Jo Grimond

In the late 1940s and 50s, the Liberal Party seemed doomed to irrelevance. Its few MPs held their seats as a result of pacts to which Winston Churchill turned a blind eye. Its share of the vote was just 2.5%. Clement Davies, its leader at the time, in one of the bravest decisions he made, refused an offer of a merger from Churchill and chose to soldier on. However, it was Grimond, who picked up the mantle of leader after Davies' resignation and, in the face of seemingly insuperable odds, turned the fortunes of the Liberal Party around. When Grimond passed the torch on to his successor, Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberals were secure in their independence as the third force in British politics.