David Lloyd George

Prime minister of the United Kingdom (1916-1922)

• Born: January 17, 1863
• Birthplace: Manchester, England
• Died: March 26, 1945
• Place of death: Ty Newydd, near Llanystumdwy, Wales

Lloyd George guided the United Kingdom through the trials of World War I and ushered in a new era the age of the common person as world leader.

Early Life

David Lloyd George was the son of William George, a schoolmaster of Welsh descent, and Elizabeth Lloyd, the daughter of a Welshman. David soon became acquainted with his roots; after the death of her husband in 1864, Elizabeth Lloyd took her two children (another son was born subsequently) to live with her brother in Llanystumdwy, Wales. From his uncle, Richard Lloyd, a dissenting Baptist preacher, liberal political activist, and master shoemaker, Lloyd George acquired not only his distinctive surname but also his talent for oratory, his passion for social issues, and his characteristic willfulness.

Most photographs of Lloyd George feature the prominent shock of flowing white hair and distinctive mustache, and date generally from his tenure as prime minister during and after World War I. Other photographs from as late as 1912 show a much younger-looking man, with darker hair and a fresher face, harboring the same piercing eyes; comparison reveals the strain Lloyd George bore during the nightmarish stalemate of “the war to end all wars.”

Growing up in the Welsh countryside, Lloyd George learned early of the inherent political, social, and religious conflicts between his neighbors and their wealthy British landlords. His avid partisanship, the basis for his lifelong defense of the rights of the common man, was forged early. After attending the Anglican village school, he was articled in 1879 to a solicitor’s firm in Portmadoc. He gained attention by speaking eloquently on land reform and temperance issues, and pleased his uncle by taking a few turns in local Nonconformist pulpits.

In 1884, Lloyd George passed the law exam and opened a practice in Criccieth. He became active in organizing a local farmers’ union and in opposing the Anglican tithe, again showing a marked partisanship. In 1888, he married Margaret Owen, the future mother of his five children. The same year saw the creation of the new county council. Lloyd George’s involvement in this agrarian populist politics led to his election in 1890 as a member of Parliament from Caernarvon Boroughs. He would hold his seat for the next fifty-five years.

Life’s Work

As a newcomer to the House of Commons, Lloyd George’s initial interest was in home rule for Wales. He showed assertiveness (and stubbornness) in spearheading a revolt against Lord Rosebery’s leadership of the Liberal Party in 1894-1895, and political skill in pushing a bill to disestablish the Church of England in Wales. He risked much in his adamant criticism of the South African War on both moral and political grounds, but this joust with the imperial establishment marked him as one of the most important young men of his party.

With the return of the Liberals to power in 1905, Lloyd George became president of the Board of Trade. Showing himself an able administrator, he was instrumental in creating the Port of London Authority, which brought much-needed order (as well as increased capacity) to London’s dockyards. He also lobbied successfully for legislation to clarify Great Britain’s confusing patent and copyright laws, and to expand and upgrade the merchant marine.

H. H. Asquith became prime minister in 1908, and Lloyd George was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd George’s transition from fiery orator to indispensable administrator represents a remarkable personal achievement. He combined cool, logical organization with boldness bordering on heresy in promoting his “People’s Budget” of 1909. Designed to fund both a massive naval buildup (the arms race with imperial Germany was well under way) and a progressive program of social legislation, the budget showed the ruthless precision of its author by drawing on such hitherto untouchable sources as property, income, and inheritance. The wealthy landed class, privileged oppressor of Lloyd George’s youth and ancestry, met its nemesis. The resulting interparliamentary crisis led to the limiting of the Lords’ Veto, a significant step in the progress of British government; one more link with the past was broken. Lloyd George went on to introduce the National Insurance Act in 1911, and, amid charges of outright socialism, succeeded in establishing a plan of compensation for illness, injury, and unemployment for the working classes. Lloyd George’s will, his greatest political asset, had again helped overcome tradition.

The year 1911 brought crisis. Germany, headed by the master sword rattler of his day, Kaiser Wilhelm, sent a gunboat to Agadir in the French colony of Morocco as a show of force. Lloyd George, whose life had been threatened for opposing the South African War, gave a speech warning of Great Britain’s intolerance of such interference in French affairs. His popularity rose instantly. In an age of nationalist fervor, the ardent advocate of Wales stepped onto the international stage.

Broad exposure was followed by embarrassment in the form of the Marconi scandal in 1912. Lloyd George was one of several ministers who invested in the American Marconi Company just before it received a British government contract to develop the radio-telegraph. He and the others found themselves stigmatized until World War I arrived to absorb the attention of the public and make corruption seem relatively unimportant.

With the German violation of Belgian neutrality in August, 1914, Lloyd George began the restoration of his reputation by voicing strong support for the war effort. This restoration was completed with his success in the new ministry of munitions, part of Asquith’s equally new coalition government of May, 1915. Since Great Britain, like all the combatants, had foreseen and planned only for a short conflict (popular theories abounded as to how, given the interdependency of modern economies, the war simply could not last more than a few short months), Lloyd George’s values as an arbitrator, builder, and organizer can scarcely be exaggerated. Alarming deficiencies in war matériel became surpluses; Great Britain settled in for the long conflict, owing a great debt to Lloyd George’s leadership.

When Lord Kitchener was drowned in June, 1916, Lloyd George became minister of war. This influential position brought him into immediate conflict with members of the British high command over matters of strategy. Lloyd George was one of several prominent individuals (Winston Churchill was another) who advocated finding some sort of “eastern alternative” to the bloody attrition of trench warfare in Belgium and France. British military leaders, notably Sir Douglas Haig, resented this civilian interference in their sphere of influence; this schism hampered the British war effort for two years, culminating in the disastrous Flanders campaign of 1917. Lloyd George’s role in this quarrel and in all phases of the war effort increased when he succeeded Asquith as prime minister in December, 1916.

Lloyd George had reached the pinnacle of political success; he had also sown the seeds of his own downfall. By siding with the Conservatives in the rebellion against Asquith’s ineffective leadership, he alienated his colleague and much of the Liberal Party, which would adversely affect his postwar career. During the war, however, he was without equal in popularity and influence. Showing characteristic strength of will, Lloyd George united the public much as Churchill would in the next war, and was instrumental in forging such achievements as the creation of a joint Allied command, a personal triumph and a large step toward victory.

At the war’s end, Lloyd George and his coalition were overwhelmingly returned. He again demonstrated his talents as a mediator at the peace conference, negotiating between the widely diverging views of Woodrow Wilson and Georges Clemenceau. In 1921, Lloyd George supported the formation of the Irish Free State; this success lost for him the support of the Conservatives. The Turkish crisis of 1922 found Lloyd George and the Conservatives again on opposing sides; his support for the Greeks was soundly rejected. He resigned in October, never again to serve in a ministerial capacity.

The Liberal Party, divided between Asquith and Lloyd George, lost much of its membership to Labour in the decade following the war. Lloyd George failed in an attempted comeback in 1929; his party, as a viable political base, had disappeared.

Lloyd George spent his final fifteen years in relative obscurity. He favored concessions to Nazi Germany, although in his last highly visible act he called for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s resignation for supporting a policy of appeasing the Nazis. After his wife’s death in 1941, Lloyd George married his secretary of thirty years, Frances Louise Stevenson. On December 31, 1944, he became a peer. He died in Wales on March 26, 1945.

Significance

Lloyd George was a new kind of politician for a new century. His fiery populism, a position supported more by oratory and cunning than by birth or connection, represented a new and vibrant force in British politics. His career was full of paradox and contradiction. Though a man of peace, he gained his greatest popularity and met his greatest success in war. Though a fierce individualist, he accomplished much through compromise. His popularity and willingness to compromise led directly to the destruction of his party and the end of his own career. As a result, this man of the people found himself cast aside by the postwar masses, who flocked to socialism and the Labour Party. It is at least arguable that senility was in part responsible for his misreading of Adolf Hitler; willpower may have given way to wishful thinking. Still, Lloyd George was certainly not alone in his opinions, and the thoughts of a man in his seventies should not diminish his earlier accomplishments, which were huge.

Lloyd George led his country through the worst calamity the world had yet known, and set an example of social consciousness at the highest level of government. His nation and the democracies of the West remain greatly in his debt.

Bibliography

Campbell, John. Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922-1931. London: Jonathan Cape, 1977. A study of Lloyd George’s unsuccessful attempts to revive the shattered Liberal Party.

Grigg, John. Lloyd George: From Peace to War, 1912-1916. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Focuses on the transition from man of peace to leader of the war effort.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Lloyd George: War Leader, 1916-1918. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Focuses on Lloyd George’s actions during the final years of World War I.

MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random House, 2002. Examines the intent, goals, and constraints of the people who negotiated the Treaty of Versailles after World War I, focusing on Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and President Woodrow Wilson.

Purcell, Hugh. Lloyd George. London: Haus, 2006. Concise but thorough overview of Lloyd George’s life and career, part of a series of biographies of British prime ministers.

Rowland, Peter. David Lloyd George: A Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1976. The definitive biography.

Scally, Robert J. The Origins of the Lloyd George Coalition: The Politics of Social-Imperialism, 1900-1918. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1975. Traces Lloyd George’s progress from agitator to coalition builder and world leader. Interesting insights into the man’s erratic brilliance.

Sylvester, A. J. Life with Lloyd George: The Diary of A. J. Sylvester. Edited by Colin Cross. London: Macmillan, 1975. A useful secondary source, full of detail.

Tuchman, Barbara W. The Proud Tower. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Provides useful background information for study of Lloyd George and of most of his major contemporaries in Great Britain and abroad.