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Showing posts with label General Election 1906. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Election 1906. Show all posts

Sunday, February 1, 2026

Liberal Party General Election Manifesto 1906

I recently noticed the usual source for most pre-2005 Manifestos is noticeably missing the 1906 Liberal Manifesto; a speech delivered by Henry Campbell-Bannerman to his Constituents at Stirling Burghs ahead of the General Election and published in type form alongside other pamphlets relevant to the issues of the election. 

This is an important Manifesto in many ways, as it preceded the final Majority Liberal Government and cautiously outlines some of the tenents of 'New Liberalism' - better known today as Social Liberalism - which rejected the Classical Liberal ideas of Limited Government and instead argued that safeguarding freedoms required an active role from the Government to prevent them from being threatened by poor circumstance or oppression from other sources. 

Despite this, Campbell-Bannerman himself would not be responsible for many of these reforms, as though there was popular support for them within the Party, he was in many ways stuck in the ways of Victorian Era Gladstonian Liberalism, to the point the Neoliberal Economist Friedrich Hayek would remark "Perhaps the government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman ... should be regarded as the last Liberal government of the [Classical] type." 

By 1907 Campbell-Bannerman becoming increasingly ill, dying during his residence at 10 Downing Street in April 1908. His successor, H. H. Asquith, would then begin many of the reforms stated here in earnest.

As of now this Manifesto seems to be completely unavailable for free on the internet, and as such I have gone out of my way to source a copy for republishing, as it currently sits in the Public Domain. The following is the contents:

 

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East Anglia, United Kingdom