defeating the Conservatives was slight. Thus, in 1997 the Liberal Democrats
increased their representation in Parliament from 20 to 46, despite their share
of total votes cast actually decreasing, compared with the election of 1992. The
party won 52 seats, with 18.3% of the popular vote, in 2001.
Despite the long history of the Liberal Party it would be a mistake to see any
real ideological continuity over the years. The modern Liberal Democrats, and
the Liberal Party that immediately preceded it, have been in many ways more
radical, especially on constitutional reform, than the Labour Party, and they
retain virtually nothing of thebourgeoisindividual ethic with which they
competed against the Tory party in the earlier days (seeLiberalism). The
Liberals have become essentially a party of middle-class professionals (although
their electoral support tends to be spread equally across all classes), radical in
their own way (they were more consistently committed to theunilateralist
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament than the Labour Party, for example), but
essentially supportive of a free-market, Europe-oriented economy, as long as
their policy embraces such concerns asenvironmentalismand civil liberties.
The Liberal Party merged, in 1988, with the Social Democratic Party (SDP)
after the two parties had worked in alliance since 1981. In the early 1980s the
benefit of additional support from the SDP, essentially a splinter group from the
Labour Party, although it also drew support and members for theConserva-
tive Partyand indeed the Liberal Party itself, had promised to give the centre
in British politics sufficient strength to break the two-party system (alliance
politicians spoke frequently of ‘breaking the mould of British politics’). The
collapse of this hope after the 1987 general election was accounted for in both
parties by their lack of unity, and the subsequent merger created a new party
the identity of which was overwhelmingly that of the old Liberal Party. A
minority of dissenting Social Democrats pledged to continue in an indepen-
dent SDP, but were of no electoral significance by the time of the 1992 general
election. The major shift to the centre of the Labour Party from the mid-1990s
increasingly made plausible the claim of the Liberal Democrats to be the UK’s
radical party, and its increased parliamentary representation from 1997 led to
optimism that its influence in British politics may continue to strengthen.
Liberalism
Liberalism can mean either a particular party creed in a particular time period,
especially the late 19th century (the hey-day of Liberalism), or a general social
and political attitude and orientation. Historically Liberalism was a middle-
class orbourgeoismovement for freedom from remaining feudal and mon-
archial control, and was associated,inter alia, withfreedomsboth legalistic,
such as the economic theory oflaissez-faire, and individual. From this
position of supporting basiccivil libertiesorhuman rights, liberalism has
Liberalism