AHC: Prevent Labour's Rise to Power

Here's your challenge: keep the Liberals as the opposition to the Conservatives in British politics, relegating Labour to, perhaps, third party status.

You can have any POD after 1900, with the Liberals either maintaining or reclaiming major party status.

Are you ready?
 
Would a radical socialist uprising that results in a left of Labour party dominating British politics be considered cheating?

Not if their primary opposition is the Liberal Party. I think I phrased the challenge wrong: I want a TL where the Liberals stay one of the two big parties in British politics.
If there's some radical-left party opposed by the Liberals, good enough for me.
 
Not if their primary opposition is the Liberal Party. I think I phrased the challenge wrong: I want a TL where the Liberals stay one of the two big parties in British politics.
If there's some radical-left party opposed by the Liberals, good enough for me.

A longer more brutal general strike. The Conservatives overplay their response to a wider and deeper union campaign. Many die as troops crush protests. The troops reflect over night, as they did in Russia in 1917. They refuse to do it again and there is mutiny officers and Conservative politicians are shot.
A provisional government is formed and calls an election. The middle classes shocked by the Tories over reaction , but fearing the left votes Liberal in large measure supporting a platform of third way "industrial conciliation".
Free market laissez faire is dead and the Conservative Party with it.
 
A longer more brutal general strike. The Conservatives overplay their response to a wider and deeper union campaign. Many die as troops crush protests. The troops reflect over night, as they did in Russia in 1917. They refuse to do it again and there is mutiny officers and Conservative politicians are shot.
A provisional government is formed and calls an election. The middle classes shocked by the Tories over reaction , but fearing the left votes Liberal in large measure supporting a platform of third way "industrial conciliation".
Free market laissez faire is dead and the Conservative Party with it.

Actually, that's a great idea. Thanks:D
 
Well this is not an easy challenge.

Despite the Liberal Party Landslide of 1906 which some perceived as ensuring they would dominate the 20th Century as they did the 19th, it was the last time they won an Absolute Majority in the House of Commons (125), and the last time they came first in the Popular Vote.

One thing to note is that in the December 1918 Election, the Liberal Party was split, and then PM David Lloyd George was being supported by a Coalition of some Liberal MPs, many Conservatives, and a few from Labour. Lloyd George could have sought to reunify the Liberal Party and contest in that manner - as the Coalition secured a massive Majority thanks in no small part to Lloyd George's Personal Popularity at the time - but it fell apart soon after.

To keep the Liberal Party as one of the big two? The Cash for Peerages Scandal is certainly one way to help. DLG Stepping Down far earlier than he eventually did can aid in the Liberal Party Fortunes too.

There's also the fact that by 1922, the FPTP Voting System that had been helping the Liberal Party started turning against them, causing their seat count to collapse, so if the two aforementioned points are enacted, then they might be able to keep enough support to avoid a massive shift over to Labour in terms of seats, and later votes.
 
You don't need anything as dramatic as death squads or revolution...

You only need a few small changes right at the start of the period.

The Labour Party began life as the Labour Representation Committee in 1900. As in, a political committee that explored ways of representing labour [ie the Trades Union movement] in established politics.

Up until this point many Unions had backed the Liberals as the more 'worker friendly' party and the first two decades of the twentieth century saw a period of jumping ship on the left from Liberal to Labour.

That said, some established Trade Unionists remained skeptical about the LRC, particularly those who did not directly associate pro-worker politics with the socialism that coloured the early LRC. Important figures like John Burns and John Ward never abandoned the Liberals, though, remaining outside of Labour.

You would only need a little more skepticism and conservatism amongst the Trades Union to see the LRC, and the subsequent Labour Party, struggle to get off the ground. If significant Unions like the groups that later became the TGWU etc failed to see the LRC as a viable option, or were put off direct political engagement as a strategy, then you would essentially see the Labour Party never really go beyond a small-scale single-issue pressure group.

Changing this, however, requires you to make the Liberal Party more of a standard bearer for the trades union movement to stick with.

some ideas:

Lloyd George succeeds Campbell Bannerman not Asquith - as much as I love Asquith, he was much to middle-class for the Trades Union. Lloyd George, on the other hand, in the 1900s, was very much the darling of the radical movement.

Have the Liberal Party of the interwar period be seen as the destination for Radically inclined young ideologues. Some of the Labour generation of 1945 are going to stay in the Trades Union movement in this scenario [Bevin, Bevan, etc] but others are going to gravitate towards political movements [Atlee, Stafford Cripps, Morrison, etc]. This would give the radical wing of the Liberal Party a new edge in a period where many in British Politics were searching for new answers.

Prevent the economic orthodoxy of the 19th century Liberals spilling over into the new century - they need post 1900 to stop seeing Free Trade as the central pillar of their identity as the Trade Unions will never buy this and will start looking to throw their support elsewhere.
 
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