalism that challenged Labour for not adequately satisfying the progressive base of support within the country. The Liberals seemed more idealistic than Labour, more consistent than the Conservatives, and attracted a new generation of voters whose voice was not adequately heard in government.
In 1968, Grimond retired as leader and in 1983 he retired from the House of Commons to join the House of Lords. Under successive leaders Jeremy Thorpe and David Steel, the Liberals began to command nearly 20 per cent of the vote nationally. In the 1980s, the Liberals and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a breakaway party from Labour’s more revolutionary socialist leadership, formed a coalition before merging to form the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) in 1988. The inaugural leader of the Liberal Democrats Paddy Ashdown noted that the Liberals “have been living far too long of the intellectual capital of the Jo Grimond era” in a compliment to the former leader.
The Liberal Democrats have not achieved major party status, and with the “back to square one” loss in 2015 due to the David Cameron-Nick Clegg coalition government formed in 2010, the party is still in recovery mode. Their 2015 loss was largely attributed to the Lib Dems failing to uphold their promises in coalition, such as not to raise University tuition fees, directly contrasting from Grimond’s initial association of Liberals with younger voters. While the politics of the Lib Dems is not as strongly in line with Grimond as it was before the coalition government, Jo Grimond exemplified how the Liberal Party changed its trajectory and made headwinds in the UK political landscape when on the brink of collapse altogether. Through progressivism, devolution, and internationalism, Grimond gave the Liberal Party a new platform that distinguished itself from the traditional Labour-Conservative divide. Following through with the pledge he made in his inaugural speech as party leader to “march [his] troops towards the sound of gunfire”, Jo Grimond prepared the Liberal Party to hold their own while battling for a Britain more focused on its citizens.
Bibliography
Barberis, Peter. Liberal Lion: Jo Grimond, a Political Life. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005.
Grimond, Jo. Jo Grimond: Memoirs. First Edition. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1979.
McManus, Michael, and Jim Wallace. Jo Grimond: Towards the Sound of Gunfire. First Edition. Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd, 2001.
Panter-Downes, Mollie. “Letter from London,” October 4, 1957. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1957/10/12/letter-from-london-323.
Featured image credit: “Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberal Party from 1956-1967” by mira66 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
Retrospect Journal 