A ‘Strange Death’ Foretold (or the Not So ‘Strange Death’ of Liberal Wales): Liberal Decline, the Labour Ascendancy and Electoral Politics in South Wales, 1922-1924

Abstract

This essay revisits debates concerning the rapid decline of the historic and once powerful Liberal Party and its replacement by the Labour Party as the main anti-Conservative, progressive party of the state around the fulcrum of the First World War. The particular context and lens for the analysis are what have been termed the 'mining valleys' of South Wales, from Llanelli in the east to Pontypool in the west, where the startling transformation of British progressive politics was perhaps no more apparent. Discussion and debate over the precise reasons and departure point of unprecedented British party political change in this period have continued unabated, but the electoral and local political and social advances of Labour in the South Wales coalfield in the raft of elections between 1922 and 1924 facilitated, consolidated and embedded the longer process of progressive realignment.