Who we are

The 1909 Group is an initiative of the Liberal Democrats' ALTER (Action on Land Tax and Economic Reform) calling on other party groups who share some of our own objectives to come together into an umbrella organization to celebrate the centenary of David Lloyd George's 1909 "People's Budget". We aim to promote study into how some of the measures in that budget and the ideas of the Liberal reformers that influenced and were influenced by it remain to be adopted, to educate others about how adopting some of those measures could positively affect some of the pressing social and economic problems and imbalances that continue to exist today and to campaign within the Liberal Democrats and beyond for their adoption.

As a first step therefore, Cllr Tony Vickers, the Chair of ALTER, has written to the chairs of fellow Lib Dem organizations we think may have a particular interest in some of the issues we see arising out of such investigation, education and campaigning - and we hope that The Green Lib Dems, Lib Dem Youth and Students, the Liberal History Group and the Beveridge Group will consider collaborating in The 1909 Group. Of course we welcome anyone with an interest in exploring whether there can be fairer tax, welfare, environmental, monetary and generational policies that could provide the Liberal Democrats with a persuasive and radical platform that is at the same time quintessentially Liberal.

For too long now the political debate, nationally and more recently between Lib Dems themselves, has been over "left" and "right", "socialism" and firstly "capitalism" but latterly "monetarism". Nationally, the century since the People's Budget has been dominated by huge swings from state socialism - and just think how much of our economy had been nationalized by the mid seventies - to a mish-mash of conservative protectionism, and then amoral laissez-faire capitalism. Within the party, the divide is portrayed as one between so called "economic liberals", seen as the "right", who are supposedly trying single-mindedly to promote neoliberalism, and "social liberals", seen as the "left" promoting "profligate" tax and spend policies.

We believe that these arguments are not only stale today, but were largely stale by the time Lloyd George and Winston Churchill toured the country together promoting the 1909 budget. Lloyd George was a free trade advocate as well as a land tax proponent. Henry George, who heavily influenced the debate on both issues had himself drawn inspiration from classical liberals like John Locke and Adam Smith to produce solutions to the sort of pressing problems identified by Charles and Mary Booth, Seebohm Rowntree and others who brought to public attention the pressing need for social and economic reform.

The immense social and economic upheavals of world war, the failure to implement liberal economic reforms that would have softened the impact of depression and possibly prevented the rise of Nazism against a backdrop of the unjust and destructive economic punishment of Germany, all threw the start made by Lloyd George in 1909 off course. More recent attempts to find a "Third Way" most notably in the form of Blairism are likely to fail precisely because they do not recognize the fundamental structural economic inequities that Henry George and Lloyd George did recognize and attempt to address and are instead based on capitulation to the amoral market championed in Thatcherism.

We earnestly hope that The 1909 Group, through this website, events at party conferences and influencing those making our party's policy, can reinvigorate the sprit of 1909 and the Liberal reform agenda.