parliamentary group that became most palpable as a vigorous faction within the parliamentary opposition to the Conservative government of Harry Albert Atkinson (1887–90) and that provided the Liberal Party with many of its future major figures. Prominent in the party were William Pember Reeves, Joseph Ward, and John McKenzie, all advocates of modern social and economic ideas that were required to raise the standards of New Zealand society. The party was bound together not only by its program but also by a national self-consciousness that moved its members to think of themselves as New Zealanders rather than as transplanted Britons.