National Liberal Club

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National Liberal Club

The National Liberal Club, known to its members as the NLC, is a London gentlemen's club, now also open to women, which was established by William Ewart Gladstone in 1882 for the purpose of providing club facilities for Liberal Party campaigners among the newly-enlarged electorate after the Third Reform Act. The club's impressive neo-gothic building over the Embankment of the river Thames is one of the largest clubhouses ever built. Designed by Alfred Waterhouse, it was not completed until 1887. Its facilities include a dining room, a bar, function rooms, a billiards room, a smoking room and reading room, as well as an outdoor riverside terrace overlooking the London Eye. It is located at 1 Whitehall Place, close to the Houses of Parliament, the Thames Embankment, and Trafalgar Square.

History
Decline and revival
Reciprocal arrangements
Membership
Notable members
External links

History

In the five years between the club's establishment and completion, 1882-7, it occupied temporary premises on the corner of Northumberland Avenue and Trafalgar Square.

In its late nineteenth century heyday, its membership was primarily political, but had a strong journalistic and even bohemian character. Members were known to finish an evening's dining by diving into the Thames. It was also the site of much intrigue in the Liberal Party over the years, rivalling the Reform Club as a social centre for Liberals by the advent of World War I, although its membership was more based on Liberal activists in the country at large; it was built on such a large scale to provide London club facilities for Liberal activists from around the country, justifying its use of the description 'national'. From 1916 to 1918, the clubhouse was requisitioned by the British government for use as a billet for Canadian troops, the club relocating to nearby Northumberland Avenue in the meantime. At the end of the First World War, the Canadian soldiers who stayed there presented the Club with a moose head as a gift of thanks. During the party's 1916-23 split, the Lloyd George wing of the party was in the ascendant in the club, with the Asquith faction centred around the Reform Club, though Lloyd George himself was shunned by many NLC members.

There is a well-known story told of the NLC, that the Conservative politician F.E. Smith would stop off there every day on his way to parliament, to use the club's lavatories. One day the hall porter apprehended Smith and asked him if he was actually a member of the club, to which Smith replied, "Good god! You mean it's a club as well?" This story, and aprocryphal variations thereof (usually substituting Smith with Churchill), are told of many different clubs. The original related to the NLC, at the half-way point between parliament and Smith's house in Temple. The comment was a jibe at the brown tiles in some of the NLC's late-Victorian architecture.

Decline and revival

The fortunes of the NLC have mirrored those of the Liberal Party - as the Liberals declined as a national force in the 1940s and 1950s, so did the NLC. By the 1970s it was in a serious state of disrepair, its membership dwindling, and its finances losing almost a thousand pounds a week. Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe handed over the club to Canadian businessman George de Chabris, who, unbeknownst to Thorpe, was a confidence trickster. De Chabris spent nine months running the club, relaxing membership rules and bringing in more income, but also moving his family in rent-free, running several fraudulent businesses from its premises, paying for a sports car and his children's private school fees from the Club's accounts, and he eventually left in a hurry owing the club Ł60,000, even emptying out the cash till of the day's takings as he went. He eventually agreed to pay back half of that in installments. In his time at the club he also sold it a painting for Ł10,000, when it was valued at less than Ł1,000. One of his more controversial reforms was to sell the National Liberal Club's library and archive, which was the largest library of 17th-20th century political books, pamphlets, leaflets and campaigning material in the country, to Bristol University, where it is still housed today. However, the papers referring to the history of the club itself are on permanent loan to the NLC.

As the Liberal Party's lease on its headquarters expired in 1977, the party organisation moved to the basement of the NLC, and continued to operate from there until 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party to form the Liberal Democrats, and occupied the SDP's old headquarters in Cowley Street.

In the early 1980s, the club sold off its second-floor and basement function rooms, and the bedrooms on the third and fourth floors (including two vast ballrooms and the Gladstone Library, which contained 35,000 volumes) to create the adjoining Royal Horseguards Hotel, which is approached from a different entrance. This was not without some dissent among the membership, but the sale ensured that the club's financial future was secure, and the remaining part of the club, mainly on the ground and first floors of the vast building, still remains one of the largest clubhouses in the world. Originally built for 6,000 members, the club still provides facilities for around 2,000.

The club's current social calendar includes gourmet meals (including events such as a Christmas Dinner and Burns Night Supper), regular luncheon circles with guest speakers, tutored wine tastings, a Younger Members' Group, and an Annual Whitebait Supper, where members depart by river from Embankment Pier, downstream to the Greenwich tavern which Gladstone used to take his cabinet ministers to by boat. The Political and Economic Circle, which was founded by Gladstone in the 1890s, continues to meet to this day.

Reciprocal arrangements

The club is open to members from Mondays to Fridays, 8am-midnight. During the weekend members may use either the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall, or the East India Club in St. James's Square. There are also reciprocal arrangements with over 80 other clubs worldwide, granting members a comfortable place to stay when abroad. The club does not have any contact with the NULC (National Union of Liberal Clubs) which represents the interests of Liberal Social Working Men's Clubs in the country nationwide.

Membership

The NLC is a private members' club, with membership needing the nomination of an existing member, and a waiting period of several months. Members are either Political Members, who sign a declaration that they are a Liberal in their politics, or Non-Political Members, who sign a declaration that they shall not use the club's facilities for 'political activities adverse to Liberalism.' In keeping with its liberal roots, it was the first gentlemen's club to allow both women and ethnic minorities as members. A stringent dress code is still strictly enforced: male members must wear a jacket and tie at all times, with female members maintaining a similar level of formality. Formal military wear and religious wear are acceptable alternatives. A single exception to the dress code is on hot summer days, when members are permitted to remove their jackets on the club's terrace, but not within the club itself.

It is the only London club to contain another club within - since 1990, the NLC has also been home to the Savage Club, which lodges in some rooms on their ground floor.

Members of the Old Millhillian's Club are also given access to the London facility. They are not, however, automatically members of the NLC and do not have the benefits of the reciprocal arrangements unless they join the NLC in their own right.