Welsh Liberal Party

The Welsh Liberal Party was the section of the Liberal Party operating in Wales. From the 1860s until the First World War, a close relationship developed between particular issues relevant to Welsh politics and the Liberal Party. These included land reform, temperance, the expansion and reform of elementary education and, most prominently, the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales. In the decade after 1886, there emerged another issue in the form of Home Rule as espoused by the Cymru Fydd movement but, for some within the Liberal Party in Wales this was a step too far and it came close to breaking the party.^[1]

The Liberal Party in Wales survived this crisis and at the 1906 General Election won almost every Welsh constituency. The First World War was a turning point, however. The post-war Coalition government's failure, under the leadership of David Lloyd George, to implement the recommendations of the Sankey Commission to nationalise the coal industry led to a collapse of support for the Liberals in the South Wales coalfield. At the same time the acrimonious split between Lloyd George and Asquith in 1916 had a permanent legacy in rural Wales and led to the party's fortunes declining to such an extent that it remained a force in only a small number of rural constituencies.^[2] A revival in the party's fortunes in the 1960s and 1970s was limited in Wales by the emergence of a rival 'third-force' in the form of Plaid Cymru.