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This article examines the oral and physical disruption of 'public' meetings in England in the spring of 1886, when such activity formed part of broader contests over the legitimacy of extra‐parliamentary responses to the Liberal government's Irish Home Rule Bill. Disruption is an important example of the diverse ways in which home rule energised politics outside Westminster and of the heatedness of grassroots responses to it. For those who engaged in it, disruption offered forms of political interaction and participation that, additionally, made claims to representation and opinion. However, disruption was a practice of contestation that was itself the subject of contention and it was decried as transgressing the bounds of appropriate political conduct. Disruption could be seen, in both intent and effect, as a permissive or subversive, inclusive or exclusionary, behaviour. It could therefore legitimise or undermine claims that popular feeling was on the side of or opposed to the policy. The 'politics of disruption' both reflected and generated intense debate about the state of politics in an age of 'mass democracy' – of which home rule was the first major crisis – and about the sanctity of political rights and liberties. This article argues that our understanding of political disruption is enhanced by examining its practice and reception at historical moments, outside the episodic election cycle, when contemporaries believed that it was critically important that 'public opinion' on a political issue be ascertained and voiced, and when the validity of such opinion was disputed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the oral and physical disruption of 'public' meetings in England in the spring of 1886, when such activity formed part of broader contests over the legitimacy of extra‐parliamentary responses to the Liberal government's Irish Home Rule Bill. Disruption is an important example of the diverse ways in which home rule energised politics outside Westminster and of the heatedness of grassroots responses to it. For those who engaged in it, disruption offered forms of political interaction and participation that, additionally, made claims to representation and opinion. However, disruption was a practice of contestation that was itself the subject of contention and it was decried as transgressing the bounds of appropriate political conduct. Disruption could be seen, in both intent and effect, as a permissive or subversive, inclusive or exclusionary, behaviour. It could therefore legitimise or undermine claims that popular feeling was on the side of or opposed to the policy. The 'politics of disruption' both reflected and generated intense debate about the state of politics in an age of 'mass democracy' – of which home rule was the first major crisis – and about the sanctity of political rights and liberties. This article argues that our understanding of political disruption is enhanced by examining its practice and reception at historical moments, outside the episodic election cycle, when contemporaries believed that it was critically important that 'public opinion' on a political issue be ascertained and voiced, and when the validity of such opinion was disputed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benjamin Disraeli described Thomas Attwood as a 'provincial banker labouring under a financial monomania'. The leader of the Birmingham Political Union, Attwood's Warwickshire accent and support for a paper currency were widely derided at Westminster. However, the themes of Attwood's brief parliamentary career were shared by the other men who represented Birmingham in the early- and mid-Victorian period. None of these MPs were good party men, and this article illuminates the nature of party labels in the period. Furthermore, it adds a new dimension to the historical understanding of debates on monetary policy and shows how local political identities and traditions interacted with broader party identities. With the exception of Richard Spooner, who was a strong tory on religious and political matters, the currency men are best described as popular radicals, who consistently championed radical political reform and were among the few parliamentary supporters of the 'People's Charter'. They opposed the new poor law and endorsed factory regulation, a progressive income tax, and religious liberty. Although hostile to the corn laws they believed that free trade without currency reform would depress prices, wages and employment. George Frederick Muntz's death in 1857 and his replacement by John Bright marked a watershed and the end of the influence of the 'Birmingham school'. Bright appropriated Birmingham's radical tradition as he used the town as a base for his campaign for parliamentary reform. He emphasized Birmingham's contribution to the passing of the 1832 Reform Act but ignored the currency reformers' views on other matters, which had often been at loggerheads with the 'Manchester school' and economic liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fate of the Liberal Party in West Yorkshire is seen by some as a microcosm of its inevitable decline nationally, because of its inability to appeal to the newly enfranchised working class with its values too close to the Conservatives. Dutton has contended conversely that West Yorkshire Liberalism demonstrated the varied pattern of the Party's development in different regions, and the way in which its association with the Conservatives significantly affected the latter. Using newly available sources, this article takes up Dutton's argument and extends it to look at the fate of the Liberals who did not work with other parties, and what their persistence implies about the fundamental driving forces of politics in West Yorkshire and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline of the British Liberal party after the end of the First World War posed crucial questions for those with Liberal beliefs and convictions. Should they, despite compelling evidence to the contrary, pin their hopes on the eventual revival of an apparently moribund party? Alternatively, was their best hope to build upon the liberal tendencies within other existing and more powerful parties? In the historical exploration of this dilemma the role of the Liberal National (later National Liberal) party has received comparatively little attention. Historians have tended to accept the verdict of mainstream Liberals that the Liberal Nationals were nothing but Conservatives in disguise. This article seeks to explore these issues through a detailed study of the career of Herbert Janes, active in the politics of Luton for more than two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Hill Green (1836-82) has been widely recognized for his contributions to Liberal political-social theory and for his Liberal partisanship. Historians and political theorists continue to emphasize his advocacy of limited state interference and democratic localism, as well as his anti-imperialist statements. Recent scholars of English nationalism, national identity and patriotism, including Peter Mandler, Julia Stapleton, Krishan Kumar, H.S. Jones, Roberto Romani and Georgios Varouxakis, acknowledge Green as an acolyte of Giuseppe Mazzini, a Cobdenite and a Little Englander. While they place Green's ideas within a continuum of Victorian Liberal nationalist ideas (blending into Conservatism and socialism during the 20th century), their investigations foster the view that Green placed little value in the nation as a focus of individual and collective identification. In their readings of Green, the abstract 'community', free of national peculiarities, was to him the antidote to both individual and national narrowness. However, examination of Green's statements about community, the moral ideal and religion reveals that his theorising was informed by a view of national character different from that of most contemporary liberal intellectuals. Green rejected the 'Liberal anglican' view that a national church or clerisy was necessary to guide the development of the English nation. He identified ideas and practices of protestant dissenters as progressive forces in English history and endorsed them as means of national development. Religious pluralism and forms of ecclesiastical organisation promoting democratic localism were to Green among the essential characteristics of Englishness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the Liberal party program in England in 1902 was overloaded with social problems: sweat shops, housing, licensing, prison reform, daylight saving, and old age pensions made it almost impossible to consider the fiscal questions concerning income tax and its incidence. Another difficulty that gravely affected the Liberal stalwarts and the Radicals was the incoming of Fabians, in Liberal disguise. George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and some of the most brilliant writers of the day lectured on the doctrine, and Alfred Orage, as editor of the New Age, published weekly contributions from many of the Fabians. There was no Fabian political party in existence, but the sentimental Liberals who entered the political arena used its nostrums in their appeal to the electors. Probably twenty or thirty of these men who were elected to the Commons in 1906 were just as strongly opposed to fundamental economic and fiscal reform as any Tory. Such were the difficulties facing the old Radicals, and many predicted that, if the Fabians exerted their influence upon cabinet ministers, it would mean the disintegration of the party.