Overview

In this study of the changes in the social and political thought of the Edwardian Liberal Party, Dr Emy charts the process of internal conversion by which the Party came to favour an advanced social policy. He links these changes with important developments in the internal composition of the Party, in particular the emergence of a new group of social radicals, and claims that these two factors were responsible for the Liberals' commitment to advanced measures of social reform. The author also maintains that the entry of the social radicals into Parliament marks the origins of a significant debate in modern British politics - the economic problem. He argues that the central issue of the problem - the degree to which social and moral priorities are both entitled to and are able to displace the primacy of deterministic economic assumptions about how society must work - was the critical issue of post-1906 politics, and also came to form the touchstone of modern party allegiances.