title: Air India Flight 182

text: Mounties working with prosecutor Jardine and RCMP and Japanese experts eventually determined the components of the bomb from fragments and matched them with items that Reyat possessed or had purchased. Prosecutor Jardine visited Tokyo five times to meet with Japanese authorities, and Canada formally asked that evidence to be sent to Canada. Still lacking sufficient evidence for a murder charge, Jardine recommended two manslaughter charges and five explosives-related counts, resulting in a request to Britain to extradite Reyat, who was arrested on 5 February 1988 as he was driving to the Jaguar car plant. After lengthy proceedings to extradite him from Britain, Reyat was flown to Vancouver on 13 December 1989 and his trial began 18 September 1990. On 10 May 1991, he was convicted of two counts of manslaughter and four explosives charges relating to the Narita Airport bombing. He was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Fifteen years after the bombing, on 27 October 2000, RCMP arrested Malik and Bagri. They were charged with 329 counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of the people on board Air India Flight 182, conspiracy to commit murder, the attempted murder of passengers and crew on the Canadian Pacific flight at Japan's New Tokyo International Airport (now Narita International Airport), and two counts of murder of the baggage handlers at New Tokyo International Airport. It became known as the "Air India Trial".


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 6 June 2001, RCMP arrested Reyat, who about to finish his earlier 10-year-sentence, on charges of murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy in the Air India bombing. On 10 February 2003, Reyat pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter for aiding in the construction of a bomb. He was sentenced to five years in prison. The court claimed Reyat was guilty of helping make of the bomb, but that he lacked any knowledge of how it would be used and lacked an intent to kill. He was expected to provide testimony in the trial of Malik and Bagri, but prosecutors were vague.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: The trial of Malik and Bagri proceeded between April 2003 and December 2004 in Courtroom 20, more commonly known as "the Air India courtroom". At a cost of $7.2 million, the high-security courtroom was specially built for the trial in the Vancouver Law Courts. On 16 March 2005, Justice Ian Josephson found the two accused not guilty on all counts because the evidence was inadequate:


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In a letter to the Attorney General of British Columbia, Malik demanded compensation from the Canadian government for wrongful prosecution in his arrest and trial. Malik owes the government $6.4 million and Bagri owes $9.7 million in legal fees.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On July 14, 2022, Ripudaman Singh Malik, one of the men acquitted in the 1985 Air India terrorist bombings, was shot to death in Surrey, B.C.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In February 2006, Inderjit Singh Reyat was charged with perjury with regard to his testimony in the trial. The indictment was filed in the Supreme Court of British Columbia and lists 27 instances in which Reyat allegedly misled the court during his testimony. Reyat had pleaded guilty to constructing the bomb, but denied under oath that he knew anything about the conspiracy.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 3 July 2007, with perjury proceedings still pending, Reyat was denied parole by the National Parole Board, which concluded he was a continued risk to the public. The decision meant Reyat had to serve his full five-year sentence, which ended 9 February 2008.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Reyat's perjury trial began in March 2010 in Vancouver, but was abruptly dismissed on 8 March 2010. The jury was dismissed after "biased" remarks about Reyat by a woman juror.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: A new jury was chosen. In September 2010, according to the "Lethbridge Herald" newspaper, jurors were told Reyat had lied 19 times under oath. On 19 September 2010, Reyat was convicted of perjury.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 7 January 2011, he was sentenced to 9 years in prison by Justice Mark McEwan, who remarked that Reyat "behaved nothing like a remorseful man unwittingly implicated in mass murder," adding that, "[i]n the witness box, Mr. Reyat behaved like a man still committed to a cause which treated hundreds of men, women and children [as] expendable." In February 2011, Reyat filed an appeal stating that the judge "erred in law, misdirected the jury and failed to tell jurors there was no evidence to support portions of the Crown's closing address," and called it "harsh and excessive," asking for a new trial.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In January 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected Reyat's bid to appeal his perjury conviction. The country's top court did not disclose its reasons as per customary practice.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In March 2014, the British Columbia Court of Appeal dismissed Reyat's appeal that the 9-year length of the sentence, the country's longest sentence for perjury, was unfit. The court ruled the gravity of the perjury in such a case was without comparison.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 28 January 2016, Inderjit Singh Reyat was released on parole. He was released from a halfway house less than 13 months later, on 14 February 2017, with restrictions.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: The Canadian government had been warned by the Indian R&AW about the possibility of terrorist bombs aboard Air India flights in Canada, and over two weeks before the crash, CSIS reported to the RCMP that the potential threat to Air India as well as Indian missions in Canada was high.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In June 1985, there was an Air India telex message that suggested planes could be targeted by "time delay devices." Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario James Bartleman also testified that, as a senior intelligence official in the federal Department of External Affairs, he saw a security "intercept" with a specific warning of a threat against the airline on the weekend of the bombing.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In his verdict, Justice Ian Josephson cited "unacceptable negligence" by CSIS when hundreds of wiretaps of the suspects and other informants were destroyed. Of the 210 wiretaps that were recorded during the months before and after the bombing, 156 were erased. These tapes continued to be erased even after the terrorists had become the primary suspects in the bombing.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Because the original wiretap records were erased, they were inadmissible as evidence in court. CSIS claimed the wiretap recordings contained no relevant information, but an RCMP memo states that "There is a strong likelihood that had CSIS retained the tapes between March and August 1985, that a successful prosecution of at least some of principals in both bombings could have been undertaken." "The CSIS investigation was so badly bungled that there was a near mutiny by CSIS officers involved in the probe," said the agent who destroyed the tapes once he had been granted anonymity in January 2000 by "Globe and Mail" journalists. One agent "said he felt compelled to destroy the tapes (that were in his possession) because he was morally obliged to do everything in his power to protect the safety of his sources. '[I] decided it was a moral issue... If their identity had become known in the Sikh community, they would have been killed. There is no doubt in my mind about that.'"


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Tara Singh Hayer, the publisher of the "Indo-Canadian Times" and a member of the Order of British Columbia, provided an affidavit to the RCMP in 1995 claiming that he was present during a conversation in which Bagri admitted his involvement in the bombings. While at the London offices of fellow Sikh newspaper publisher Tarsem Singh Purewal, Hayer claimed he overheard a meeting between Purewal and Bagri in which Bagri stated that "if everything had gone as planned the plane would have blown up at Heathrow airport with no passengers on it. But because the plane was a half-hour to three quarters of an hour late, it blew up over the ocean." On 24 January that same year, Purewal was killed near the offices of the "Des Pardes" newspaper in Southall, England, leaving Hayer as the only other witness.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 18 November 1998, Hayer was shot dead while getting out of his car in the garage of his home in Surrey, British Columbia. Hayer had survived an earlier attempt on his life in 1988, but was paralysed and used a wheelchair. As a consequence of his murder, the affidavit was inadmissible as evidence. This was later cited as a reason why the suspects in the bombing were eventually acquitted in 2005.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: During an interview with Bagri on 28 October 2000, RCMP agents described Surjan Singh Gill as an agent for CSIS, saying the reason that he resigned from the Babbar Khalsa was because his CSIS handlers told him to pull out.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: After the subsequent failure of CSIS to stop the bombing of Flight 182, the head of CSIS was replaced by Reid Morden. In an interview for CBC Television's news program "The National", Morden claimed that CSIS "dropped the ball" in its handling of the case. A Security Intelligence Review Committee cleared CSIS of any wrongdoing. However, that report remains secret to this day. As of June 2003, the Canadian government continued to insist that there was no mole involved.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 1 May 2006, the Crown-in-Council, on the advice of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, announced the launch of a full public inquiry into the bombing, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice John Major, to find investigate the events surrounding the bombing and the subsequent investigation, as well as to identify gaps in Canada's security and intelligence system.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Initiated later in June, the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182 was to examine how Canadian law restricted funding terrorist groups, how well witness protection is provided in terrorist cases, if Canada needed to upgrade its airport security, and if issues of co-operation between the RCMP, CSIS, and other law enforcement agencies had been resolved. It was to also provide a forum wherein families of the victims could testify on the impact of the bombing and would not repeat any criminal trials.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: The inquiry's findings were published on 17 June 2010 in its final report, Air India Flight 182: A Canadian Tragedy. The report was 4,000 pages long, with 5 volumes and 64 recommendations. Major concluded that a "cascading series of errors" by Crown ministries, the RCMP, and CSIS allowed the terrorist attack to take place. He called for the Canadian government's National Security Advisor to be given responsibility for preventing conflict between agencies, as well as calling for a national director of terrorism prosecutions, a new coordinator of witness protection for terrorism cases, and broad changes to close the gaps in airport security.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: As per recommendation of the inquiry, Stephen Harper announced in the media, a week after the report and on the 25th anniversary of the disaster, that he would "acknowledge the catastrophic failures of intelligence, policing and air security that led to the bombing, and the prosecutorial lapses that followed" and deliver an apology on behalf of the sitting Cabinet of Canada.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: On 23 June 2005, 20 years after the downing of Air India Flight 182, Prime Minister Paul Martin attended a memorial service in Ahakista, West Cork, Ireland, with victims' families to grieve. This would be the first time a Canadian Prime Minister had visited the Irish memorial, which was built right after the bombing. Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, on the advice of Martin, declared the anniversary a national day of mourning. During the anniversary observances, Martin said that the bombing was a Canadian problem, not a foreign problem, saying,


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Ujjal Dosanjh, the moderate Sikh who had been attacked in a prelude to the Air India bombing, was by this time a member of Martin's cabinet as federal Minister of Health, and had previously in the interim been Premier of British Columbia.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: In May 2007, Angus Reid Strategies released the results of public opinion polling of whether Canadians viewed the Air India bombing as a Canadian or Indian tragedy and whom they blamed: 48% of respondents considered the bombing as a Canadian event, while 22% thought it was a mostly Indian affair; 34% of those asked felt both CSIS and airport security personnel deserved a great deal of the blame in addition to 27% who believed the RCMP were largely to blame; 18% mentioned Transport Canada.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Ken MacQueen and John Geddes of "Maclean's" said that the Air India bombing has been referred to as "Canada's 9/11." They disagreed, however, stating the following:


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Memorials were erected in Canada and elsewhere to commemorate the victims. In 1986, a monument was unveiled in Ahakista, Ireland, on the first anniversary of the bombing.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Subsequently, a groundbreaking occurred on 11 August 2006 at a playground that would form part of a memorial in Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Another memorial was unveiled on 22 June 2007 in Humber Bay Park East, Toronto, Ontario; many of the bombing victims had lived in Toronto. The memorial features a sundial, the base of which consists of stones from all provinces and territories of Canada, as well as the countries of the other victims, and a wall, oriented toward Ireland and bearing the names of the dead.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: A third Canadian memorial opened in Ottawa in 2014. A fourth memorial was unveiled in Lachine, Montreal on the 26th anniversary of the tragedy. There are no memorials in India as of yet.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: The Pada memorial awards at Laurentian University were established in honour of victim Vishnu Pada, the husband of Lata Pada, Indian-born Canadian choreographer and Bharatanatyam dancer.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: The University of Manitoba created the Donald George Lougheed Memorial Scholarship in honour of Air India victim Donald George Lougheed. It is awarded to computer engineering students.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Laxminarayan and Padmini Turlapati, the parents of victims Sanjay and Deepak Turlapati, created the Sanjay Deepak Children Trust.


title: Air India Flight 182

text: Sankurathri Foundation was established by Dr. Chandra Sekhar Sankurathri in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh in memory of his wife Manjari, son Sri Kiran and daughter Sarada, victims of the Air India Flight 182. SF implements educational programs through Sarada Vidyalayam, health care programs through Sri Kiran Institute of Ophthalmology and disaster relief programs through Spandana.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Anthony John Horowitz, (born 5 April 1955) is an English novelist and screenwriter specialising in mystery and suspense.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: His works for children and young adult readers include "The Diamond Brothers" series, the "Alex Rider" series, and "The Power of Five" series (known in the U.S. as "The Gatekeepers"). His work for adults includes the play "Mindgame" (2001); two Sherlock Holmes novels, "The House of Silk" (2011) and "Moriarty" (2014); two novels featuring his own detective Atticus Pünd, "Magpie Murders" (2016) and "Moonflower Murders" (2020); and four novels featuring a fictionalised-version of himself as a companion and chronicler to private investigator Daniel Hawthorne, "The Word Is Murder" (2017), "The Sentence Is Death" (2018), "A Line to Kill" (2021), and "The Twist of a Knife" (2022). The Estate of James Bond creator Ian Fleming also chose Horowitz to write Bond novels utilizing unpublished material by Fleming, starting with "Trigger Mortis" in 2015, followed by "Forever and a Day" in 2018, and a third and final novel "With a Mind to Kill" in May 2022.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: He has also written for television, contributing scripts to ITV's "Agatha Christie's Poirot" and "Midsomer Murders". He was the creator and writer of the ITV series "Foyle's War", "Collision" and "Injustice" and the BBC series "New Blood".


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, into a Jewish family, and in his early years lived an upper middle class lifestyle. An overweight and unhappy child, Horowitz enjoyed reading books from his father's library. As a child, Horowitz used to go to Instow, where his nanny took him boating on the River Torridge. He also had a stuffed monkey named Benjamin (which was later eaten by his dog).


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz started writing at the age of 8 or 9 and he instantly "knew" he would be a professional writer. This was because he was an underachiever in school and was not physically fit, and found his escape in books and telling stories. In a 2006 interview Horowitz stated "I was quite certain, from my earliest memory, that I would be a professional writer and nothing but."


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: At age 13 he went to Rugby School, a public school in Rugby, Warwickshire. Horowitz's mother introduced him to "Frankenstein" and "Dracula". She also gave him a human skull for his 13th birthday. Horowitz said in an interview that it reminds him to get to the end of each story since he will soon look like the skull. He graduated from the University of York with a lower second class degree in English literature and art history in 1977, where he was in Vanbrugh College.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz's father was associated with some of the politicians in the "circle" of prime minister Harold Wilson, including Eric Miller. Facing bankruptcy, he moved his assets into Swiss numbered bank accounts. He died from cancer when Horowitz was 22, and the family was never able to track down the missing money despite years of trying.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz now lives in Central London with his wife Jill Green, whom he married in Hong Kong on 15 April 1988. Green produced "Foyle's War", the series Horowitz wrote for ITV. They have two sons. He credits his family with much of his success in writing, as he says they help him with ideas and research. He is a patron of family support charity Home-Start in Suffolk and child protection charity Kidscape.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Politically, he considers himself to be "vaguely conservative". Ahead of the 2010 United Kingdom general election, Horowitz stated he would vote for the Conservative Party in response to the then policies of the governing Labour Party but "with little enthusiasm." In 2017, Horowitz expressed criticism of the notion of cultural appropriation after a publisher had allegedly tried to dissuade him from creating a black character as a central figure in one of his novels, and supported fellow author Lionel Shriver's critiques on the same issue. He also criticised the social phenomenon of cancel culture and "mobbing" of figures for expressing diverse opinions, stating "There is a rigidity in the way we have begun to think and speak. If we step outside certain lines on certain issues, we find not just people disagreeing, but disagreeing to the extent of death threats. When somebody says something untoward in the press, and I am not saying this about myself, people don't just say that was a stupid thing to say. They say, "Lose your job." They want you to never ever have an income again."


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours, both for services to literature.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Anthony Horowitz's first book, "The Sinister Secret of Frederick K Bower", was a humorous adventure for children that was published in 1979 and later reissued as "Enter Frederick K Bower" in 1985. In 1981 his second novel, "Misha, the Magician and the Mysterious Amulet" was published and he moved to Paris to write his third book.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 1983, the first novel in the Pentagram series was released. Entitled "The Devil's Door-Bell", the story saw thirteen-year-old Martin Hopkins trying to adjust to a new life with a foster mother on a Yorkshire farm, but it quickly becomes a nightmare when he ends up having to battle an ancient evil that threatens the whole world. Only three of the four remaining novels in the series were ever released: "The Night of the Scorpion" (1984), "The Silver Citadel" (1986) and "Day of the Dragon" (1986).


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 1988, "Groosham Grange" was published. Its central character is a thirteen-year-old "witch", David Eliot, gifted as the seventh son of a seventh son. This book went on to win the 1989 Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award. Some similarities were made between this book and J. K. Rowling's newer "Harry Potter" series, but Horowitz did not choose to take action because of this.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Despite this, the most major release of Horowitz's early career was "The Falcon's Malteser" (1986). This book was the first in the successful Diamond Brothers series, and was followed in 1987 by "Public Enemy Number Two", and by "South by South East" in 1991.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz wrote many stand-alone novels in the 1990s. His 1994 novel "Granny," a comedy thriller about an evil grandmother, was Horowitz's first book in three years, and it was the first of three books for an audience similar to that of "Groosham Grange". The second of these was "The Switch", a body swap story, first published in 1996. The third was 1997's "The Devil and His Boy", which is set in the Elizabethan era and explores the rumour of Elizabeth I's secret son.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 1999, "The Unholy Grail" was published as a sequel to "Groosham Grange". It was later renamed "Return to Groosham Grange" in 2003, possibly to help young readers understand the connection between the two books. In 2021, Horowitz revealed to a fan on Twitter that he had plans to write a third book, but was dissuaded after the success of the "Harry Potter" series"." In the same year, Horowitz publishing a collection of several short horror stories aimed for children and young adults, entitled "Horowitz Horror" (1999). This was an opportunity for Horowitz to further explore a darker side of his writing.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Sometime before the new millennium, Horowitz attempted to reach out to an adult audience with a novel called "Poisoned Pen." The novel is based around Martin Holland, who is a childhood friend of a 21st century incarnation of William Shakespeare. In the novel, William Shakespeare is reimagined as a Hollywood screenwriter who is murdered in a set of circumstances that Martin Holland finds rather odd, despite attempts from a Los Angeles detective to dissuade him. The novel follows Martin's attempts to solve the ever-growing mystery through a series of rather unusual circumstances and a number of people who seem rather glad that Shakespeare was murdered. The novel has never been published in the UK or even in English, but copies in Spanish and Dutch have been released (retitled as "El asesinato de Shakespeare" and "William S." respectively). As of June 2021, despite Horowitz's recent successes in adult literature, there are no plans to get the novel republished.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz began his most famous and successful series in the new millennium with the "Alex Rider" novels. These books are about a 14-year-old boy becoming a spy, a member of the British Secret Service branch MI6. As of 2021, there are eleven books where Alex Rider is the protagonist, and another connected to the Alex Rider series: "Stormbreaker" (2000), "Point Blanc" (2001), "Skeleton Key" (2002), "Eagle Strike" (2003), "Scorpia" (2004) "Ark Angel" (2005), "Snakehead" (2007), "Crocodile Tears" (2009), "Scorpia Rising" (2011), plus "Russian Roulette" (2013). Horowitz had stated that "Scorpia Rising" was to be the last book in the Alex Rider series prior to writing "Russian Roulette" about the life of Yassen Gregorovich, but he has returned to the series with "Never Say Die" (2017) and "Nightshade" (2020). In January 2022, he announced that he will begin writing a new Alex Rider novel that is due to be published sometime in 2023.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 2003, Horowitz also wrote three novellas featuring the Diamond Brothers: "The Blurred Man", "The French Confection" and "I Know What You Did Last Wednesday", which were republished together as "Three of Diamonds" in 2004. The author information page in early editions of "Scorpia" and the introduction to "Three of Diamonds" claimed that Horowitz had travelled to Australia to research a new Diamond Brothers book, entitled "Radius of the Lost Shark". This claim was further backed up when a new Diamond Brothers novella entitled "The Greek who Stole Christmas!" was released in 2007, where it is hinted at the end that "Radius of the Lost Shark" may turn out to be the eighth entry in the series. However, the next novel in the series is instead called "Where Seagulls Dare", and is unrelated to the Australian-based adventure that was previously announced. Horowitz published the first six chapters unedited on his website throughout 2020, and intends for the full, edited novel to be published in 2022, with all profits going to support the NHS.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz also published two sequels to his short horror story collection; "More Horowitz Horror" (2000) and "More Bloody Horowitz" (2009). Many of the stories in "Horowitz Horror" and "More Horowitz Horror" were later repackaged in twos or threes as the "Pocket Horowitz" series, while "More Bloody Horowitz" was later reissued as "Scared to Death". One of the short stories in "More Bloody Horowitz" is notable for serving as Horowitz's opportunity to get even with fellow author Darren O'Shaughnessy, more commonly known as Darren Shan. In 2008, the pair had gotten into a joke dispute over O'Shaughnessy's use of Horowitz's name for an objectionable character (Antoine Horwitzer) in "Wolf Island". In retaliation, Horowitz chose to plot a gruesome literary revenge in the short story "The Man Who Killed Darren Shan."


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 2004, Horowitz again attempted to branch out to an adult audience with "The Killing Joke", a comedy about a man who tries to track a joke to its source with disastrous consequences. The book was not very successful, and in August 2005, Horowitz returned to young adult fiction by releasing a book called "Raven's Gate" which began a second successful series entitled "The Power of Five" ("The Gatekeepers" in the United States). Based heavily on one of his earlier novels entitled "The Devil's Door-Bell", each of the first four entries of "The Power of Five" subsequently ended up being a rewritten and expanded version of their respective counterpart from the "Pentagram" series. The second book in the series, "Evil Star" (based on "The Night of the Scorpion")"," was released in April 2006. The third in the series is called "Nightrise" (based on "The Silver Citadel"), and was released on 2 April 2007. The fourth book "Necropolis" (based on "Day of the Dragon") was released in October 2008. The fifth and final book, the only one not based on an earlier "Pentagram" novel, was released in October 2012 and is called "Oblivion". Horowitz describes this series as "Alex Rider with devils and witches".


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In October 2008, Anthony Horowitz's play "Mindgame" opened Off Broadway at the SoHo Playhouse in New York City. "Mindgame" starred Keith Carradine, Lee Godart, and Kathleen McNenny. The production was the New York stage directorial debut for Ken Russell.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In March 2009 he was a guest on "Private Passions", the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: On 19 January 2011, the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle announced that Horowitz was to be the writer of a new Sherlock Holmes novel, the first such effort to receive an official endorsement from them and to be entitled "The House of Silk". It was both published in November 2011 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. A follow-up novel, "Moriarty", was published in 2014.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In October 2014, the Ian Fleming estate commissioned Horowitz to write a James Bond novel, "Trigger Mortis", which was released in 2015. It was followed by a second novel, "Forever and A Day", which came out on 31 May 2018. A third novel entitled "With a Mind to Kill" was announced in May 2021 and will be released in May 2022. Horowitz is the only author in recent years to have been invited by Ian Fleming Publications to write successive, official James Bond novels.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 2016, Horowitz's adult novel "Magpie Murders" was published. Having previously spoken about the book in 2005, it was initially described as being about "a whodunit writer who is murdered while he's writing his latest whodunit". Horowitz finally expected to finish it in late 2015, and it was finally published in October 2016. A follow-up novel, "Moonflower Murders", was released in 2020. A third and final novel in the series is expected to be released as well, with Horowitz expressing hope that he'll start writing it sometime in 2023.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 2011, Horowitz tweeted that he had plans to write a new trilogy for the same demographic as his "Alex Rider" and "Power of Five" books, but that it's still "a secret". During 2012 and 2013, Horowitz tweeted out some more information regarding the series, where he stated that it will be "a completely new genre" from anything else he'd done so far, and that it will have a contemporary setting in modern-day London with a 15-year-old protagonist. He also revealed that it's tentatively entitled "The Machine". However, Horowitz revealed in 2021 that he has yet to begin writing this series and that he has no immediate plans to do so.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz wrote the screenplay for "Just Ask for Diamond", a 1989 film adaptation of his "Diamond Brothers" novel "The Falcon's Malteser" that had an all-star cast which included Bill Paterson, Jimmy Nail, Roy Kinnear, Susannah York, Michael Robbins and Patricia Hodge, and featured Colin Dale and Dursley McLinden as Nick and Tim Diamond respectively.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz is the writer of a feature film screenplay, "The Gathering", which was released in 2003 and starred Christina Ricci.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz began writing for television in the 1980s, contributing to the children's anthology series "Dramarama", and also writing five episodes of the third season for the popular fantasy series "Robin of Sherwood". He also novelised three of Carpenter's episodes as a children's book under the title "Robin of Sherwood: The Hooded Man" (1986).


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In addition, he created "Crossbow" (1987), a half-hour action adventure series loosely based on William Tell. This era in Horowitz's career also saw the release of "Adventurer" (1987), a thriller about a convict stuck on a prisoner ship with his sworn enemy based on the Richard Carpenter series, and "Starting Out" (1990), a collection of screenplays by the author himself, published.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: His association with murder mysteries began with the adaptation of several Hercule Poirot stories for ITV's popular "Agatha Christie's Poirot" series during the 1990s. Often his work has a comic edge, such as with the comic murder anthology "Murder Most Horrid" (BBC Two, 1991) and the comedy-drama "The Last Englishman" (1995), starring Jim Broadbent.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: In 1991, "The Diamond Brothers", a six-part television series written and directed by Horowitz himself, was broadcast on ITV. The series is based on the book "South by South East", which Horowitz claimed he wrote after he had written the television series, effectively making "South by South East" a novelisation of the television series rather than the novel acting as the primary source of inspiration. Both McLinden and Dale reprised their respective film roles, which makes the television series act as a sequel to "Just Ask for Diamond".


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: From 1997, he wrote the majority of the episodes in the early series of "Midsomer Murders". In 2001, he created a drama anthology series of his own for the BBC, "Murder in Mind", an occasional series which deals with a different set of characters and a different murder every one-hour episode.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: He is also less-favourably known for the creation of two short-lived and sometimes derided science-fiction shows, "Crime Traveller" (1997) for BBC One and "The Vanishing Man" (pilot 1996, series 1998) for ITV. While "Crime Traveller" received favourable viewing figures it was not renewed for a second season, which Horowitz accounts to temporary personnel transitioning within the BBC.


title: Anthony Horowitz

text: Horowitz adapted his novel "Magpie Murders" into a television miniseries, aired on BritBox in the UK and on the PBS series "Masterpiece Mystery!" in the US.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: In "Odyssey", Mario explores various kingdoms and collects Power Moons hidden inside them, used as a fuel source to power an airship known as the Odyssey to travel to new locations. Cappy's main function is the "capture" ability, letting Mario possess enemies and other objects, helping him solve puzzles and progress in the game. After completing the main story mode, other post-game kingdoms are unlockable and an additional minigame, "Luigi's Balloon World", is playable. The game supports multiplayer and virtual reality with a Nintendo Labo virtual reality kit.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Developed by Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development division, "Odyssey" entered development soon after the release of "Super Mario 3D World" in 2013. Various ideas were suggested during development, and to incorporate them all the team decided to employ a sandbox-style of gameplay. Unlike previous installments such as "New Super Mario Bros.", and "Super Mario 3D Land", which were aimed at a more casual audience, the team designed "Super Mario Odyssey" to appeal to the series' core fans. The game also features two voiced theme songs, "Jump Up, Super Star!", and "Break Free (Lead The Way)!"


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Odyssey" was released on October 27, 2017. It received universal acclaim, with praise for its inventiveness, originality, and for improving on concepts introduced in prior "Mario" games. "Odyssey" is cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. The game won several awards and has sold 23 million copies, making it one of the bestselling Switch games and the fastest-selling "Super Mario" game.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Super Mario Odyssey" is a platform game in which players control Mario as he travels across many different worlds, known as "Kingdoms" within the game, on the hat-shaped ship "Odyssey", to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser, who plans to forcibly marry her. The Kingdoms in the game return to the exploration-based level design featured in "Super Mario 64". Each Kingdom has Mario searching for and clearing various objectives in order to obtain items known as Power Moons, which are the power sources of the "Odyssey" and grant access to new Kingdoms. Checkpoint flags littered throughout each Kingdom allow Mario to instantly warp to them once activated. Certain levels feature areas called "flat" zones, where Mario is placed in a 2D side-scrolling environment similar to his appearance in the original "Super Mario Bros."


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: In addition to his existing moves, like triple-jumping and wall-jumping, Mario can throw his cap, the physical form of a hat spirit named Cappy, in multiple directions to attack enemies and use as a temporary platform. When the cap is thrown at certain objects, enemies, or non-playable characters, Mario is able to take possession of them, referred to as "capturing", allowing him to use unique abilities. For example, Mario can capture a Bullet Bill to fly across large gaps, a Tyrannosaurus to trample things, a bolt of electricity called a Spark Pylon to climb up electric wires, and a tank called a Sherm to fire at enemies and break blocks for passage. Some actions can be accelerated by using motion controls in the Joy-Con controllers, but the game is otherwise fully playable when the Joy-Con are attached to the Switch console. Throughout the game, Mario can pick up coins, including purple ones unique to each kingdom, to spend on items such as new hats and outfits, some of which are required for completing certain objectives. The game uses a health system similar to the "Super Mario Galaxy" games, although Mario has unlimited lives; the only penalty for dying is paying up to ten coins. The player can also collect items known as 'Life-Up Hearts' which grant three extra hit points. The game also features cooperative play, in which a second player takes control of Cappy and can attack enemies independently of Mario.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The game requires a minimum number of Power Moons to be collected from each Kingdom to move onto the next, though these may be obtained from any source, making major objectives largely optional. Once Bowser is defeated, each kingdom is repopulated with more Power Moons. Collecting enough Power Moons allows for additional outfits to be purchased and unlocks two bonus areas. One of these areas is a boss rush called Dark Side, with 250 Power Moons required to enter. The other is a level called Darker Side that combines many elements of the game, and requires 500 Power Moons to enter. In addition to this, there is also a level based on Peach's Castle from "Super Mario 64" unlocked by beating the game. This level allows Mario to face harder versions of previously defeated bosses and earn additional Power Moons by completing in-game achievements.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The game features a photo mode that allows players to use a free-moving camera to take and save screenshots, with additional options such as filters and stickers. Use of the "Odyssey"-themed Mario, Peach, and Bowser Amiibo figurines allow for special in-game abilities and unlocking special costumes which are otherwise unavailable until after the player completes the game and collects enough Power Moons. Other Amiibo can be scanned to provide hints to finding Power Moons.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The game was updated in 2019 to be compatible with the Nintendo Labo virtual reality kit. In this mode, Mario must complete challenges in a number of Kingdoms to recruit musicians and give them instruments by completing tasks related to musical notes.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: A hide-and-seek minigame, called "Luigi's Balloon World", was released as part of an update on February 21, 2018. In it, players have 30 seconds to hide a balloon somewhere in a kingdom, which is then able to be played by others attempting to find it. A leaderboard system ranks the players who have found the most balloons.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach from the Mushroom Kingdom and takes her aboard his airship, intent on forcibly marrying her. Mario, also aboard, attempts to rescue her but is knocked off the ship by Bowser's hat and falls into the neighboring Cap Kingdom. With Mario gone, Bowser stomps on Mario's cap and lets it drift into the ship's rear propellers, shredding it to pieces. A piece of the hat is grabbed by Cappy, one of the Cap Kingdom's sentient hat-like creatures called Bonneters. The two meet, and he explains to Mario that Bowser also kidnapped his sister, Tiara, to be used as Peach's wedding tiara. Cappy joins Mario and takes the shape of Mario's cap, providing him with the ability to throw his cap and temporarily capture other creatures and objects and utilize their abilities. They travel to the nearby Cascade Kingdom, recover an airship called the "Odyssey", and begin hunting Bowser down.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Mario and Cappy explore the various kingdoms to collect Power Moons to fuel the "Odyssey" and battle the Broodals—a team of anthrophomorphic rabbit wedding planners hired by Bowser—who steal items including a dress, a cake, and a bouquet from each kingdom to set up Bowser's wedding. Eventually, they catch up to Bowser in his own kingdom; however, Bowser subsequently departs for his wedding on the Moon and leaves the two to fight the Broodals in their Mecha-Broodal. They defeat them and follow Bowser to the Moon.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Mario and Cappy fly the "Odyssey" to the Moon's surface and confront Bowser inside a cathedral. The two battle in the Moon's interior, where Bowser is defeated and Mario frees Peach and Tiara, but the cavern begins to collapse. Using Cappy, Mario takes control of an unconscious Bowser and escapes to the surface with Peach and Tiara. Back on the surface, Mario prepares to propose to Peach, but Bowser regains consciousness and proposes as well. The two fight over her hand in marriage before an overwhelmed Peach demands they stop, and she boards the "Odyssey" with Cappy and Tiara. The rivals are both heartbroken until Peach tells Mario to come home with her. Mario boards the ship just in time, leaving Bowser stranded on the moon.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: In post-game content, Mario and Cappy collect more Power Moons that were released from Moon rocks to traverse other parts of the Moon, known as "Dark Side" and "Darker Side", to complete other challenges. Meanwhile, Peach and Tiara travel the world on their own terms, and meet up with Mario along the way.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Super Mario Odyssey" was developed by Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development division, with additional assistance from 1-Up Studio. The game was produced by Yoshiaki Koizumi and Koichi Hayashida, the same producers behind "Super Mario 3D World", and directed by Kenta Motokura. Shigeru Miyamoto reassumed his role of what he calls the "Creative Fellow", and the developers gave him concepts and he gave feedback in return. According to Koizumi, Miyamoto "left us to our own devices quite a lot."


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Odyssey" was designed to appeal to "Mario" core audience—a departure from the series' then-recent focus on casual players; the game focuses more on dense, open-world exploration rather than the linear gameplay recent "Mario" games have taken, following instead the format of games such as "Super Mario 64" or "Super Mario Sunshine".


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: According to Miyamoto, after "Super Mario Galaxy" and "3D World", linear gameplay was focused on less and the game would "go back to the roots, to "Mario Sunshine"". The game did intend to have camera control that was much easier to use than "Sunshine", however. The first concept that came to be for "Odyssey" involved Koizumi using motion controls; he pictured motion actions that the Joy-Con controllers could be used for, and the most natural fit was throwing an object. To create a sense of connection to this gimmick, Mario's own hat was the object chosen to be thrown.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: In an interview with Koizumi, he stated that every core gameplay concept was decided on very early into the game's development cycle, with the philosophy of creating an entirely new experience for the series; these ideas consisted of traveling between kingdoms, collecting Power Moons, and other settings. Cappy was also created in the first prototype, and motion controls were built off of this. Another goal was keeping the game running at 60 frames per second. Certain locations, such as New Donk City, contained realistic looks and humans; this design choice was to emphasize the feeling of a new location that is different from the normal.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: One of the main aspects considered was the Switch's capabilities of portability and TV docking, which affected how the game could be played. Motion controls were also implemented, being able to use the two controllers in each hand. The developers were careful in making sure the game was fun to play in these distinct ways. To bridge the two, the game was balanced to allow gameplay in short bursts or long sessions to satisfy both fields. Kenta Motokura mentioned at an interview at E3 that the game was made possible to play in these two ways; the player has the choice of either following a set storyline or can find power moons simply by exploring. They also made sure each platforming stage had numerous ways of completion.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: A game the designers considered when designing "Odyssey" was the sandbox video game "Minecraft". They initially believed a game that had camera movement would be difficult to use amongst children, but they later passed this as sufficient due to "Minecraft"s popularity and excessive use of camera control.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The developers constructed prototypes of gameplay gimmicks or platforming stages first; from there, they would discuss what kind of setting or theme the prototype would best fit within, and the locations would be constructed second. Thirdly, the locations would be taken and more ideas were designed specifically for them. The game's locations were built around the themes of journey and surprise, according to Kenta Motokura. The kingdoms have purchasable souvenirs to help make them more relatable and easier to connect to. Since the kingdoms were also open-world areas, the developers filled them with diversity and small details to give them a sense of empathy by making the player feel connected to them. Each kingdom was based on personal experiences from the designers, and they built off these locations by experimenting with how Mario could interact with them. The ability to take in-game screenshots was also considered by the team to be a natural fit.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Cappy was created into a character a little later after the hat throwing mechanic was introduced because the developers wanted a "buddy" to travel alongside Mario. The developers prioritized the city environment when selecting which environments to represent in "Odyssey". They wanted a familiar aspect from the series to anchor players in the novel setting, and so chose Pauline, a character who first appeared alongside Mario in "Donkey Kong", to be the mayor of New Donk City.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: While doing character work for Pauline, they gave her an interest in jazz music. This led her to becoming a singer, with the inclusion of the song "Jump Up Super Star!" "Super Mario Run" had previously featured a track with vocals that was added in an update released one month prior to "Odyssey". A swing music-inspired song, "Jump Up Super Star!" was composed by the game's lead composer, Naoto Kubo, with vocals by Kate Higgins. The song's chorus was made simple to be memorable and easy to sing along to. Lyrics were written in Japanese by Nobuyoshi Suzuki and translated to English by Rob Heiret. Another theme song, "Break Free (Lead the Way)", followed a similar process. Other music was written by Shiho Fujii and series sound director Koji Kondo.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: A sampler album containing 12 tracks from the game was released on iTunes in December 2017. A four-disc soundtrack containing 136 tracks was released in Japan in 2018 by Being Inc. The soundtracks include English, Japanese, and instrumental versions of "Jump Up Super Star!" and "Break Free (Lead the Way)". The discs also include commentary from some of the development staff.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The game was teased via the Nintendo Switch console announcement trailer in 2016; in January 2017 during a Nintendo presentation, "Odyssey" was formally announced to be in development, and was followed shortly after with gameplay footage. A section at E3 2017 was themed around New Donk City, and was filled with kiosks that allowed people to play a demo. The announcement at E3 2017 was the most popular part of the presentation on social media and was considered the best part of the show by other attending developers. Critics also noted the game's density of secrets and noted the format of open-world exploration.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Two weeks before the game's release, Nintendo uploaded a Broadway inspired promotional music video of "Jump Up Super Star!", which featured live-action dancers alongside a CGI animated character of Mario. The song was released on the digital music storefront iTunes shortly after and became one of the top 40 best sellers in the United States.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The game officially released October 27, 2017, alongside Amiibo of Mario, Peach, and Bowser in their respective wedding attire. In addition, a limited-time "Odyssey" themed Nintendo Switch was released, containing the console, Joy-Con reminiscent to the color of the character Cappy, a Switch console carrying case, and a Nintendo eShop digital download code for "Odyssey". Later that December, Nintendo partnered with food manufacturing company Kellogg's to release a limited quantity breakfast cereal —""Super Mario" Cereal"— in the United States. The back of the box contains an NFC tag that can be scanned like an Amiibo toy, which provides exclusive in-game extras.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Super Mario Odyssey" received "universal acclaim", according to the review aggregator Metacritic. As of 2022, review aggregator Metacritic ranks "Odyssey" as the joint third highest-rated game of all-time.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Andrew Webster of "The Verge" thought that the structure of the game lent itself well to the portable nature of the Switch, which players could play for either long sessions in order to follow the missions, or in short bursts while collecting "Power Moons", which the author compared to the "shrines", or hidden mini-dungeons, which were scattered throughout "". Despite the praise, Webster noted that the motion controls "felt frustratingly imprecise", preferring the accuracy of standard controls. The ability for Mario to turn into his 2D "Super Mario Bros." form in certain constrained segments was compared to the puzzles featured in "", while "VentureBeat" made note of the game's similarities to the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Edge" praised the inventiveness of the game's new ideas and the risks Nintendo had taken to deviate from the established formula of "Mario" games, which they believed had paid off. They likened the game to "Super Mario 64" and called it the spiritual successor that had previously not yet been achieved. The magazine also complimented the introduction of Cappy and the capturing mechanic, which they called the most versatile ability in the "Mario" series to date, and enjoyed how the ability allowed Nintendo to reinvent a number of their favorite gameplay activities. "Famitsu" gave the game a score of 39/40, the same as "Super Mario 64" and the highest score for a 3D "Mario" game since then. Perfect 10/10 scores were also awarded by IGN and GameSpot, who both praised the game's originality.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: In contrast, Ian Dallas, the creator of "What Remains of Edith Finch", gave "Super Mario Odyssey" a lukewarm review. He explained, "My problem with "Super Mario Odyssey" is that it's not actually satisfying to finish. This is not to say it isn't worth playing; it absolutely is. I just don't think it's worth finishing". Phil Hornshaw of Digital Trends gave the game 4/5 stars, saying that "Mario's first turn on the Switch is fun, but lacks the innovation and creativity of Nintendo's best." Hornshaw also noted that the "Controls and camera can be imprecise" and "frustrating".


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The song "Jump Up, Super Star!" debuted at number 33 on the "Billboard" Japan Hot 100 for the week of November 11, 2017. In Japan, the song reached No. 1 on the Japanese iTunes Store. On the US iTunes Store, the song debuted at 25 in the "All Genres" category. Kate Higgins performed "Jump Up, Super Star!" live at The Game Awards 2017 ceremony.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: Three days after release, more than two million copies of the game were sold worldwide, with 500,000 in Japan. During its launch week, the game competed with "Assassin's Creed Origins", which it was narrowly outsold by in the United Kingdom. In the United States and Europe, it became Nintendo's fastest-selling "Super Mario" game ever, with 1.1 million copies sold in the US within five days. According to the NPD Group, the game was the best-selling video game of October 2017, and was listed by Amazon as the online retailer's highest-selling game of the year. By December 2017, "Super Mario Odyssey" had sold 9.07 million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling game for the Switch at that time. By August 2022, it had sold 23 million copies.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: "Entertainment Weekly" and Giant Bomb both ranked the game second in their list of the "Best Games of 2017", and "GamesRadar+" ranked it fourth on their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017, while "Eurogamer" and "Polygon" ranked it third on their lists of the "Top 50 Games of 2017". "Ars Technica" ranked the game as their Game of the Year, while "The Verge" named it as one of their 15 Best Games of 2017. Readers and staff of "Game Informer" voted it as the best platforming game of the year, while the former also voted it as Game of the Year, along with Best Nintendo Game. EGMNow also ranked the game at #4 in their list of the 25 Best Games of 2017.


title: Super Mario Odyssey

text: The game won the award for "Best Switch Game" in "Destructoid"s Game of the Year Awards 2017. It also won the awards for "Best Platformer" and "Best Original Music" in IGN's Best of 2017 Awards, whereas its other nominations were for "Game of the Year" and "Best Switch Game". It was also nominated for "Switch Retail Game of the Year" and "Overall Game of the Year" by both reader and staff votes in "Nintendo Life"s Game of the Year Awards. The game won the Game of the Year award at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers award event, where it won all but one of the categories it was nominated for. "Odyssey" also won the awards in IGN's Best of E3 for "Best Platformer", "Best Nintendo Switch Game", and "Game of Show"; and in "Destructoid"s Best of E3 for "Best of Show".


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Under prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1905–1908) and H. H. Asquith (1908–1916), the Liberal Party passed reforms that created a basic welfare state. Although Asquith was the party leader, its dominant figure was David Lloyd George. Asquith was overwhelmed by the wartime role of coalition prime minister and Lloyd George replaced him in late 1916, but Asquith remained as Liberal Party leader. The split between Lloyd George's breakaway faction and Asquith's official Liberal Party badly weakened the party.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The coalition government of Lloyd George was increasingly dominated by the Conservative Party, which finally deposed him in 1922. By the end of the 1920s, the Labour Party had replaced the Liberals as the Conservatives' main rival. The Liberal Party went into decline after 1918 and by the 1950s won as few as six seats at general elections. Apart from notable by-election victories, its fortunes did not improve significantly until it formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. At the 1983 general election, the Alliance won over a quarter of the vote, but only 23 of the 650 seats it contested. At the 1987 general election, its share of the vote fell below 23% and the Liberals and the SDP merged in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), who the following year were renamed the Liberal Democrats. A splinter group reconstituted the Liberal Party in 1989.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Prominent intellectuals associated with the Liberal Party include the philosopher John Stuart Mill, the economist John Maynard Keynes and social planner William Beveridge. Winston Churchill authored "Liberalism and the Social Problem" (1909), praised by Henry William Massingham as "an impressive and convincing argument" and widely considered as the movement’s bible.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Liberal Party grew out of the Whigs, who had their origins in an aristocratic faction in the reign of Charles II and the early 19th century Radicals. The Whigs were in favour of reducing the power of the Crown and increasing the power of Parliament. Although their motives in this were originally to gain more power for themselves, the more idealistic Whigs gradually came to support an expansion of democracy for its own sake. The great figures of reformist Whiggery were Charles James Fox (died 1806) and his disciple and successor Earl Grey. After decades in opposition, the Whigs returned to power under Grey in 1830 and carried the First Reform Act in 1832.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Reform Act was the climax of Whiggism, but it also brought about the Whigs' demise. The admission of the middle classes to the franchise and to the House of Commons led eventually to the development of a systematic middle class liberalism and the end of Whiggery, although for many years reforming aristocrats held senior positions in the party. In the years after Grey's retirement, the party was led first by Lord Melbourne, a fairly traditional Whig, and then by Lord John Russell, the son of a Duke but a crusading radical, and by Lord Palmerston, a renegade Irish Tory and essentially a conservative, although capable of radical gestures.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: As early as 1839, Russell had adopted the name of "Liberals", but in reality his party was a loose coalition of Whigs in the House of Lords and Radicals in the Commons. The leading Radicals were John Bright and Richard Cobden, who represented the manufacturing towns which had gained representation under the Reform Act. They favoured social reform, personal liberty, reducing the powers of the Crown and the Church of England (many Liberals were Nonconformists), avoidance of war and foreign alliances (which were bad for business) and above all free trade. For a century, free trade remained the one cause which could unite all Liberals.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In 1841, the Liberals lost office to the Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel, but their period in opposition was short because the Conservatives split over the repeal of the Corn Laws, a free trade issue; and a faction known as the Peelites (but not Peel himself, who died soon after) defected to the Liberal side. This allowed ministries led by Russell, Palmerston and the Peelite Lord Aberdeen to hold office for most of the 1850s and 1860s. A leading Peelite was William Gladstone, who was a reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in most of these governments. The formal foundation of the Liberal Party is traditionally traced to 1859 and the formation of Palmerston's second government.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: However, the Whig-Radical amalgam could not become a true modern political party while it was dominated by aristocrats and it was not until the departure of the "Two Terrible Old Men", Russell and Palmerston, that Gladstone could become the first leader of the modern Liberal Party. This was brought about by Palmerston's death in 1865 and Russell's retirement in 1868. After a brief Conservative government (during which the Second Reform Act was passed by agreement between the parties), Gladstone won a huge victory at the 1868 election and formed the first Liberal government. The establishment of the party as a national membership organisation came with the foundation of the National Liberal Federation in 1877. The philosopher John Stuart Mill was also a Liberal MP from 1865 to 1868.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: For the next thirty years Gladstone and Liberalism were synonymous. William Gladstone served as prime minister four times (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886, and 1892–94). His financial policies, based on the notion of balanced budgets, low taxes and "laissez-faire", were suited to a developing capitalist society, but they could not respond effectively as economic and social conditions changed. Called the "Grand Old Man" later in life, Gladstone was always a dynamic popular orator who appealed strongly to the working class and to the lower middle class. Deeply religious, Gladstone brought a new moral tone to politics, with his evangelical sensibility and his opposition to aristocracy. His moralism often angered his upper-class opponents (including Queen Victoria), and his heavy-handed control split the Liberal Party.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In foreign policy, Gladstone was in general against foreign entanglements, but he did not resist the realities of imperialism. For example, he ordered the occupation of Egypt by British forces in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War. His goal was to create a European order based on co-operation rather than conflict and on mutual trust instead of rivalry and suspicion; the rule of law was to supplant the reign of force and self-interest. This Gladstonian concept of a harmonious Concert of Europe was opposed to and ultimately defeated by a Bismarckian system of manipulated alliances and antagonisms.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: As prime minister from 1868 to 1874, Gladstone headed a Liberal Party which was a coalition of Peelites like himself, Whigs and Radicals. He was now a spokesman for "peace, economy and reform". One major achievement was the Elementary Education Act of 1870, which provided England with an adequate system of elementary schools for the first time. He also secured the abolition of the purchase of commissions in the British Army and of religious tests for admission to Oxford and Cambridge; the introduction of the secret ballot in elections; the legalization of trade unions; and the reorganization of the judiciary in the Judicature Act.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Regarding Ireland, the major Liberal achievements were land reform, where he ended centuries of landlord oppression, and the disestablishment of the (Anglican) Church of Ireland through the Irish Church Act 1869.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In the 1874 general election Gladstone was defeated by the Conservatives under Benjamin Disraeli during a sharp economic recession. He formally resigned as Liberal leader and was succeeded by the Marquess of Hartington, but he soon changed his mind and returned to active politics. He strongly disagreed with Disraeli's pro-Ottoman foreign policy and in 1880 he conducted the first outdoor mass-election campaign in Britain, known as the Midlothian campaign. The Liberals won a large majority in the 1880 election. Hartington ceded his place and Gladstone resumed office.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Among the consequences of the Third Reform Act (1884) was the giving of the vote to many Irish Catholics. In the 1885 general election the Irish Parliamentary Party held the balance of power in the House of Commons, and demanded Irish Home Rule as the price of support for a continued Gladstone ministry. Gladstone personally supported Home Rule, but a strong Liberal Unionist faction led by Joseph Chamberlain, along with the last of the Whigs, Hartington, opposed it. The Irish Home Rule bill proposed to offer all owners of Irish land a chance to sell to the state at a price equal to 20 years' purchase of the rents and allowing tenants to purchase the land. Irish nationalist reaction was mixed, Unionist opinion was hostile, and the election addresses during the 1886 election revealed English radicals to be against the bill also. Among the Liberal rank and file, several Gladstonian candidates disowned the bill, reflecting fears at the constituency level that the interests of the working people were being sacrificed to finance a costly rescue operation for the landed élite. Further, Home Rule had not been promised in the Liberals' election manifesto, and so the impression was given that Gladstone was buying Irish support in a rather desperate manner to hold on to power.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The result was a catastrophic split in the Liberal Party, and heavy defeat in the 1886 election at the hands of Lord Salisbury, who was supported by the breakaway Liberal Unionist Party. There was a final weak Gladstone ministry in 1892, but it also was dependent on Irish support and failed to get Irish Home Rule through the House of Lords.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Historically, the aristocracy was divided between Conservatives and Liberals. However, when Gladstone committed to home rule for Ireland, Britain's upper classes largely abandoned the Liberal party, giving the Conservatives a large permanent majority in the House of Lords. Following the Queen, High Society in London largely ostracized home rulers and Liberal clubs were badly split. Joseph Chamberlain took a major element of upper-class supporters out of the Party and into a third party called Liberal Unionism on the Irish issue. It collaborated with and eventually merged into the Conservative party. The Gladstonian liberals in 1891 adopted The Newcastle Programme that included home rule for Ireland, disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales, tighter controls on the sale of liquor, major extension of factory regulation and various democratic political reforms. The Programme had a strong appeal to the nonconformist middle-class Liberal element, which felt liberated by the departure of the aristocracy.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: A major long-term consequence of the Third Reform Act was the rise of Lib-Lab candidates. The Act split all county constituencies (which were represented by multiple MPs) into single-member constituencies, roughly corresponding to population patterns. With the foundation of the Labour Party not to come till 1906, many trade unions allied themselves with the Liberals. In areas with working class majorities, in particular coal-mining areas, Lib-Lab candidates were popular, and they received sponsorship and endorsement from trade unions. In the first election after the Act was passed (1885), thirteen were elected, up from two in 1874. The Third Reform Act also facilitated the demise of the Whig old guard; in two-member constituencies, it was common to pair a Whig and a radical under the Liberal banner. After the Third Reform Act, fewer former Whigs were selected as candidates.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: A broad range of interventionist reforms were introduced by the 1892–1895 Liberal government. Amongst other measures, standards of accommodation and of teaching in schools were improved, factory inspection was made more stringent, and ministers used their powers to increase the wages and reduce the working hours of large numbers of male workers employed by the state.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Gladstone finally retired in 1894. Gladstone's support for Home Rule deeply divided the party, and it lost its upper and upper-middle-class base, while keeping support among Protestant nonconformists and the Celtic fringe. Historian R. C. K. Ensor reports that after 1886, the main Liberal Party was deserted by practically the entire whig peerage and the great majority of the upper-class and upper-middle-class members. High prestige London clubs that had a Liberal base were deeply split. Ensor notes that, "London society, following the known views of the Queen, practically ostracized home rulers."


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The new Liberal leader was the ineffectual Lord Rosebery. He led the party to a heavy defeat in the 1895 general election.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Liberal Party lacked a unified ideological base in 1906. It contained numerous contradictory and hostile factions, such as imperialists and supporters of the Boers; near-socialists and laissez-faire classical liberals; suffragettes and opponents of women's suffrage; antiwar elements and supporters of the military alliance with France. Nonconformists – Protestants outside the Anglican fold – were a powerful element, dedicated to opposing the established church in terms of education and taxation. However, the non-conformists were losing support amid society at large and played a lesser role in party affairs after 1900. The party, furthermore, also included Irish Catholics, and secularists from the labour movement. Many Conservatives (including Winston Churchill) had recently protested against high tariff moves by the Conservatives by switching to the anti-tariff Liberal camp, but it was unclear how many old Conservative traits they brought along, especially on military and naval issues.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The middle-class business, professional and intellectual communities were generally strongholds, although some old aristocratic families played important roles as well. The working-class element was moving rapidly toward the newly emerging Labour Party. One uniting element was widespread agreement on the use of politics and Parliament as a device to upgrade and improve society and to reform politics. All Liberals were outraged when Conservatives used their majority in the House of Lords to block reform legislation. In the House of Lords, the Liberals had lost most of their members, who in the 1890s "became Conservative in all but name." The government could force the unwilling king to create new Liberal peers, and that threat did prove decisive in the battle for dominance of Commons over Lords in 1911.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The late nineteenth century saw the emergence of New Liberalism within the Liberal Party, which advocated state intervention as a means of guaranteeing freedom and removing obstacles to it such as poverty and unemployment. The policies of the New Liberalism are now known as social liberalism.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The New Liberals included intellectuals like L. T. Hobhouse, and John A. Hobson. They saw individual liberty as something achievable only under favourable social and economic circumstances. In their view, the poverty, squalor, and ignorance in which many people lived made it impossible for freedom and individuality to flourish. New Liberals believed that these conditions could be ameliorated only through collective action coordinated by a strong, welfare-oriented, and interventionist state.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: After the historic 1906 victory, the Liberal Party introduced multiple reforms on range of issues, including health insurance, unemployment insurance, and pensions for elderly workers, thereby laying the groundwork for the future British welfare state. Some proposals failed, such as licensing fewer pubs, or rolling back Conservative educational policies. The People's Budget of 1909, championed by David Lloyd George and fellow Liberal Winston Churchill, introduced unprecedented taxes on the wealthy in Britain and radical social welfare programmes to the country's policies. In the Liberal camp, as noted by one study, “the Budget was on the whole enthusiastically received.” It was the first budget with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the public. It imposed increased taxes on luxuries, liquor, tobacco, high incomes, and land – taxation that fell heavily on the rich. The new money was to be made available for new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. In 1911 Lloyd George succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act, making provision for sickness and invalidism, and this was followed by his Unemployment Insurance Act.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Contrasting Old Liberalism with New Liberalism, David Lloyd George noted in a 1908 speech the following:


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Liberals languished in opposition for a decade while the coalition of Salisbury and Chamberlain held power. The 1890s were marred by infighting between the three principal successors to Gladstone, party leader William Harcourt, former prime minister Lord Rosebery, and Gladstone's personal secretary, John Morley. This intrigue finally led Harcourt and Morley to resign their positions in 1898 as they continued to be at loggerheads with Rosebery over Irish home rule and issues relating to imperialism. Replacing Harcourt as party leader was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Harcourt's resignation briefly muted the turmoil in the party, but the beginning of the Second Boer War soon nearly broke the party apart, with Rosebery and a circle of supporters including important future Liberal figures H. H. Asquith, Edward Grey and Richard Burdon Haldane forming a clique dubbed the Liberal Imperialists that supported the government in the prosecution of the war. On the other side, more radical members of the party formed a Pro-Boer faction that denounced the conflict and called for an immediate end to hostilities. Quickly rising to prominence among the Pro-Boers was David Lloyd George, a relatively new MP and a master of rhetoric, who took advantage of having a national stage to speak out on a controversial issue to make his name in the party. Harcourt and Morley also sided with this group, though with slightly different aims. Campbell-Bannerman tried to keep these forces together at the head of a moderate Liberal rump, but in 1901 he delivered a speech on the government's "methods of barbarism" in South Africa that pulled him further to the left and nearly tore the party in two. The party was saved after Salisbury's retirement in 1902 when his successor, Arthur Balfour, pushed a series of unpopular initiatives such as the Education Act 1902 and Joseph Chamberlain called for a new system of protectionist tariffs.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Campbell-Bannerman was able to rally the party around the traditional liberal platform of free trade and land reform and led them to the greatest election victory in their history. This would prove the last time the Liberals won a majority in their own right. Although he presided over a large majority, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was overshadowed by his ministers, most notably H. H. Asquith at the Exchequer, Edward Grey at the Foreign Office, Richard Burdon Haldane at the War Office and David Lloyd George at the Board of Trade. Campbell-Bannerman retired in 1908 and died soon after. He was succeeded by Asquith, who stepped up the government's radicalism. Lloyd George succeeded Asquith at the Exchequer, and was in turn succeeded at the Board of Trade by Winston Churchill, a recent defector from the Conservatives.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The 1906 general election also represented a shift to the left by the Liberal Party. According to Rosemary Rees, almost half of the Liberal MPs elected in 1906 were supportive of the 'New Liberalism' (which advocated government action to improve people's lives),) while claims were made that “five-sixths of the Liberal party are left wing.” Other historians, however, have questioned the extent to which the Liberal Party experienced a leftward shift; according to Robert C. Self however, only between 50 and 60 Liberal MPs out of the 400 in the parliamentary party after 1906 were Social Radicals, with a core of 20 to 30. Nevertheless, important junior offices were held in the cabinet by what Duncan Tanner has termed "genuine New Liberals, Centrist reformers, and Fabian collectivists," and much legislation was pushed through by the Liberals in government. This included the regulation of working hours, National Insurance and welfare.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: A political battle erupted over the People's Budget, which was rejected by the House of Lords and for which the government obtained an electoral mandate at the January 1910 election. The election resulted in a hung parliament, with the government left dependent on the Irish Nationalists. Although the Lords now passed the budget, the government wished to curtail their power to block legislation. Asquith was required by King George V to fight a second general election in December 1910 (whose result was little changed from that in January) before he agreed, if necessary, to create hundreds of Liberals peers. Faced with that threat, the Lords voted to give up their veto power and allowed the passage of the Parliament Act 1911.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: As the price of Irish support, Asquith was now forced to introduce a third Home Rule bill in 1912. Since the House of Lords no longer had the power to block the bill, but only to delay it for two years, it was due to become law in 1914. The Unionist Ulster Volunteers, led by Sir Edward Carson, launched a campaign of opposition that included the threat of a provisional government and armed resistance in Ulster. The Ulster Protestants had the full support of the Conservatives, whose leader, Bonar Law, was of Ulster-Scots descent. Government plans to deploy troops into Ulster had to be cancelled after the threat of mass resignation of their commissions by army officers in March 1914 ("see Curragh Incident"). Ireland seemed to be on the brink of civil war when the First World War broke out in August 1914. Asquith had offered the Six Counties (later to become Northern Ireland) an opt out from Home Rule for six years (i.e. until after two more general elections were likely to have taken place) but the Nationalists refused to agree to permanent Partition of Ireland. Historian George Dangerfield has argued that the multiplicity of crises in 1910 to 1914, political and industrial, so weakened the Liberal coalition before the war broke out that it marked the "Strange Death of Liberal England". However, most historians date the collapse to the crisis of the First World War.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Liberal Party might have survived a short war, but the totality of the Great War called for measures that the Party had long rejected. The result was the permanent destruction of the ability of the Liberal Party to lead a government. Historian Robert Blake explains the dilemma:


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Blake further notes that it was the Liberals, not the Conservatives who needed the moral outrage of Belgium to justify going to war, while the Conservatives called for intervention from the start of the crisis on the grounds of "realpolitik" and the balance of power. However, Lloyd George and Churchill were zealous supporters of the war, and gradually forced the old peace-orientated Liberals out.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Asquith was blamed for the poor British performance in the first year. Since the Liberals ran the war without consulting the Conservatives, there were heavy partisan attacks. However, even Liberal commentators were dismayed by the lack of energy at the top. At the time, public opinion was intensely hostile, both in the media and in the street, against any young man in civilian garb and labeled as a slacker. The leading Liberal newspaper, the "Manchester Guardian" complained:


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Asquith's Liberal government was brought down in , due in particular to a crisis in inadequate artillery shell production and the protest resignation of Admiral Fisher over the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign against Turkey. Reluctant to face doom in an election, Asquith formed a new coalition government on 25 May, with the majority of the new cabinet coming from his own Liberal party and the Unionist (Conservative) party, along with a token Labour representation. The new government lasted a year and a half, and was the last time Liberals controlled the government. The analysis of historian A. J. P. Taylor is that the British people were so deeply divided over numerous issues, But on all sides there was growing distrust of the Asquith government. There was no agreement whatsoever on wartime issues. The leaders of the two parties realized that embittered debates in Parliament would further undermine popular morale and so the House of Commons did not once discuss the war before May 1915. Taylor argues:


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The 1915 coalition fell apart at the end of 1916, when the Conservatives withdrew their support from Asquith and gave it instead to Lloyd George, who became prime minister at the head of a new coalition largely made up of Conservatives. Asquith and his followers moved to the opposition benches in Parliament and the Liberal Party was deeply split once again.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Lloyd George remained a Liberal all his life, but he abandoned many standard Liberal principles in his crusade to win the war at all costs. He insisted on strong government controls over business as opposed to the "laissez-faire" attitudes of traditional Liberals. in 1915-16 he had insisted on conscription of young men into the Army, a position that deeply troubled his old colleagues. That brought him and a few like-minded Liberals into the new coalition on the ground long occupied by Conservatives. There was no more planning for world peace or liberal treatment of Germany, nor discomfit with aggressive and authoritarian measures of state power. More deadly to the future of the party, says historian Trevor Wilson, was its repudiation by ideological Liberals, who decided sadly that it no longer represented their principles. Finally the presence of the vigorous new Labour Party on the left gave a new home to voters disenchanted with the Liberal performance.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The last majority Liberal Government in Britain was elected in 1906. The years preceding the First World War were marked by worker strikes and civil unrest and saw many violent confrontations between civilians and the police and armed forces. Other issues of the period included women's suffrage and the Irish Home Rule movement. After the carnage of 1914–1918, the democratic reforms of the Representation of the People Act 1918 instantly tripled the number of people entitled to vote in Britain from seven to twenty-one million. The Labour Party benefited most from this huge change in the electorate, forming its first minority government in 1924.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In the 1918 general election, Lloyd George, hailed as "the Man Who Won the War", led his coalition into a khaki election. Lloyd George and the Conservative leader Bonar Law wrote a joint letter of support to candidates to indicate they were considered the official Coalition candidates—this "coupon", as it became known, was issued against many sitting Liberal MPs, often to devastating effect, though not against Asquith himself. The coalition won a massive victory: Labour increased their position slightly but the Asquithian Liberals were decimated. Those remaining Liberal MPs who were opposed to the Coalition Government went into opposition under the parliamentary leadership of Sir Donald MacLean who also became Leader of the Opposition. Asquith, who had appointed MacLean, remained as overall Leader of the Liberal Party even though he lost his seat in 1918. Asquith returned to Parliament in 1920 and resumed leadership. Between 1919 and 1923, the anti-Lloyd George Liberals were called Asquithian Liberals, Wee Free Liberals or Independent Liberals.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Lloyd George was increasingly under the influence of the rejuvenated Conservative party who numerically dominated the coalition. In 1922, the Conservative backbenchers rebelled against the continuation of the coalition, citing, in particular, Lloyd George's plan for war with Turkey in the Chanak Crisis, and his corrupt sale of honours. He resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Bonar Law.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: At the 1922 and 1923 elections the Liberals won barely a third of the vote and only a quarter of the seats in the House of Commons as many radical voters abandoned the divided Liberals and went over to Labour. In 1922, Labour became the official opposition. A reunion of the two warring factions took place in 1923 when the new Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin committed his party to protective tariffs, causing the Liberals to reunite in support of free trade. The party gained ground in the 1923 general election but made most of its gains from Conservatives whilst losing ground to Labour—a sign of the party's direction for many years to come. The party remained the third largest in the House of Commons, but the Conservatives had lost their majority. There was much speculation and fear about the prospect of a Labour government and comparatively little about a Liberal government, even though it could have plausibly presented an experienced team of ministers compared to Labour's almost complete lack of experience as well as offering a middle ground that could obtain support from both Conservatives and Labour in crucial Commons divisions. However, instead of trying to force the opportunity to form a Liberal government, Asquith decided instead to allow Labour the chance of office in the belief that they would prove incompetent and this would set the stage for a revival of Liberal fortunes at Labour's expense, but it was a fatal error.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Labour was determined to destroy the Liberals and become the sole party of the left. Ramsay MacDonald was forced into a snap election in 1924 and although his government was defeated he achieved his objective of virtually wiping the Liberals out as many more radical voters now moved to Labour whilst moderate middle-class Liberal voters concerned about socialism moved to the Conservatives. The Liberals were reduced to a mere forty seats in Parliament, only seven of which had been won against candidates from both parties and none of these formed a coherent area of Liberal survival. The party seemed finished, and during this period some Liberals, such as Churchill, went over to the Conservatives while others went over to Labour. Several Labour ministers of later generations, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, were the sons of Liberal MPs.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Asquith finally resigned as Liberal leader in 1926 (he died in 1928). Lloyd George, now party leader, began a drive to produce coherent policies on many key issues of the day. In the 1929 general election, he made a final bid to return the Liberals to the political mainstream, with an ambitious programme of state stimulation of the economy called "We Can Conquer Unemployment!", largely written for him by the Liberal economist John Maynard Keynes. The Liberal Party stood in Northern Ireland for the first and only time in the 1929 general election, gaining 17% of the vote, but won no seats. The Liberals gained ground, but once again it was at the Conservatives' expense whilst also losing seats to Labour. Indeed, the urban areas of the country suffering heavily from unemployment, which might have been expected to respond the most to the radical economic policies of the Liberals, instead gave the party its worst results. By contrast, most of the party's seats were won either due to the absence of a candidate from one of the other parties or in rural areas on the Celtic fringe, where local evidence suggests that economic ideas were at best peripheral to the electorate's concerns. The Liberals now found themselves with 59 members, holding the balance of power in a Parliament where Labour was the largest party but lacked an overall majority. Lloyd George offered a degree of support to the Labour government in the hope of winning concessions, including a degree of electoral reform to introduce the alternative vote, but this support was to prove bitterly divisive as the Liberals increasingly divided between those seeking to gain what Liberal goals they could achieve, those who preferred a Conservative government to a Labour one and vice versa.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: A group of Liberal MPs led by Sir John Simon opposed the Liberal Party's support for the minority Labour government. They preferred to reach an accommodation with the Conservatives. In 1931 MacDonald's Labour government fell apart in response to the Great Depression. Macdonald agreed to lead a National Government of all parties, which passed a budget to deal with the financial crisis. When few Labour MPs backed the National government, it became clear that the Conservatives had the clear majority of government supporters. They then forced MacDonald to call a general election. Lloyd George called for the party to leave the National Government but only a few MPs and candidates followed. The majority, led by Sir Herbert Samuel, decided to contest the elections as part of the government. The bulk of Liberal MPs supported the government, – the Liberal Nationals (officially the "National Liberals" after 1947) led by Simon, also known as "Simonites", and the "Samuelites" or "official Liberals", led by Samuel who remained as the official party. Both groups secured about 34 MPs but proceeded to diverge even further after the election, with the Liberal Nationals remaining supporters of the government throughout its life. There were to be a succession of discussions about them rejoining the Liberals, but these usually foundered on the issues of free trade and continued support for the National Government. The one significant reunification came in 1946 when the Liberal and Liberal National party organisations in London merged. The National Liberals, as they were called by then, were gradually absorbed into the Conservative Party, finally merging in 1968.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The official Liberals found themselves a tiny minority within a government committed to protectionism. Slowly they found this issue to be one they could not support. In early 1932 it was agreed to suspend the principle of collective responsibility to allow the Liberals to oppose the introduction of tariffs. Later in 1932 the Liberals resigned their ministerial posts over the introduction of the Ottawa Agreement on Imperial Preference. However, they remained sitting on the government benches supporting it in Parliament, though in the country local Liberal activists bitterly opposed the government. Finally in late 1933 the Liberals crossed the floor of the House of Commons and went into complete opposition. By this point their number of MPs was severely depleted. In the 1935 general election, just 17 Liberal MPs were elected, along with Lloyd George and three followers as independent Liberals. Immediately after the election the two groups reunited, though Lloyd George declined to play much of a formal role in his old party. Over the next ten years there would be further defections as MPs deserted to either the Liberal Nationals or Labour. Yet there were a few recruits, such as Clement Davies, who had deserted to the National Liberals in 1931 but now returned to the party during World War II and who would lead it after the war.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Samuel had lost his seat in the 1935 election and the leadership of the party fell to Sir Archibald Sinclair. With many traditional domestic Liberal policies now regarded as irrelevant, he focused the party on opposition to both the rise of Fascism in Europe and the appeasement foreign policy of the National Government, arguing that intervention was needed, in contrast to the Labour calls for pacifism. Despite the party's weaknesses, Sinclair gained a high profile as he sought to recall the Midlothian Campaign and once more revitalise the Liberals as the party of a strong foreign policy.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In 1940, they joined Churchill's wartime coalition government, with Sinclair serving as Secretary of State for Air, the last British Liberal to hold Cabinet rank office for seventy years. However, it was a sign of the party's lack of importance that they were not included in the War Cabinet; some leading party members founded Radical Action, a group which called for liberal candidates to break the war-time electoral pact. At the 1945 general election, Sinclair and many of his colleagues lost their seats to both Conservatives and Labour and the party returned just 12 MPs to Westminster, but this was just the beginning of the decline. In 1950, the general election saw the Liberals return just nine MPs. Another general election was called in 1951 and the Liberals were left with just six MPs and all but one of them were aided by the fact that the Conservatives refrained from fielding candidates in those constituencies.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In 1957, this total fell to five when one of the Liberal MPs died and the subsequent by-election was lost to the Labour Party, which selected the former Liberal Deputy Leader Megan Lloyd George as its own candidate. The Liberal Party seemed close to extinction. During this low period, it was often joked that Liberal MPs could hold meetings in the back of one taxi.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Through the 1950s and into the 1960s the Liberals survived only because a handful of constituencies in rural Scotland and Wales clung to their Liberal traditions, whilst in two English towns, Bolton and Huddersfield, local Liberals and Conservatives agreed to each contest only one of the town's two seats. Jo Grimond, for example, who became Leader of the Liberal Party in 1956, was MP for the remote Orkney and Shetland islands. Under his leadership a Liberal revival began, marked by the Orpington by-election of March 1962 which was won by Eric Lubbock. There, the Liberals won a seat in the London suburbs for the first time since 1935.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Liberals became the first of the major British political parties to advocate British membership of the European Economic Community. Grimond also sought an intellectual revival of the party, seeking to position it as a non-socialist radical alternative to the Conservative government of the day. In particular he canvassed the support of the young post-war university students and recent graduates, appealing to younger voters in a way that many of his recent predecessors had not, and asserting a new strand of Liberalism for the post-war world.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The new middle-class suburban generation began to find the Liberals' policies attractive again. Under Grimond (who retired in 1967) and his successor, Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberals regained the status of a serious third force in British politics, polling up to 20% of the vote, but unable to break the duopoly of Labour and Conservative and win more than fourteen seats in the Commons. An additional problem was competition in the Liberal heartlands in Scotland and Wales from the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru who both grew as electoral forces from the 1960s onwards. Although Emlyn Hooson held on to the seat of Montgomeryshire, upon Clement Davies death in 1962, the party lost five Welsh seats between 1950 and 1966. In September 1966, the Welsh Liberal Party formed their own state party, moving the Liberal Party into a fully federal structure.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: In local elections, Liverpool remained a Liberal stronghold, with the party taking the plurality of seats on the elections to the new Liverpool Metropolitan Borough Council in 1973. On 26 July 1973, the party won two by-elections on the same day, in the Isle of Ely (with Clement Freud), and Ripon (with David Austick). In the February 1974 general election, the Conservative government of Edward Heath won a plurality of votes cast, but the Labour Party gained a plurality of seats. The Conservatives were unable to form a government due to the Ulster Unionist MPs refusing to support the Conservatives after the Northern Ireland Sunningdale Agreement. The Liberals obtained 6.1 million votes, the most it would ever achieve, and now held the balance of power in the Commons. Conservatives offered Thorpe the Home Office if he would join a coalition government with Heath. Thorpe was personally in favour of it, but the party insisted it would only agree pending a clear government commitment to introducing proportional representation (PR) and a change of prime minister. The former was unacceptable to Heath's cabinet and the latter to Heath personally, so the talks collapsed. Instead, a minority Labour government was formed under Harold Wilson but with no formal support from Thorpe. In the October 1974 general election, the Liberals total vote slipped back slightly (and declined in each of the next three) and the Labour government won a wafer-thin majority.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: Thorpe was subsequently forced to resign after allegations that he attempted to have his homosexual lover murdered by a hitman. The party's new leader, David Steel, negotiated the Lib-Lab pact with Wilson's successor as prime minister, James Callaghan. According to this pact, the Liberals would support the government in crucial votes in exchange for some influence over policy. The agreement lasted from 1977 to 1978, but proved mostly fruitless, for two reasons: the Liberals' key demand of PR was rejected by most Labour MPs, whilst the contacts between Liberal spokespersons and Labour ministers often proved detrimental, such as between Treasury spokesperson John Pardoe and Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey, who were mutually antagonistic.


title: Liberal Party (UK)

text: The Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 general election, placing the Labour Party back in opposition, which served to push the Liberals back into the margins.