Liberalism

In Liberalism Hobhouse advanced the view, useful in the political situation of the time, that socialism could be subsumed within Liberalism, though not if socialism were understood in its Marxist or bureaucratic elitist forms. He also advocated a Progressive Alliance between the Liberal Party and the Labour movement, a hope he maintained throughout the 1920s when despair at the divisions in the party separated him from membership of it. Unlike other New Liberal intellectuals, however, Hobhouse did not join the Labour Party. He was hostile to class-based politics, and although a supporter of trade unionism, opposed the idea of a political party based on sectional interest. He participated briefly in the discussions which led to the Liberal Yellow Book. In the last month of his life, following the election of 1929 which had seen a Labour minority government come to power, he wrote that he was ‘sorry that the Liberals did not get more seats, as I think (I know its blasphemy) they carry more brains to the square inch than Labour, most of whose men are merely dull and terribly afraid of their permanent officials’.

Hobhouse died in Alenon, France on 21 June 1929. He had married Nora Hawden 1891, and was the father of three children.