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Lloyd George

Name: David Lloyd George

Achievements: Prime Minister of Britain.  Took first step to welfare state.

Born: January 17, 1863; Manchester, England.

Died: March 26, 1945; Tynewydd, Caernarvonshire, Wales (Aged 82)

Field & Discipline: Politics

Language: English

Father: William George

Mother: Elizabeth Lloyd.

Siblings: William; Mary Ellen

Spouse: 1) Margaret Owen; 2) Frances Stevenson

Children: by Owen: Richard; Gwilym; Mair; Megan; Olwen

Education: Church of England village school, Llanystumdwy, Wales

Major Work:

"War Memoirs" (1933-36)

"The Truth About the Peace Treaties" (1938)

Life & Times:

Lloyd George made an early name as a powerful speaker and in 1899 he was elected to Parliament as the Liberal member for Caernarvon  in Wales.  In 1905, he took office for the first time as President of the Board of Trade in the Liberal administration led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

In this role, Lloyd George was responsible for the Merchant Shipping Act of 1906 that improved conditions for seamen,  and the Port of London Act of 1908 that set up the

Port of London Authority.  Then, in 1908, he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer at the same time Herbert Asquith took over as Prime Minister from  Campbell-Bannerman.

In his first budget, the famous ‘People's Budget’ of 1909, he introduced measures to combat poverty and set out new methods of taxation to fund increased welfare spending.  The package included schemes for public spending on transport and agriculture, which would provide employment opportunities

More controversially, he proposed to tax unearned increases on land values, to increase death duties and to introduce a super-tax on the more wealthy.  Considering that the members of the House of Lords were mainly landowners and wealthy, not surprisingly they rejected his budget.

At the time, the House of Lords had the power to dictate what was or wasn’t included in a budget.  This issue became the cause of two general elections and led to the passing of  an Act of Parliament in 1911 which removed the Lords’ power of veto over budgets.

Lloyd George succeeded in passing the National Insurance Act in 1911 against strong opposition.  This was a contributory insurance scheme for health and unemployment, funded by contributions from both employers and employees, which became the first step in the creation of the modern welfare state.

During the coalition government in the First World War of 1914 to 1918, Lloyd George was vigorous in his new position as Minister of Munitions.  He employed businessmen in his department and made stirring speeches to munitions workers in order to speed up the delivery of supplies.

His methods annoyed the Conservatives,  but his effectiveness was one of the reasons Asquith made  him Secretary of War after the death of Lord Kitchener in 1916. In this job, Lloyd George totally disagreed with the accepted military strategy of fighting for a breakthrough on the Western Front.  Instead, he favored an attack on Germany from the East,  against the views of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

As the war of attrition on the Western Front continued with great loss of life, he got more and more support from members of parliament,  and calls were made for Asquith to hand over conduct of the war to a small group headed by Lloyd George. In December 1916, Asquith resigned and Lloyd George took over as Prime Minister.

He immediately appointed a war cabinet of five people, who were able to make much faster decisions than the previous body of twenty-three members.  At the Calais Conference in February 1917, he insisted that the next offensive should be under the command of Britain's ally, France.   This campaign,  under the French general Robert-Georges Nivelle, was a failure.

Lloyd George was much more successful in his measure against the German submarines causing serious disruption to shipping and preventing supplies reaching Britain.  By 1917 food shortages were critical, so he forced through the acceptance of a convoy system, introduced legislation to increase agricultural production and, in 1918, imposed food rationing.

In March 1917, he called the ministers of Britain's Dominions to an Imperial War Conference.  He was so impressed with the South African leader, [co-opted] Smuts*, that he gave him a seat in the War Cabinet and made him responsible for the organization of the Royal Flying Corps (a few years later renamed the Royal Air Force).   Close co-operation with Dominion leaders was a critical step in ensuring a consistent war effort within the British Empire.

In the winter of 1917, General Haig requested more troops but Lloyd George, with a deep distrust of the generals, refused, afraid that Haig would use them for an ill-advised attack.  He kept a tight rein on all war decisions so that he was completely in control,  and was proved right when, without the extra troops, the Germans were defeated in 1918 and the war came to an end.

Lloyd George called a general election, which resulted in victory for his coalition government and he remained as Prime Minister, but he lost the support of most of his fellow-Liberals and was relying on Conservative support.

Together with President [Versailles negotiations with] Woodrow Wilson* and the French premier, [Versailles negotiations with] Clemenceau*, he was at the Versailles Peace Conference,  but his own economics adviser, [row with] Keynes*, was so angered at the harsh terms imposed on Germany that he resigned.

Around this time, problems in Ireland became acute.  The possibility of Home Rule for the British colony of Ireland had been raised many times in the nineteenth century and the nationalist Sinn Fein party were now refusing to recognise rule from Westminster.

After two years of armed conflict between the Irish Volunteers, the British army and the Royal Irish Constabulary, in 1921,  thanks to public revulsion at reports of atrocities committed by British auxiliaries (known as the Black and Tans), peace negotiations began.

Largely due to Lloyd George's negotiating skills, a treaty was signed which created the Irish Free State on 6th ^December of that year.   However Lloyd George gave into pressure from industrialists in Northern Ireland and excluded the six counties of Ulster from the agreement.  The decision was to have violent repercussions for generations.

The right-wing Conservatives who formed the bulk of Lloyd George’s supporters in the House of Commons were bitterly against the treaty.

In 1922, his position was on shaky ground when war with Turkey was narrowly averted after Mustapha Kemal, a Turkish nationalist, tried to invade Chanak, which had been declared a Greek/Turk neutral zone. Lloyd George was blamed for much of the Turkish aggression, because he had supported Greek acquisition of territory regarded by the Turks as theirs.

A scandal over selling honours for campaign contributions was the final straw and, in October 1922, the Conservatives in the House of Commons forced Lloyd George to resign.

In the years leading up to World War II (1939-1945) Lloyd George ignored evidence of German rearmament and, in1936,  three years before Britain declared war, he visited [visited] Hitler*, the German Chancellor, at his mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden.   He came away greatly impressed by Hitler's success in combating unemployment but by the end of the decade he realized that Hitler had beaten unemployment by using all available labor in his rearmament programme.

In 1940, less than a year into the war, the [refused offer from] Churchill* offered him a seat in his war cabinet.  Lloyd George turned him down, opting to continue as leader of a group of Liberal MP’s until the year he died.

Extra Connections: Smith FE*?  De Valera*? Harmsworth*? Carson*?

[served by] Balfour* served under him.

Assessment: His greatest achievements were his contributions to the Allied victory in World War I and his work on the birth of the welfare state.

Oneliner: David Lloyd George, UK Prime Minister who introduced the Welfare State

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