The Liberty and Property Defence League and Individualism

Abstract

In 1882, when Dicey's so-called age of ‘Individualism’ was over and the high tide of laissez-faire was receding, there emerged for die first time in Britain a thoroughly dogmatic pressure group for extreme laissez-faire. This was the Liberty and Property Defence League. The League originated as part of what Beatrice Webb described as the ‘reaction against empirical socialism [which] came to a head under Mr Gladstone's administration of 1880–85’. But it out lasted Gladstone's second government and defended laissez-faire widi some effect until the end of the century.