Lloyd George, David, 1st Earl of Dwyfor

I

Introduction

Lloyd George, David, 1st Earl of Dwyfor (1863-1945), British Prime Minister (1916-1922), who led the United Kingdom through the latter part of World War I and the early post-war years.

Born of Welsh parentage in Manchester, Lloyd George was raised, after the early death of his father, by his mother and her shoemaker brother, Richard Lloyd, in Caernarvonshire. His was a relatively humble and strongly Nonconformist background. After elementary schooling, he trained as a solicitor, in due course setting up a law firm with his brother. From an early age he was active in Liberal politics and in 1890 was elected to Parliament in a by-election.

II

Early Career

Lloyd George was a prominent Welsh Nonconformist Radical in the 1890s, advocating land and educational reforms, temperance, and disestablishment of the Welsh church. In the mid-1890s he tried to lead Welsh nationalism. He came to the fore of British politics with his opposition to the South African War, and the Conservative government's Education Act of 1902. As a result of his leading role on these two issues and as the leading Nonconformist politician, Lloyd George's ministerial career began in the Cabinet, as President of the Board of Trade, when the Liberal Party under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman took office in 1905. In this position he won the respect of both employers and trade unions for his effective interventions in industrial disputes and for the business-friendly legislation promoted by his department.

In 1908 Lloyd George was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer. His 1909 budget (“The People's Budget”) was deemed very radical for the time, with its substantial provision for social reforms and for naval building and also for a highly controversial proposal for a detailed valuation of land that threatened future higher taxation. The budget's rejection by the House of Lords caused a constitutional crisis, leading to two general elections in 1910 and the placing of a time limit on the powers of veto of the House of Lords by the Parliament Act of 1911. Lloyd George's speeches condemning the peers were notably vitriolic; one given at Limehouse in the East End of London even resulted in the term “limehouse” entering the English language, denoting an abusive and demagogic speech. Lloyd George was also associated with the major Liberal social reforms, old age pensions (1908) and health insurance (1911) in particular (see Liberal Britain).

At the beginning of World War I, Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, took the necessary steps to prevent a financial panic and also to raise the finance needed for a major war. With a massive demand for munitions, Lloyd George took on the new post of Minister of Munitions and oversaw the expansion of output. In 1916 he became secretary of state for war. Committed to victory, he became an early Liberal proponent of conscription. He also became convinced of the need for the direction of the war to be supervised not by a large Cabinet but by a small war committee. Conflict over this issue was the immediate cause of the fall of Herbert Asquith as prime minister in December 1916.

III

War Leader

Lloyd George became prime minister, at the head of a coalition government, on December 6, 1916. He replaced the Cabinet of 20 ministers with a war cabinet of 5 to 7 (until October 31, 1919). He shook up the organization of government, creating new ministries and the “garden suburb” at 10 Downing Street of his own advisers. He committed Britain to outright victory (“the knock-out blow”) and worked to achieve a unified allied command. Many of those high in the British war effort later paid tribute to his courage and dedication, and to the popular press and many of the public he was “The Man Who Won The War”. Unlike Winston Churchill in 1945, Lloyd George won a landslide victory in the post-war general election of 1918. In 1919 his prestige was at its zenith when he was one of the peacemakers at Paris and a framer of the Treaty of Versailles.

Due to the split with Asquith, his post-war coalition government was heavily reliant on Conservative support. This ebbed away, notably after 1920. In the 1918 general election he had promised “a fit land for heroes to live in”, resulting in a substantial housing programme and extensions to unemployment insurance. However, the repayment of war debt, the decision to return to the gold standard (which involved deflation of the economy) and the severe economic recession of 1921 to 1922 reversed much of Lloyd George's social programmes, the biggest reductions coming at the behest of advice of a committee under Sir Eric Geddes to review public expenditure (“the Geddes axe” of 1922). Lloyd George also disappointed many of his pre-war supporters in his tough policy in Ireland, using the army and unsavoury auxiliary forces (including the “Black and Tans”) to wage war against the Republican forces. He succeeded in resolving the conflict in Ireland for some decades with the 1921 Irish Treaty, though this settlement further undercut much Conservative support from his coalition government (see Irish Revolution).

Lloyd George also alienated Conservative support through his foreign policy after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. In the ensuing three years he attended a series of much-heralded European conferences, at which he attempted to resolve the reparations issue, to bring both Germany and Russia back into normal relations with the rest of Europe, and generally to assist economic recovery. His willingness to deal with Soviet Russia and the general failure to achieve major results, especially at the Genoa conference of April 1922 over repayment of the Russian war debt, further weakened his support. Worse still was the Chanak crisis over the city of Smyrna (now İzmir), when Lloyd George's support for Greece almost led to a military confrontation with Turkey in Asia Minor. Although peacefully resolved in October, it damaged Lloyd George's political credibility. It was one, but only one, of the reasons for the size of the vote (187) by Conservative MPs against continuing the coalition government at a meeting at the Carlton Club on October 19, 1922, which forced his resignation.

IV

Elder Statesman

After a year Lloyd George and his Liberal supporters merged with Asquith and the main part of the Liberal Party when the Conservative prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, wished to end free trade. In 1926, Asquith resigned as Liberal Leader over the General Strike, when it was apparent most Liberal members, like Lloyd George, opposed the Conservative government's policy. Lloyd George was then in effect Liberal leader from 1926 until 1931. In opposition in the 1920s he sponsored major rethinking of Liberal policies and was himself involved, along with the economist J. M. Keynes, in coming up with proposals to “conquer” unemployment.

From 1931 until 1944 Lloyd George was a respected but often isolated elder statesman in the House of Commons. He was briefly impressed by Adolf Hitler and his public works but was hostile to Benito Mussolini. He increasingly wanted a tougher British stance against the fascist dictators and deplored the Munich settlement. He declined Churchill's 1940 offers of positions as Director of Food Production and of ambassador to Washington. Deteriorating in health, his outlook was often pessimistic. Yet, hoping to comment on peacemaking, he accepted a peerage in 1945, by which time he was already terminally ill with cancer.

A prestigious author, among Lloyd George's works are his War Memoirs, 6 vols (1933-1936) and The Truth About the Peace Treaties, 2 vols (1938).