David
Lloyd George, the son of William George and Elizabeth Lloyd, was born
in Manchester on 17th January, 1863.
David's father, a schoolmaster, died a year after he was born and
his mother took her two children to live with her brother, Richard
Lloyd, a shoemaker in Llanystumdwy, Caernarvonshire. The Lloyd family
were staunch Nonconformists and
worshipped at the Disciples of Christ Chapel in Criccieth. Richard
Lloyd was Welsh-speaking and deeply resented English dominance over
Wales.
Lloyd George was an intelligent boy and did very well at his local
school. It was decided that he should become a solicitor and after
passing the Law Society examination was articled in January 1879,
to a firm of solicitors in Portmadoc. After completing his training,
David Lloyd George established his own law practice in Criccieth.
He soon developed a reputation as a solicitor who was willing to defend
people against those in authority.
In 1888 Lloyd George married Margaret Owen, the daughter of a prosperous
farmer. He remained an active member of the Disciples of Christ Chapel
and it was during his church work that he gained his early training
as an orator. Lloyd George developed a reputation as a fiery preacher
and was often asked to speak at Temperance
Society meetings in Wales.
Lloyd George joined the local Liberal Party
and became an alderman on the Caernarvon County Council. He also took
part in several political campaigns including one that attempted to
bring an end to church tithes. Lloyd George was also a strong supporter
of land reform. As a young man he had read books by Thomas
Spence, John Stuart Mill and Henry
George on the need to tackle this issue. He had also been impressed
by pamphlets written by George Bernard Shaw
and Sidney Webb of the Fabian
Society on the need to tackle the issue of land ownership.
In 1890 Lloyd George was selected as the Liberal candidate for the
Caernarvon Boroughconstituency. A by-election took place later that
year when the sitting Conservative
MP died. Lloyd George fought the election on a programme which called
for religious equality in Wales, land reform, the local veto in granting
licenses for the sale of alcohol, graduated taxation and free trade.
Lloyd George won the seat by 18 votes and at twenty-seven became the
youngest member of the House of Commons.
Lloyd George's dramatic oratory soon brought him to the attention
of the leaders of the Liberal Party in
the House of Commons. However, it was
felt he was too radical and they suspected that he would lose his
seat in the 1900 General Election because
of his opposition to the Boer War. However,
in Caernarvon he was seen as the most important figure in Parliament
defending Welsh rights and was re-elected.
The leadership of the Liberal Party also
disapproved of Lloyd George's role in the campaign against the 1902
Education Act. In his speeches on this issue he appeared to be
encouraging people to break the law by supporting John
Clifford and his National Passive Resistance Committee. As a result
of Clifford's campaign, over 170 Nonconformists
went to prison for refusing to pay their school taxes.
After the 1906 General Election, the leader
of the Liberal Party, Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman, became the new Prime-Minister. Lloyd
George was given the post of President of the
Board of Trade. In 1908 the new prime minister, Henry
Asquith,
promoted him to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd George
now had the opportunity to introduce reforms that he had been campaigning
for since he first arrived in the House of
Commons.
Lloyd George had been a long opponent of the Poor
Law in Britain. He was determined to take action that in his words
would "lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the
poor". He believed the best way of doing this was to guarantee
an income to people who were to old to work. Based on the ideas of
Tom Paine that first appeared in his book
Rights of Man in 1791, Lloyd George's measure, the Old
Age Pensions Act, provided between 1s. and 5s. a week to people
over seventy.
To pay for these pensions Lloyd George had to raise government revenues
by an additional £16 million a year. In 1909 Lloyd George announced
what became known as the People's Budget. This included increases
in taxation. Whereas people on lower incomes were to pay 9d. in the
pound, those on annual incomes of over £3,000 had to pay 1s.
2d. in the pound. Lloyd George also introduced a new supertax of 6d.
in the pound for those earning £5000 a year. Other measures included
an increase in death duties on the estates of the rich and heavy taxes
on profits gained from the ownership and sale of property. Other innovations
in Lloyd George's budget included labour exchanges and a children's
allowance on income tax.
The Conservatives, who had a large
majority in the House of Lords, objected
to this attempt to redistribute wealth, and made it clear that they
intended to block these proposals. Lloyd George reacted by touring
the country making speeches in working-class areas on behalf of the
budget and portraying the nobility as men who were using their privileged
position to stop the poor from receiving their old
age pensions. After a long struggle with the House
of Lords Lloyd George finally got his budget through parliament.
Bernard
Partridge (August, 1908)
With the
House of Lords extremely unpopular with the
British people, the Liberal government
decided to take action to reduce its powers. The 1911
Parliament Act drastically cut the powers of the Lords. They were
no longer allowed to prevent the passage of 'money bills' and it also
restricted their ability to delay other legislation to three sessions
of parliament.
When the House of Lords attempted to stop
this bill's passage, the Prime Minister, Henry
Asquith, appealed to George V for
help. Asquith, who had just obtained a victory in the 1910
General Election, was in a strong position, and the king agreed
that if necessary he would create 250 new Liberal
peers to remove the Conservative majority
in the Lords. Faced with the prospect of a House
of Lords with a permanent Liberal majority,
the Conservatives agreed to let the 1911 Parliament
Act to become law.
Lloyd George's next reform was the 1911
National Insurance Act. This gave the British working classes
the first contributory system of insurance against illness and unemployment.
All wage-earners between sixteen and seventy had to join the health
scheme. Each worker paid 4d a week and the employer added 3d. and
the state 2d. In return for these payments, free medical attention,
including medicine was given. Those workers who contributed were also
guaranteed 7s. a week for fifteen weeks in any one year, when they
were unemployed.
Lloyd George's reforms were strongly criticised and some Conservatives
accused him of being a socialist. There was no doubt that he had been
heavily influenced by Fabian Society pamphlets
on social reform that had been written by Beatrice
Webb, Sidney Webb and George
Bernard Shaw in the early 1900s. However, he had also been influenced
by non-socialist writers such Seebohm Rowntree
and Charles Booth.
Although most Labour Party members of the
House of Commons had welcomed Lloyd George's
reforms, politicians such as James Keir Hardie,
Fred Jowett and George
Lansbury argued that the level of benefits were far too low. They
also complained that the pensions should be universal and disliked
what was later to be called the Means Test aspect of these reforms.
In 1912 Hilaire Belloc and G.
K. Chesterton of the political weekly, The
Eye-Witness, accused Loyd George, along with Herbert
Samuel and Rufus Isaacs of corruption.
It was suggested that the men had profited by buying shares based
on knowledge of a government contract granted to the Marconi
Company to build a chain of wireless stations.
In January
1913 a parliamentary inquiry was held into the claims made by The
Eye Witness. It was discovered that Rufus
Isaacs had purchased 10,000 £2 shares in Marconi and immediately
resold 1,000 of these to Lloyd George. Although the parliamentary
inquiry revealled that Lloyd George, Herbert
Samuel and Sir Rufus Isaacs had profited
directly from the policies of the government, it was decided the men
had not been guilty of corruption.
When in opposition, Lloyd George had always been a supporter of women's
rights, however, when in power, he did little to help the cause. This
upsets members of both the NUWSS and the
WSPU and resulted in many activists leaving
the Liberal Party. In July 1912, Christabel
Pankhurst began organizing a secret arson campaign. One of their
first targets was Lloyd George and they successful burnt down a house
that was being built for him.
At the end of July, 1914, it became clear to the British government
that the country was on the verge of war with Germany. Four senior
members of the government, Lloyd George, Charles
Trevelyan, John Burns, and John
Morley, were opposed to the country becoming involved in a European
war. They informed the Prime Minister, Herbert
Asquith, they intended to resign over the issue. When war was
declared on 4th August, three of the men, Trevelyan, Burns and Morley,
resigned, but Asquith managed to persuade Lloyd George, to change
his mind.
The progressive wing of the Liberal Party,
was disappointed with Lloyd George's unwillingness to oppose Britain's
involvement in the First World War. In
fact, he soon emerged as one of the main figures in the government
willing to escalate the war in an effort to bring a quick victory.
When the war appeared to be going badly in 1915, Lloyd George was
asked to become Minister of Munitions. The coalition government was
impressed with Lloyd George's abilities as a war minister and began
to question Asquith's leadership of the country during this crisis.
In December, 1916 Lloyd George agreed to collaborate with the Conservatives
in the cabinet to remove Herbert Asquith.
Lloyd George, who had upset the radicals in his party by not opposing
conscription in 1916, was now in overall charge of the war effort.
However, Lloyd George found it difficult to control the tactics used
by his generals on the Western Front but he had more success with
the navy when he persuaded them to use the convoy system to ensure
adequate imports of food and military supplies. An energetic war leader,
Lloyd George received a lot of credit for Britain's eventual victory
over the Triple Alliance.
Lloyd George's
decision to join the Conservatives
in removing Herbert Asquith in 1916 split
the Liberal Party. In the 1918
General Election, many Liberals supported candidates who remained
loyal to Asquith. Despite this, Lloyd George's Coalition group won
459 seats and had a large majority over the Labour
Party and members of the Liberal Party
that supported Asquith.
Herbert Asquith lost his seat in East
Fife in 1918 and William Wedgwood Benn led
the groups opposed to Lloyd George's government. John
Benn, who was also opposed to Lloyd George, gave the group the
name, Wee Frees, after a small group of Free Church of Scotland members
who refused to accept the union of their church with the United Presbyterian
Church.
At
the Versailles Peace Conference Lloyd
George clashed with Georges Clemenceau
about how the defeated powers should be treated. Lloyd George told
Clemenceau that his proposals were too harsh and would "plunge
Germany and the greater part of Europe into Bolshevism." Clemenceau
replied that Lloyd George's alternative proposals would lead to Bolshevism
in France.
At
the end of the negotiations Clemenceau managed to restore Alsace-Lorraine
to France but some of his other demands were
resisted by the other delegates. Clemenceau, like most people in France,
thought that Germany had been treated
too leniently at Versailles.
During
the 1918 General Election campaign, Lloyd
George promised comprehensive reforms to deal with education, housing,
health and transport. However, he was now a prisoner of the Conservative
Party who had no desire to introduce these reforms. Lloyd George
endured three years of frustration before he was ousted from power
by the Conservative members of his cabinet.
For the next twenty years Lloyd George
continued to campaign for progressive causes, but without a political
party to support him, he was never to hold power again. During the
1920s Lloyd George produced several reports on how Britain could be
improved. This included Coal and Power
(1924), Towns and the Land (1925),
Britain's Industrial Future (1928)
and We Can Conquer Unemployment
(1929).
In September 1936 Lloyd George visited Adolf
Hitler in an attempt to persuade him not to stop taking military
action in Europe. Although Lloyd George agreed that Germany
had been badly treated after the First World
War, he was opposed to the British government's policy of appeasement.
David
Lloyd George
died on 26th March, 1945.
(1)
Jennie
Lee , My Life With Nye (1980)
Lloyd George was a wonderful orator. I have heard
my father say that when he came to address meetings in Scotland you
had to hold on to your seat not to be carried away. And in his early
years he was deeply concerned to make life more tolerable for the
poor. He fought for his social security legislation with all his boundless
energy and adroitness; the only thing he was not prepared to do for
the poor was to become one of them. He needed money, lots of money,
to maintain a home for his wife and family in Wales and another in
England for his secretary, who became his mistress.
In our part of the world Lloyd George was no hero. We did not forgive
or forget the Khaki Election of 1918. Nor his treatment of pacifists
during the war. Nor the Marconi Scandal. Nor the way he played fast
and loose with the Suffragette Movement, doing nothing to oppose forceful
feeding or to undo the notorious Cat and Mouse Act.
What Lloyd George failed to understand was no man, however gifted,
is a major political power in himself. He can teach, he can preach,
he can make a significant contribution, but power politics is a struggle
between social forces, not a duel between individuals. Once the war
was over the Tories had no more use for him. He was an outsider, an
upstart Welsh lawyer who had got above himself.
(2) David Lloyd George,
Budget speech (1909)
This is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage
implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help
hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away,
we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty,
and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in
its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves
which once infested its forests.
(3)
David Lloyd George, speech (21st July 1911)
Personally I am a sincere advocate of all means which would
lead to the settlement of international disputes by methods such as
those which civilization has so successfully set up for the adjustment
of differences between individuals.
But I
am also bound to say this - that I believe it is essential in the
highest interests, not merely of this country, but of the world, that
Britain should at all hazards maintain her place and her prestige
amongst the Great Powers of the world. Her potent influence has many
a time been in the past, and may yet be in the future, invaluable
to the cause of human liberty. It has more than once in the past redeemed
Continental nations, who are sometimes too apt to forget that service,
from overwhelming disaster and even from national extinction. I would
make great sacrifices to preserve peace. I conceive that nothing would
justify a disturbance of international good will except questions
of the gravest national moment. But if a situation were to be forced
upon us in which peace could only be preserved by the surrender of
the great and beneficent position Britain has won by centuries of
heroism and achievement, by allowing Britain to be treated where her
interests were vitally affected as if she were of no account in the
Cabinet of nations, then I say emphatically that peace at that price
would be a humiliation intolerable for a great country like ours to
endure.
(4) On the 4th September, 1914, C.
P. Scott, recorded details of a meeting he had with David Lloyd
George that day.
He (Lloyd George), Beauchamp, Morley and Burns had all resigned
from the Cabinet on the Saturday (1st August) before the declaration
of war on the ground that they could not agree to Grey's pledge to
Cambon (the French ambassador in London) to protect north coast of
France against Germans, regarding this as equivalent to war with Germany.
On urgent representations of Asquith he (Lloyd George) and Beauchamp
agreed on Monday evening to remain in the Cabinet without in the smallest
degree, as far as he was concerned, withdrawing his objection to the
policy but solely in order to prevent the appearance of disruption
in face of a grave national danger. That remains his position. He
is, as it were, an unattached member of the Cabinet.
David Low, The Star
(1922)
(5)
J. R. Clynes, Memoirs (1937)
Shortly after the outbreak of war Lloyd George who had solemnly sworn
during the Boer War that he would resign from politics if ever England
entered an armed struggle again, made some speeches which went echoing
from end to end of Britain. He said "The British Empire is finding
its purpose in the great design of Providence upon earth, finding
it in this great war for liberty and for right. This is a holy war,
not a war of conquest. As the Lord liveth, we seek not a yard of German
colonies. We are in this war with motives of purest chivalry.
(6) C. P. Scott,
editor of the Manchester Guardian,
recorded in his diary comments made by David Lloyd George at a private
meeting on 27th December, 1917.
I listened last night, at a dinner given to Philip Gibbs on
his return from the front, to the most impressive and moving description
from him of what the war (on the Western Front) really means, that
I have heard. Even an audience of hardened politicians and journalists
were strongly affected. If people really knew, the war would be stopped
tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know. The correspondents
don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth. What they
do send is not the war, but just a pretty picture of the war with
everybody doing gallant deeds. The thing is horrible and beyond human
nature to bear and I feel I can't go on with this bloody business.
(7) After the First World
War, Lord Northcliffe, who had
served in David Lloyd George's cabinet, was highly critical of the
prime minister.
During the war no one could doubt his patriotism. It was sincere and
fearless. But he could not understand comradeship in any enterprise.
He only appreciated team work when he was the captain of the team.
He resented that co-operation which implied equality and give and
take. He had no confidence in any show which he did not run himself.
(8)
David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (1938)
Modern
warfare, we discovered, was to a far greater extent than ever before
a conflict of chemists and manufacturers. Manpower, it is true, was
indispensable, and generalship will always, whatever the conditions,
have a vital part to play. But troops, however brave and well led,
were powerless under modern conditions unless equipped with adequate
and up-to-date artillery (with masses of explosive shell), machine-guns,
aircraft and other supplies. Against enemy machine-gun posts and wire
entanglements the most gallant and best-led men could only throw away
their precious lives in successive waves of heroic martydom. Their
costly sacrifice could avail nothing for the winning of victory.
(9)
David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (1938)
It is not too much to say that when the Great War broke
out our Generals had the most important lessons of their art to learn.
Before they began they had much to unlearn. Their brains were cluttered
with useless lumber, packed in every niche and corner.
(10)
Raymond
Poincare diary entry (14th March, 1919)
Today Clemenceau is angry with the English,
and especially with Lloyd George. -I won't budge," he said, -
I will act like a hedgehog and wait until they come to talk to me.
I will yield nothing. We will see if they can manage without me. Lloyd
George is a trickster. He has managed to turn me into a "Syrian".
I don't like being double-crossed. Lloyd George has deceived me. He
made me the finest promises, and now he breaks them. Fortunately,
I think that at the moment we can count on American support. What
is the worst of all is that the day before yesterday, Lloyd George
said to me. "Well, now that we are going to disarm Germany, you
no longer need the Rhine". I said to Clemenceau: " Does
disarmament then seem to him to give the same guarantees? Does he
think that, in the future, we can be sure of preventing Germany from
rebuilding her army?" "We are in complete agreement,"
said Clemenceau; " it is a point I will not yield."
(11) In her book, Margaret
Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution Margaret Cole commented
on Lloyd George's decision to encourage hostility towards the peace
movement during the 1918 General Election.
Lloyd George came into public life as a great Radical and who, as
his later history showed, retained so much of real radicalism in his
heart, should at that moment, of all moments, have chosen to hang
on to personal power at the price of giving way to the worst elements
in the community - only to be cast out by the Tories like an old shoe,
when he had served his purpose, killed the Liberal Party, and deceived
the working class so thoroughly that they would never trust him again.
(12) After the 1922 General
Election, Margot Asquith, the wife of Herbert
Asquith, wrote to C. P. Scott criticizing
his decision to support David Lloyd George in his campaign to be re-elected
(21st November, 1922)
I feel very bitter about Lloyd George; his is the kind of
character I mind most, because I feel his charm and recognize his
genius; but he is full of emotion without heart, brilliant with intellect,
and a gambler without foresight. He has reduced our prestige and stirred
up resentment by his folly - in India, Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Russia,
America, and France.
(13) Hilaire Belloc,
unpublished memoirs written in 1937.
David Lloyd George excelled even the ruck of politicians in his
desire for what he thought was fame, as well as his extravagant greed
for money. The two things do not usually go together but in his case
it was difficult to say which was the stronger. He fully achieved
both. Lloyd George began as a small Nonconformist Radical member of
Parliament. He was a fluent speaker and appealed strongly to the audiences
which in an earlier generation had also been appealed to by Spurgeon,
Moody and Sankey and people of that kind. He may possibly like other
men of the sort who enter public life had some sort of convictions
when he begun, but he had certainly lost them by the year 1900 and
was purely on the make.
(14) Some people believed that the cartoons
of David Lloyd George by David Low in the Daily
Star helped to force him out of office in 1922.
David Lloyd George was the best-hated statesman of his time, as well
as the best loved. The former I have good reason to know; every time
I made a pointed cartoon against him, it brought batches of approving
letters from all the haters. Looking at Lloyd George's pink and hilarious,
head thrown back, generous mouth open to its fullest extent, shouting
with laughter at one of his own jokes, I thought I could see how it
was that his haters hated him. He must have been poison to the old
school tie brigade, coming to the House an outsider, bright, energetic,
irrepressible, ruthless, mastering with ease the House of Commons
procedure, applying all the Celtic tricks in the bag, with a talent
for intrigue that only occasionally got away from him.
I always had the greatest difficulty in making Lloyd George sinister
in a cartoon. Every time I drew him, however critical the comment,
I had to be careful or he would spring off the drawing-board a lovable
cherubic little chap. I found the only effective way of putting him
definitely in the wrong in a cartoon was by misplacing this quality
in sardonic incongruity - by surrounding the comedian with tragedy.
(15)
David Lloyd George, Daily Express
(17th November, 1936)
I have just returned from a visit to Germany. ... I have now seen
the famous German leader and also something of the great change he
has effected. Whatever one may think of his methods - and they are
certainly not those of a Parliamentary country - there can be no doubt
that he has achieved a marvellous transformation in the spirit of
the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social
and economic outlook.
One man
has accomplished this miracle. He is a born leader of men. A magnetic
dynamic personality with a single-minded purpose, a resolute will,
and a dauntless heart. He is the national Leader. He is also securing
them against that constant dread of starvation which is one of the
most poignant memories of the last years of the war and the first
years of the Peace. The establishment of a German hegemony in Europe
which was the aim and dream of the old prewar militarism, is not even
on the horizon of Nazism.
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