It is usually asserted that the Liberals did well in Lancashire from 1906 because of Free Trade: with the implication that laissez-faire Liberalism enjoyed a freak revival. On this reading, the Liberal party remained essentially a bourgeois instrument and the millowners rallied to it in defence of the precepts of the Manchester School. Now this chapter will not seek to deny that for many Lancashire men Free Trade was the most fundamental of political truths, nor that Lancashire as a whole was unenthusiastic about Tariff Reform. But, whatever was the case in 1906, it is grossly misleading to attribute the Liberal victories of 1910 in any significant degree to the businessmen's preference for Free Trade. Far from fiscal attitudes dictating party allegiance, it would be truer to say that party allegiance dictated fiscal attitudes.

This chapter will examine the behaviour of two sorts of men, those who were nominally Liberal and those who were nominally Conservative. In practice they were much of a muchness.