The Liberal Party
British Liberals often trace their Christian roots back to the seventeenth century and the Puritans. Parliament and the Parliamentary Army during the English Civil War and Revolution were a ferment of political and theological opinion. After much complicated evolution, gradually some puritan values came to be represented by the Whigs and later by the Liberals. Many early industrialists were Nonconformists. This meant that in the nineteenth century the Liberal Party accommodated industrial interests. It was only after the First World War when Lloyd George and Asquith began a bitter feud, in a precursor of events which troubled the Alliance after the election of 1987, that rivalries led to the abandonment of the party by these interests.
Gladstone Converts
The name of the Liverpool-born William Gladstone became synonymous with nineteenth-century Liberalism. Born of a slave trading family, he entered the Commons as a high Tory (and remained one until the mid 1840s). He voted against the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Bill but underwent a conversion in both his attitude to slavery and his politics. During the last days of William Wilberforce's life, in July 1833, and just before the abolition measure was passed, Wilberforce's son, Henry, brought Gladstone to see his dying father. Gladstone's own first major speech in the Commons had been just a few weeks earlier in defence of his father's estate manager, whom Lord Howick had described in debate as 'a murderer of slaves'. Gladstone's entry into his diary described Wilberforce as 'cheerful and serene, a beautiful picture of old age in immortality. Heard him pray with his family. Blessing and honour are upon his head.'39 Gladstone attended Wilberforce's funeral at Westminster Abbey ten days later and said: 'It brought me solemn thoughts, particularly about the slaves. This is a burdensome question.'40 Gladstone later renounced his support of slavery and admitted that Wilberforce had profoundly influenced him: 'I can see plainly enough the sad defects, the real illiberalism of my opinions on that subject.' Gladstone had learnt that only free people are fully human.