There is a strong case for judging the Liberal revival to be a result of disaffection amongst the electorate, resulting in the definitive factor of the Liberals revival; protest voting. This becomes apparent when looking at the party’s fortunes in the 1950s. During the 1950s the country was sufficiently content, under growing prosperity, to re-elect the Tories twice and the electorate seemed content with the British economy and political climate. In this period the Liberal party were at the nadir of their existence and one Gallup Poll placed the Liberals at 1% of the popular vote. The Liberal party had ceased to count. Once fissures began to appear in the economy, however, and the electorate realised that all was not well at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s, a feeling of dissatisfaction at the lack of distinction between the two major political parties surfaced. The result was a revival in the Liberals party’s fortunes by being the chief beneficiaries of electorate protest voting. The 1960s saw the Liberal party, for the first time since the Second World War; poll a double figure percentage vote at 11.2% in the 1964 general election. Although the party’s percentage vote dropped under 10% again in the following 1966 and 1970 general elections, the percentage vote stayed in double figures for the duration of the 1970’s, polling an impressive average of 17.2%.
It is clear, from the propaganda and electoral strategy of the Liberal party, that they were aware that their revival was the result of the electorate’s disaffection with the two major parties. The Liberals were quick to exploit this disaffection, one Liberal poster depicted both a Labour and Conservative leaders with the caption ‘Which twin is Tory?’. However, one of the major problems for the Liberal party, as can be seen in the example just cited, was that its chief attraction to voters remained the unpopularity of the two main parties. In gaining voters on these negative grounds, it was unable to retain their support on a clear image of Liberal policies. This leads us on to consider another factor that makes it possible to assert that the Liberal revival was merely a protest vote; the relative continuity of Liberal policy. During the period 1960-1970 the Liberal party’s official policies remained largely consistent with most of their post-war policies, although there was a more marked emphasis on the need to redistribute wealth and tackle inflation. This strengthens any argument that the party’s revival was the result of a protest vote because it is clear that the Liberals were not doing anything markedly different with regards to their policies that would explain their increase in popularity. In short, their revival was due to a protestation by the electorate of the two major parties rather than a result of an approval by the electorate of Liberal policies.
The General Election results also shed light on the nature of the Liberal revival. Although the Liberal party, as aforementioned, had enjoyed a number of by-election gains in the period under study, they still lacked a General Election breakthrough. This can be explained by pointing out that it is very common in the modern electoral system, for voters to protest vote at by-elections but at the General Election there is usually a marked ‘swing’ in which voters frequently revert to their party loyalties or real party of preference. Thus, the fact that a General Election breakthrough eluded the Liberal party during this period would suggest that there rise in popularity was the result of the electorate using the party to protest against Labour and the Conservatives at by-elections, although the British first past the post voting system also played a significant role in restricting a general election breakthrough. The general election of 1974, for example, saw the Liberal poll a very impressive 6 million votes, yet the party only gained 14 seats. In this light it is hardly surprising that the party’s revival seemed intermittent and, at first glance, likely to be the result of protest voting because the general election results often did not convey the extend to which the Liberal party had re-established its popularity amongst the electorate.
It follows then that it is also possible to argue that the Liberal revival was more than just a protest vote. It is true, that the Liberal’s fortunes were improved by a growing disaffection about rising inflation, growing unemployment, and the seeming inability of the two major parties to deal with these problems-resulting in the accumulation of protest votes by the Liberal party. Nevertheless, the revival experienced by the Liberal party in the 1960s and 1970s was attributable to several other factors.
To begin with, it is possible to assert that the Liberal revival coincided with and was aided by, a revival of liberalist views, thus the party’s progress was aided by cultural and ideological factors as well as political factors. The 1960s, famous for its liberal views on sexual behaviour and consumption of illegal substances, as-well as the emergence of issues of conscience such as The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, set up in 1958, must have had some form of positive impact on a party whose very name epitomized the attitudes of many people at the time. There were also deeper, more fundamental reasons for the Liberal revival in the 1970s; these were changes in the behaviour of the electorate. Psephologists noticed that throughout the 1950s and 1960s the electorate had been divided into two solid blocks, one firmly committed to Labour and the other to the Tories. In the 1970s, however, the blocks started breaking up as the electorate became more and more volatile. This thesis argues that traditional loyalties broke down and the main agent responsible for this change was the weakening of class as a determinant of voting behaviour. As a consequence, the Liberal party, who were not seen as a party representing any particular class, significantly improved their share of the vote.
Although Ian Bradley, the exponent of this argument, does not consider that it may have been a growing disaffection with the two major parties that contributed to the Liberals improving their share of the vote as much as or as well as the breaking down of class based politics, Bradley’s argument is strengthened by other historians who also notice a marked change in the behaviour of the electorate. John Stevenson writes of a shift in political sociology during the period under study in the form of a de-alignment from support of the two major parties, while Alan Ball states there was ‘more fluidity in electoral behaviour’. These factors suggest that the Liberal revival was brought about by more than just a protest vote. An increasingly more sophisticated electorate that would tactical vote and become less sensitive to parties who were using class issues to attract voters had a beneficial effect on the health of the Liberal party, if only the Liberals in this period had devised a way in which to keep these volatile voters, their revival would have been much stronger and more serious for the two major parties.
J. Stevenson writes that the lowering of the age of voting to 18 in 1969 may have further aided the Liberal revival because of the cohorts of younger voters whose partisanship was traditionally less strong. However, Stevenson, wisely, does not go as far as to say that there was a definite causal link between the lowering of the voting age and the Liberal revival as this may have been hard to sustain but that the emergence of more swing voters and less party loyalty was likely to have allowed the Liberal party to break the two-party hegemony of the 1950s.
Tony Greaves succession as chairman of the Liberal party in March 1970 was symbolic of a significant development in the Liberal revival; the rise of ‘community politics’. The roots of this new ‘community politics’ lay in student and radical disillusion with the Labour Government of Harold Wilson after 1964. Experience in direct action campaigns and demonstrations convinced many young activists that the only way to secure effective change was at grass-roots, community level. This technique soon became perfected by the Liberals so that they were able to build up a strong council base. Thus, after 1966, the Liberals built up local election successes in Liverpool, parts of Leeds and Birmingham at Ladywood-a Labour stronghold. These gains made by the Liberal party were judged to be axiomatic of a productive change in the Liberal party’s activities and political practises rather than the result of an accumulation of protest votes.
In conclusion, the Liberal party’s revival of the 1960s and 1970s was unquestionably aided by protest voting
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