Every boy and every gal

That's born into the world alive

Is either a little Liberal

Or else a little Conservative!

W S Gilbert — Iolanthe

Gilbert penned that lyric before the political map of Britain was redrawn by the rise of the Labour Party a century ago.

But while national support for the Liberals plummeted, the South West stubbornly refused to ditch its allegiance. Why?

When I moved to North Cornwall almost 30 years ago I was amazed by the local adulation of the young Liberal MP John Pardoe. The constituency, a Tory/Liberal marginal, was buzzing with political activity thanks to his ebullient personality and love of the razzmatazz of elections. The local Labour Party had been reduced to a deposit-losing rump of elderly stalwarts and young idealists.

Pardoe had recognised that the Liberals' traditional vote, largely allied to strong local Methodism, was not enough to win and keep the seat. He squeezed the Labour vote, thus forming an anti-Tory coalition that held the seat until the rise of Thatcherism.

Garry Tregidga, of Exeter University, points to this in his book, The Liberal Party in South West Britain. Popular candidates such as Pardoe benefited from the traditional view that an MP should be an active and charismatic leader of the local community. And their message was that as they were not part of a 'big party' machine in London they would be better placed to speak for the constituency. It was a style pioneered by the towering figure of West Country Liberalism, Isaac Foot whose charismatic oratory struck a chord with non-conformist farmers.

Tregidga traces the Liberal Party's national political decline — it lost more than 350 seats between 1906 and 1924 — its dormancy and rebirth with 47 MPs now sitting in the Mother of Parliaments.

Amid the party's wilderness years, Devon and Cornwall maintained its support, albeit with only a handful of MPs. As well as the non-conformist Liberal loyalty there was relatively little active trade unionism in the South West, a factor that had caused the switch to Labour in urban regions. Small farmers, fishermen, clay workers, etc, many in the South West saw the Liberal Party as protecting their interests against the 'big business' Conservatives or the 'nationalising' Socialists.

A well-researched work, drawing on many sources, this book is, however, not a turgid tome. It is replete with interesting detail. It shows that in 1923/24 the Liberals failed to cash in on their parliamentary bargaining power by not having a clear position on what has since become a touchstone for the party: proportional representation. Had they done so, how different the political map of Britain might look today.

It is also revealing how history repeats itself. Thus, in 1924, in a statement that has echoed down the decades, the Conservatives' Stanley Baldwin played on rural grievances by stating that 'Townspeople do not really understand us country folk'. The damage was done. The Liberals had lost the role of guardians of the countryside to the Tories.

But by 1952 the tables were turning. Gerald Whitmarsh, the Liberal candidate for Tavistock, suggested the Liberals should concentrate on championing the issues of rural areas. He even proposed changing the party's name to the Liberal and Country Party.

Six years later Mark Bonham- Carter's by-election win for the Liberals in Torrington was largely due to a feeling that the Conservative Government had let down the farmers.

Their main grievance was the Price Review which reduced subsidies for small farmers.

But, detailed though it is, the book gives comparatively brief analysis of the surge in parliamentary representation for the Liberal Democrats under Paddy Ashdown's stewardship. The Ashdown/Major/Blair years are covered in just five final pages.

Nonetheless, the book is a welcome contribution to the debate about the Liberal Party's survival in the face of a sea change in British history.

It also reveals how nothing is new in politics. In 1950 a Liberal candidate, Elisabeth Rashleigh, championed her party's call for council tenants to have the right to buy their own home.

Twenty-nine years later another woman politician, Margaret Thatcher, rode the crest of a Conservative wave into 10 Downing Street, thanks, largely, to that self same policy.

l The Liberal Party in South West Britain by Garry Tregidga is published by the University of Exeter Press, price £35.