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STUART RENDEL AND WELSH LIBERAL POLITICAL ORGANIZATION IN THE LATE-NINETEENTH CENTURY IN 1886 the Liberal Party, which since 1867 had seemed to be the natural governing party in Britain, was gravely weakened by its split, which was not to be healed, over Gladstone's Irish policy. Most of the Whigs under Lord Hartington and many of the radicals under Joseph Chamberlain moved closer to the Conservative Party in their ideas and, more importantly, in their voting tendency in the House of Commons. The Liberal Party was to find it difficult ever again to command a purely English majority in that chamber and became more dependent on the 'Celtic fringe' of Irish, Scottish and Welsh Liberals whose bargaining strength was considerably improved.1 As a consequence of these national events, there was, between 1885 and 1895, a growth in the Liberal organization in Wales which enabled it to play a constructive and substantial role in the national politics of the period. Welsh politics in the 1880s moved out of a period of stagnation into which it had settled in the preceding decade. The first flush of nonconformist triumph with Henry Richard's election for Merthyr in 1868 had been shown to have had few practical results in the 1870s in terms of legislation on Welsh affairs. While there had been a number of debates on issues such as dis- establishment in the House of Commons, the Welsh leaders had been unable to get either party to take their demands really seriously. The situation was altered in the 1880s by the emergence on the scene of an Englishman, Stuart Rendel, who was to bestride Welsh politics in the decade 1885-95. It was he, more than any other man, who was to revolutionize Welsh politics in this period by attempting to get such measures as disestablishment, education, land reform and devolution established as part of the Liberal Party programme, debated in Parliament and passed into legislation. Rendel was given a greater opportunity by the great Liberal schism of 1886, which made the Gladstonian Liberals in England more amenable to Welsh demands. However, whatever advantage may have been gained by the Liberal split might have been frittered away if there had not the literature on the Liberal Party in the late-nineteenth century is extensive. The chief works, which offer nuances of differing interpretation, are Michael Barker, Gladstone and Radicalism (1975); H. V. Emy, Liberals, Radicals, and Social Politics, 1892-1914 (1973); D. A. Hamer, Liberal Politics in the Age of Gladstone and Rosebery (1972); Kenneth O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922 (new edition, 1980); Peter Stansky, Ambitions and Strategies (1964).