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David Lloyd George

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The Rt. Hon. David, Earl Lloyd George
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Periods in Office: December, 1916 – October, 1922
Predecessor(s): Herbert Henry Asquith
Successor(s): Andrew Bonar Law
Date of Birth: 17 January 1863
Date of Death: 26 March 1945
Place of Birth: Manchester
Place of Death: Ty Newydd, Llanystumdwy, Wales
Political Party: Liberal

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, OM, PC (January 17, 1863 – March 26, 1945) was a British statesman and the last member of the Liberal Party to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

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Upbringing and Early Life

Although born in Manchester in 1863, David Lloyd George was a Welsh-speaking Welshman, the only Welshman ever to hold the office of Prime Minister in the British government. In March 1863 his father who had been a school teacher in Manchester and other towns returned to Wales and took up farming but died in July 1864. His mother sold the farm and moved with her children to in Llanystumdwy, North Wales, where she lived with her brother, a cobbler and later Baptist preacher who encouraged him to take up a career in law and enter politics. His childhood showed through in all of his career, as he attempted to aid the common man at the expense of what he liked to call "the Dukes".

Articled to a firm of solicitors in Portmadoc , Lloyd George was admitted in 1884 after taking Honours in his final law examination and set up his own practice in the back parlour of his uncles house in 1885. The practice flourished, he established branch offices in surrounding towns and took his brother William into partnership in 1887. By then he was politically active having campaigned for theLiberal in the 1885 election in which he was attracted by Chamberlain's "unauthorised programme" of reforms. The election resulted firstly in a stalemate, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives having a majority, the balance of power being held by the Irish National Party and then in Gladstone's announcement of a determination to bring about Irish Home Rule which in turn led to Chamberlain leaving the Liberals to form the Liberal Unionists. LLoyd George was uncertain of which wing to follow, carrying a pro-Chamberlain resolution at the local Liberal Club and travelling to Birmingham planning to attend the first meeting of Chamberlain's National Radical Union but he had his dates wrong and arrived a week too early. In 1907 he was to say that he thought Chamberlains plan for a federal solution correct in 1886 and still thought so, that he preferred the unauthorised programme to the Whiggish platform of the official Liberal Party and that had Chamberlain proposed solutions to Welsh grievences such as land reform and disestablishment he, together with most Welsh liberals would have followed him.

On 24th January 1888 he married Margaret Owen, the daughter of a well to do local farming family. Also in that year he and other young Welsh liberals founded a monthly paper Udgorn Rhyddid (Trumpet of Freedom) and won on appeal to the Divisional Court of Queens Bench the Llanfrothen Burial case which established the right of Nonconformists to be buried according to their own denominational rites in parish burial grounds, a right given by the Burial Act 1880 until then ignored by the Anglican clergy. It was this case, which was hailed as a great victory throughout Wales and his writings in Udgorn Rhyddid that led to his adoption as the Liberal candidate for Caernarfon Boroughs on 27th December 1888.

In 1889 he became an Alderman on the Caernafon County Council which had been created by the Local Government Act 1887. At that time he appeared to be trying to create a separate Welsh National Party modelled on Parnell's Irish National Party and worked towards a union of the North and South Wales Liberal Federations.

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Early Political Career

His flair quickly showed, and he was narrowly returned Liberal MP for Caernarfon Boroughs on 13th April 1890 at a byelection caused by the death of the former Conservative member, his margin being 19 votes.When entering the House of Commons he sat with an informal grouping of Welsh Liberal members with a programme of disestablishing and disendowing the Church of England in Wales, temperance reform and Welsh home rule He would remain an MP until 1945, fifty-five years later.As at that time backbench members of the House of Commons were not paid he supported himself and his growing family by continuing to practise as a solicitor, opening an office in London under the title of Lloyd George and Co and continuing in partnership with William George in Criccieth. He was soon speaking on Liberal issues (particuarly temperance, the 'local option' and national as opposed to denominational education)throughout England as well as Wales.

During the next decade Lloyd George campaigned in Parliament largely for Welsh issues and in particular for disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England. He wrote extensively for Liberal papers such as the Manchester Guardian. When Gladstone retired after the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill in 1894 the Welsh Liberal members chose him to serve on a deputation to Harcourt to press for specific assurances on Welsh issues and when those were not fothcoming they resolved to take independent action if the government did not bring a bill for disestablishment. When that was not forthcoming he and four other Welsh Liberals refused the Whip on 14th April 1892 but accepted Lord Roseberry's assurance and rejoined the official Liberals on 29th May. Thereafter he devoted much time to setting up branches of Cymru Fydd (Young Wales) which, he said, would in time become a force like the Irish National Party. He abandoned this idea after being criticised in Welsh newspapers for bringing about the defeat of the Liberal Party in the 1895 election and when, at a meeting in Newport on 16th January 1896, the South Wales Liberal Federation moved that he be not heard.


He gained national fame by his vehement opposition to the Second Boer War.

In 1905, he entered the new Liberal Cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as President of the Board of Trade, and on Campbell-Bannerman's death he succeeded the new Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 to 1915. In this role, he was largely responsible for the introduction of old age pensions in Britain and began what is now referred to as the Welfare State.

Considered a pacifist until 1914, Lloyd George changed his stance when World War I broke out. When the Liberal government fell as a result of the Shell Crisis of 1915 and was replaced with a coalition government dominated by Liberals still under the Premiership of Asquith, Lloyd George became the first Minister of Munitions in 1915 and then war secretary in 1916.

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War time Prime Minister

Arms of David Lloyd-George
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Arms of David Lloyd-George

He progressed to replace Asquith as prime minister of a new wartime coalition government between the Liberals and the Conservatives. This was a move that split his Liberal Party into two factions; those who supported Asquith and those who supported the coalition government. Despite this opposition, Lloyd George steered the country politically through the war, and represented Britain at the Versailles Peace Conference, clashing with French Premier Georges Clemenceau, American President Woodrow Wilson and Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. Lloyd George wanted to punish Germany politically and economically for devastating Europe during the war, but did not want to utterly destroy the German economy and political system the way Clemenceau and many other people of France wanted to do. Memorably, he replied to a question as to how he had done at the peace conference, "Not badly, considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon." Lloyd George favoured plebiscites on the Germano-Polish border that resulted in many military clashes, and an extremely long and defenceless border between those two countries.

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Prime Minister Post War

Lloyd George began to feel the weight of the coalition with the Conservatives after the war. His decision to extend conscription to Ireland was nothing short of disastrous, indirectly leading a majority of Irish MPs to declare independence. He presided over a bloody war of attrition in Ireland, that led to the formation of the Irish Free State. The involvement of government in atrocities was a major factor in turning Irish people away from the United Kingdom. At one point, he famously declared of the IRA "We have murder by the throat!". However he was soon to begin negotiations with IRA leaders to recognise their authority and end the conflict.

His 1918 General Election campaign featured promises of reforms on education, housing, health and transport. That election was conducted by the coalition of "National Liberals" (not to be confused with the later National Liberal Party that entered the National Government formed in 1931) and the Unionist Party against the remaining Asquithian Liberals and the growing Labour Party. The Coalition endorsed proposed candidates under its "coupon" leading that election to be known as the Coupon Election). Lloyd George campaigned largely as "The Man who won the War", his election manifesto was summed up in a promise to build a "Land fit for Heroes". The "Lloyd George Coalition" won the election with what is still the greatest majority in the United Kingdom, holding 525 of the 707 seats. Asquith and some of his leading supporters lost their seats as did some of the leaders of the Labour Party.

The more traditional wing of the Unionist Party however, had no intention of introducing these reforms, which led to three years of frustrated fighting within the coalition both between the National Liberals and the Unionists and between factions within the Conservatives themselves. It was this fighting, coupled with the increasingly differing ideologies of the two forces in a country reeling from the costs of war that led to Lloyd George being removed from power. The Conservatives maintained that they did not need Lloyd George to be electable simply because he was the man who won the war for Britain.

In June 1922 they were able to show (by the use of letters that had fallen into the hands of Conservative Peeers) that he (through his party whips and press agent) had been selling knighthoods and peerages for money. This led to a major attack in the House of Lords on 22nd June 1922 in which Lord Harris asked why was a peerage offered to Sir Joseph Robinson who had in the previous year been convicted of major fraud charges in South Africa. The attack was continued on 17th July in the House of Commons by Ronald McNeill and in the Lords by the Duke of Northumberland who produced documentary evidence of offers of honours to a number of other disreputable persons, that King George V ( the 'fount of honour' and whose approval was formally required) had officially objected to some of those offers and that those offers showed a 'tariff' for purchase e g 12,000 pounds for knighthood, 35,000 pounds for a baronetcy. Persons to whom offers were made and whose elevation was attacked in the Lords included William Vestey, 1st Baron Vestey, Sir James Waring Lord Waring and Sir Archibald Williamson Lord Foress

The Conservatives also attacked Lloyd George as lacking any executive accountability as prime minister, claiming that he never turned up to Cabinet meetings and banished some government departments to the gardens of 10 Downing Street.

His government was brought down by the Chanak Crisis during which on 12th October 1922 at London's Carlton Club a meeting called by Austen Chamberlain as the leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons, the frustrated and underused coalition backbenchers sealed Lloyd George's fate. Austen Chamberlain and other prominent Conservatives such as Lord Birkenhead argued for supporting Lloyd George, while prospective party leader Andrew Bonar Law argued the other way, claiming that breaking up the coalition "wouldn't break Lloyd George's heart". The main attack came from Stanley Baldwin then a junior treasury minister who spoke of Lloyd George as a 'dynamic force' who would break the Conservative Party. Baldwin and many of the more progressive members of the Conservative Party fundamentally opposed Lloyd George and those who supported him on moral grounds. The motion that the Conservative Party should fight the next election (then due in a matter of months) on its own, rather than co-operating with the Coalition Liberals was carried 187 to 86.

David Lloyd George
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David Lloyd George
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Later political career

Throughout the next two decades Lloyd George remained on the margins of British politics, being frequently predicted to return to office but never succeeding. Before the 1923 election, he made up his dispute with Asquith, allowing the Liberals to run a united ticket, and in 1926 he succeeded Asquith as Liberal leader. In 1929 Lloyd George became Father of the House, the longest serving member of the Commons. In 1931 an illness prevented his joining the National Government when it was formed. Later when the National Government called a General Election he tried to pull the Liberal Party out of it but succeeded in taking only a few followers, most of whom were related to him; the main Liberal party remained in the coalition for a year longer, under the leadership of Sir Herbert Samuel.

In 1935 he sought to promote a radical programme of economic reform, often called "Lloyd George's New Deal" after the contemporary New Deal of the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However the programme did not find favour in the mainstream political parties. Later that year Lloyd George and his family reunited with the Liberal Party in Parliament. In the late 1930s he was sent by the British government to try to dissuade Adolf Hitler from his plans of Europe-wide fascist expansion. Lloyd-George had met Hitler earlier in the 1930s and offered some public comments that were surprisingly favorable to the German dictator. Despite this embarassment, however, as the 1930s progressed Lloyd-George became more clear-eyed about the German threat and joined Winston Churchill, among others, in fighting the government's policy of appeasement. In perhaps the last important parliamentary intervention of his career, which occurred during the crucial Norway debate of May, 1940, Lloyd-George made a powerful speech that helped to undermine Chamberlain as Prime Minister and to pave the way for the ascendency of Churchill as Premier on May 10.

During the Second World War there was speculation about Lloyd George returning to government, and even suggestions of making him Prime Minister once more, but these came to nothing. In fact, Churchill offered Lloyd-George a position in his cabinet (as Minister for Agriculture, Churchill believing that Lloyd-George's role of a gentleman farmer at his country estate giving him some particular expertise) but was refused; officially because Lloyd-George felt he was too old, but there has been speculation that he thought Great Britain would lose the war with Germany and Italy. In any case, it is quite certain he was pessimistic about Britain's prospects. He was also mooted as a potential ambassador to the United States after the death of Lord Lothian early in the war, but the possibility ultimately went nowhere, as there was some lack of enthusiasm in both Britain and the United States.

In early 1945 he was raised to the peerage as the Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor and the Viscount Gwynedd, of Dwyfor in the County of Caernarvonshire. He had already formed the view that he would lose his seat in the House of Commons at the next General Election, but the offer of a peerage might have turned his fortunes around, enabling him to remain active in politics not just for the next parliamentary term, but for the rest of his life. However, he died shortly afterwards at the age of 82 without ever taking up his seat in the House of Lords.

His perceived double-dealing on many issues alienated many of his former supporters, but there is no doubt that he was a brilliant politician, hence his nickname: The Welsh Wizard. He had a reputation as a womaniser. Following the death of his wife, he married his secretary and mistress, Frances Stevenson (who had been with Lloyd-George for over 30 years at the time of his death and became Countess Lloyd-George), a cultivated, beautiful Irishwoman now largely remembered for her extensive, insightful diaries that dealt with the issues and statesmen that were a part of her lover's life.

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Family

His son, Gwilym, and daughter, Megan, both followed him into politics and were elected members of parliament. They were politically faithful to their father throughout his life but following their father's death each drifted away from the Liberal Party, with Gwilym finishing his career as a Conservative Home Secretary, whilst Megan became a Labour MP in 1957, perhaps symbolising the fate of much of the old Liberal Party. The Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan is his great-granddaughter, and is currently an active professor and provost of Trinity College at the University of Toronto.

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War cabinet, December 1916–January 1919

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Changes

  • May - August 1917 - In temporary absence of Arthur Henderson, George Barnes, Minister of Pensions acts as a member of the War Cabinet.
  • June 1917 - Jan Smuts enters the War Cabinet as a Minister without Portfolio
  • July 1917 - Sir Edward Carson enters the War Cabinet as a Minister without Portfolio
  • August 1917 - George Barnes succeeds Arthur Henderson (resigned) as Minister without Portfolio and Labour Party member of the War Cabinet.
  • January 1918 - Carson resigns and is not replaced
  • April 1918 - Austen Chamberlain succeeds Lord Milner as Minister without Portfolio.
  • January 1919 Law becomes Lord Privy Seal and is succeeded as Chancellor of the Exchequer by Chamberlain; both remaining in the War Cabinet. Smuts is succeeded by Sir Eric Geddes as Minister without Portfolio.
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Other members of Lloyd George's war government

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Peacetime government, January 1919–October 1922

The War Cabinet was formally maintained for much of 1919, but as Lloyd George was out of the country for many months this did not noticeably make much of a difference. In October 1919 a formal Cabinet was reinstated.

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Changes

  • May 1919 - Sir Auckland Geddes succeeds Sir Albert Henry Stanley as President of the Board of Trade. Sir Eric Geddes becomes Minister of Transport.
  • October 1919 - Lord Curzon succeeds Balfour as Foreign Secretary. Balfour succeeds Curzon as Lord President. The Local Government Board is abolished. Christopher Addison becomes Minister of Health. The Board of Agriculture is abolished. Lord Lee becomes Minister of Agriculture. Sir Eric Geddes becomes Minister of Transport.
  • January 1920 - George Barnes leaves the cabinet.
  • March 1920 - Sir Robert Horne succeeds Sir Auckland Geddes as President of the Board of Trade. Thomas McNamara succeeds Horne as Minister of Labour.
  • April 1920 - Sir Hamar Greenwood succeeds Ian Macpherson as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Sir Laming Worthington-Evans joins the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio.
  • February 1921 - Winston Churchill succeeds Lord Milner as Colonial Secretary. Sir Laming Worthington-Evans succeeds Churchill as War Secretary. Lord Lee succeeds Walter Long at the Admiralty. Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen succeeds Lee as Minister of Agriculture.
  • March 1921 - Austen Chamberlain succeeds Bonar Law as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the Commons. Sir Robert Horne succeeds Chamberlain at the Exchequer. Stanley Baldwin succeeds Horne at the Board of Trade.
  • April 1921 - Lord French resigns from the cabinet, remaining Lord Lieutenant. Christopher Addison becomes a Minister without Portfolio. Sir Alfred Mond succeeds him as Minister of Health. The Ministry of Munitions is abolished.
  • November 1921 - Sir Eric Geddes resigns from the cabinet. His successor as Minister of Transport is not in the Cabinet. The Attorney General, Sir Gordon Hewart, enters the Cabinet.
  • March 1922 - Lord Peel succeeds Edwin Montagu as India Secretary.
  • April 1922 - The First Commissioner of Works, Lord Crawford, enters the Cabinet.
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Preceded by:
The Marquess of Salisbury		 President of the Board of Trade
1905–1908		 Succeeded by:
Winston Churchill
Preceded by:
Herbert Henry Asquith		 Chancellor of the Exchequer
1908–1915		 Succeeded by:
Reginald McKenna
Preceded by:
(Office created)		 Minister of Munitions
1915–1916		 Succeeded by:
Edwin Samuel Montagu
Preceded by:
The Earl Kitchener of Khartoum		 War Secretary
1916		 Succeeded by:
The Earl of Derby
Preceded by:
Herbert Henry Asquith		 Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
1916–1922		 Succeeded by:
Andrew Bonar Law
Preceded by:
The Earl of Oxford and Asquith		 Leader of the British Liberal Party
1926–1931		 Succeeded by:
Sir Herbert Samuel
Preceded by:
T.P. O'Connor		 Father of the House
1929–1945		 Succeeded by:
Edward Turnour, 6th Earl Winterton


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New Creation		 Earl Lloyd-George Succeeded by:
Richard Lloyd George
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