David lloyd george death
David Lloyd George
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from to
"Lloyd George" redirects here. For other uses, see Lloyd George (disambiguation).
This British surname is barrelled, being made up of multiple names. It should be written as Lloyd George, not George.
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor[a] (17 January – 26 March ) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from to A Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, for social-reform policies, for his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and for negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State.
He was the last Liberal prime minister; the party fell into third-party status towards the end of his premiership.
Lloyd George gained a reputation as an orator and proponent of a Welsh blend of radical Liberal ideas, which included support for Welsh devolution, disestablishment of the Church of Englandin Wales, equality for labourers and tenant farmers, and reform of land ownership.
In he won a by-election to become the Member of Parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs, in which seat he remained for 55 years. He served in Henry Campbell-Bannerman's cabinet from After H. H. Asquith succeeded to the premiership in , Lloyd George replaced him as Chancellor. To fund extensive welfare reforms he proposed taxes on land ownership and high incomes in the "People's Budget" (), which the Conservative-dominated House of Lords rejected.
The resulting constitutional crisis was only resolved after elections in and passage of the Parliament Act His budget was enacted in , and the National Insurance Act and other measures helped to establish the modern welfare state. In , he was embroiled in the Marconi scandal, but remained in office and secured the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales.
In , Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions and expanded artillery shell production for the war. In , he was appointed Secretary of State for War but was frustrated by his limited power and clashes with Army commanders over strategy. Asquith proved ineffective as prime minister and was replaced by Lloyd George in December He centralised authority by creating a smaller war cabinet.
To combat food shortages caused by u-boats, he implemented the convoy system, established rationing, and stimulated farming. After supporting the disastrous French Nivelle Offensive in , he had to reluctantly approve Field Marshal Haig's plans for the Battle of Passchendaele, which resulted in huge casualties with little strategic benefit.
David lloyd george brief biography of martin Developed and hosted by Prater Raines. Richard Lloyd, like his father, was the unpaid lay pastor for the Baptist sect, the Disciples of Christ, and was the major early influence on David. He was educated at Llanystumdwy school. From July Lloyd George worked for a solicitor, qualifying as a solicitor himself six years later. In he set up his own practice, joined by his brother William from midAgainst British military commanders, he was finally able to see the Allies brought under one command in March The war effort turned in Allied favour and was won in November. Following the December "Coupon" election, he and the Conservatives maintained their coalition with popular support.
Lloyd George was a leading proponent at the Paris Peace Conference of , but the situation in Ireland worsened, erupting into the Irish War of Independence, which lasted until Lloyd George negotiated independence for the Irish Free State in At home, he initiated education and housing reforms, but trade-union militancy rose to record levels, the economy became depressed in and unemployment rose; spending cuts followed in –22, and in he became embroiled in a scandal over the sale of honours and the Chanak Crisis.
The Carlton Club meeting decided the Conservatives should end the coalition and contest the next election alone. Lloyd George resigned as prime minister, but continued as the leader of a Liberal faction.
Sample of brief biography Lloyd George was the first Welshman to serve as Prime Minister. A renowned orator and a skilled negotiator, he earned the nickname "the Welsh wizard" for his ability to manipulate the political system. Passionate about social reform, as Chancellor of the Exchequer he introduced state pensions. Determined to abolish the Work House, he declared a war on poverty but ran into opposition when he tried to raise the money to pay for this by taxing land and also by increasing the tax for higher income earners. He needed an additional six million pounds annually.After an awkward reunion with Asquith's faction in , Lloyd George led the weak Liberal Party from to He proposed innovative schemes for public works and other reforms, but made only modest gains in the election. After , he was a mistrusted figure heading a small rump of breakaway Liberals opposed to the National Government.
In , he refused to serve in Churchill's War Cabinet. He was elevated to the peerage in , very shortly before his death.
Early life
David George was born on 17 January in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to Welsh parents William George and Elizabeth Lloyd George. William died in June of pneumonia, aged David was just over one year old.
Elizabeth George moved with her children to her native Llanystumdwy in Caernarfonshire, where she lived in a cottage known as Highgate with her brother Richard, a shoemaker, lay minister and a strong Liberal. Richard Lloyd was a towering influence on his nephew and David adopted his uncle's surname to become "Lloyd George".[when?] Lloyd George was educated at the local Anglican school, Llanystumdwy National School, and later under tutors.
He was brought up with Welsh as his first language;[2]Roy Jenkins, another Welsh politician, notes that, "Lloyd George was Welsh, that his whole culture, his whole outlook, his language was Welsh."[3]
Though brought up a devout evangelical, Lloyd George privately lost his religious faith as a young man.
Biographer Don Cregier says he became "a Deist and perhaps an agnostic, though he remained a chapel-goer and connoisseur of good preaching all his life." He was nevertheless, according to Frank Owen, "one of the foremost fighting leaders of a fanatical Welsh Nonconformity" for a quarter of a century.[2]:&#;6&#;[4]
Legal practice and early politics
Lloyd George qualified as a solicitor in after being articled to a firm in Porthmadog and taking Honours in his final law examination.
He set up his own practice in the back parlour of his uncle's house in [6] Although many prime ministers have been barristers, Lloyd George is, as of , the only solicitor to have held that office.[6]
As a solicitor, Lloyd George was politically active from the start, campaigning for his uncle's Liberal Party in the election.
He was attracted by Joseph Chamberlain's "unauthorised programme" of Radical reform.[7]:&#;43&#; After the election, Chamberlain split with Gladstone in opposition to Irish Home Rule, and Lloyd George moved to join the Liberal Unionists. Uncertain of which wing to follow, he moved a resolution in support of Chamberlain at a local Liberal club and travelled to Birmingham to attend the first meeting of Chamberlain's new National Radical Union, but arrived a week too early.[7]:&#;53&#; In Lloyd George would tell Herbert Lewis that he had thought Chamberlain's plan for a federal solution to the Home Rule Question correct in and still thought so, and that "If Henry Richmond, Osborne Morgan and the Welsh members had stood by Chamberlain on an agreement as regards the [Welsh] disestablishment, they would have carried Wales with them"[7]:&#;53&#;
His legal practice quickly flourished; he established branch offices in surrounding towns and took his brother William into partnership in [6] Lloyd George's legal and political triumph came in the Llanfrothen burial case, which established the right of Nonconformists to be buried according to denominational rites in parish burial grounds, as given by the Burial Laws Amendment Act but theretofore ignored by the Anglican clergy.
On Lloyd George's advice, a Baptist burial party broke open a gate to a cemetery that had been locked against them by the vicar. The vicar sued them for trespass and although the jury returned a verdict for the party, the local judge misrecorded the jury's verdict and found in the vicar's favour.
How to write brief biography: David Lloyd George (born Jan. 17, , Manchester, Eng.—died March 26, , Ty-newydd, near Llanystumdwy, Caernarvonshire, Wales) was a British prime minister (–22) who dominated the British political scene in the latter part of World War I. He was raised to the peerage in the year of his death.
Suspecting bias, Lloyd George's clients won on appeal to the Divisional Court of Queen's Bench in London, where Lord Chief Justice Coleridge found in their favour.[2]:&#;14–15&#;[8] The case was hailed as a great victory throughout Wales and led to Lloyd George's adoption as the Liberal candidate for Carnarvon Boroughs on 27 December [9]:&#;46&#; The same year, he and other young Welsh Liberals founded a monthly paper, Udgorn Rhyddid (Bugle of Freedom).[2]:&#;14–15&#;
In , Lloyd George became an alderman on CarnarvonshireCounty Council (a new body which had been created by the Local Government Act ) and would remain so for the rest of his life.[2]:&#;15&#;[7]:&#;65–66&#; Lloyd George would also serve the county as a Justice of the Peace (), chairman of Quarter Sessions (–38), and Deputy Lieutenant in [10][11]
Marriage
Lloyd George married Margaret Owen, the daughter of a well-to-do local farming family, on 24 January [2]:&#;15–16&#; They had five children, see later.
Early years as a member of Parliament (–)
Lloyd George's career as a member of parliament began when he was returned as a Liberal MP for Caernarfon Boroughs (now Caernarfon), narrowly winning the by-election on 10 April , following the death of the Conservative member Edmund Swetenham.[12] He would remain an MP for the same constituency until , 55 years later.[9] Lloyd George's early beginnings in Westminster may have proven difficult for him as a radical liberal and "a great outsider".[9] Backbench members of the House of Commons were not paid at that time, so Lloyd George supported himself and his growing family by continuing to practise as a solicitor.
He opened an office in London under the name of "Lloyd George and Co." and continued in partnership with William George in Criccieth. In , he merged his growing London practice with that of Arthur Rhys Roberts (who was to become Official Solicitor) under the name of "Lloyd George, Roberts and Co."[13]
Welsh affairs
Kenneth O.
Morgan describes Lloyd George as a "lifelong Welsh nationalist" and suggests that between and he was "the symbol and tribune of the national reawakening of Wales", although he is also clear that from the early s his main focus gradually shifted to UK-wide issues.[14][15] He also became an associate of Tom Ellis, MP for Meirionydd, having previously told a Caernarfon friend in that he was a "Welsh Nationalist of the Ellis type".[16][17]
Decentralisation and Welsh disestablishment
One of Lloyd George's first acts as an MP was to organise an informal grouping of Welsh Liberal members with a programme that included; disestablishing and disendowing the Church of England in Wales, temperance reform, and establishing Welsh home rule.[9]:&#;50&#; He was keen on decentralisation and thus Welsh devolution, starting with the devolution of the Church in Wales saying in "I am deeply impressed with the fact that Wales has wants and inspirations of her own which have too long been ignored, but which must no longer be neglected.
First and foremost amongst these stands the cause of Religious Liberty and Equality in Wales. If returned to Parliament by you, it shall be my earnest endeavour to labour for the triumph of this great cause. I believe in a liberal extension of the principle of Decentralization."[18]
During the next decade, Lloyd George campaigned in Parliament largely on Welsh issues, in particular for disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of England.
When Gladstone retired in after the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill, the Welsh Liberal members chose him to serve on a deputation to William Harcourt to press for specific assurances on Welsh issues. When those assurances were not provided, they resolved to take independent action if the government did not bring a bill for disestablishment.
When a bill was not forthcoming, he and three other Welsh Liberals (D. A. Thomas, Herbert Lewis and Frank Edwards) refused the whip on 14 April , but accepted Lord Rosebery's assurance and rejoined the official Liberals on 29 May.[19]
Cymru Fydd and Welsh devolution
Historian Emyr Price referred to Lloyd George as "the first architect of Welsh devolution and its most famous advocate" as well as "the pioneering advocate of a powerful parliament for the Welsh people".[20] Lloyd George himself stated in "Is it not high time that Wales should the powers to manage its own affairs" and in , "Parliament is so overweighted that it cannot possibly devote the time and trouble necessary to legislate for the peculiar and domestic retirement of each and every separate province of Britain".
These statements would later be used to advocate for a Welsh assembly in the Welsh devolution referendum.[21] Lloyd George felt that disestablishment, land reform and other forms of Welsh devolution could only be achieved if Wales formed its own government within a federal imperial system.[15] In , in a failed Church in Wales Bill, Lloyd George added an amendment in a discreet attempt at forming a sort of Welsh home rule, a national council for appointment of the Welsh Church commissioners.
Although not condemned by Tom Ellis MP, this was to the annoyance of J. Bryn Roberts MP and the Home Secretary H. H. Asquith MP.[22][23][24]
He was also a co-leader of Cymru Fydd, a national Welsh party with liberal values with the goals of promoting a "stronger Welsh identity" and establishing a Welsh government.[25][26][27] He hoped that Cymru Fydd would 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 election. In an AGM meeting in Newport on 16 January of the South Wales Liberal Federation, led by D. A. Thomas, a proposal was made to unite the North and South Liberal Federations with Cymru Fydd to form The Welsh National Federation.
This was a proposal which the North Wales Liberal Federation had already agreed to. However, the South Wales Liberal Federation rejected this. According to Lloyd George, he was shouted down by "Newport Englishmen" in the meeting, although the South Wales Argus suggested the poor crowd behaviour came from Lloyd George's supporters.[19][28][29][30] Following difficulty in uniting the Liberal federations along with Cymru Fydd in the South East and thus, difficulty in gaining support for Home Rule for Wales, Lloyd George shifted his focus to improving the socio-economic environment of Wales as part of the United Kingdom and the British Empire.
Although Lloyd George considered himself a "Welshman first", he saw the opportunities for Wales within the UK.[19][31]
Uniting Welsh Liberals
In , Lloyd George created the Welsh National Liberal Council, a loose umbrella organisation covering the two federations, but with very little power.
In time, it became known as the Liberal Party of Wales.[32]
Support of Welsh institutions
Lloyd George had a connection to or promoted the establishment of the National Library of Wales, the National Museum of Wales and the Welsh Department of the Board of Education.[30] He also showed considerable support for the University of Wales, that its establishment raised the status of Welsh people and that the university deserved greater funding by the UK government.[33]
Opposition to the Boer War
Lloyd George had been impressed by his journey to Canada in Although sometimes wrongly supposed—both at the time and subsequently—to be a Little Englander, he was not an opponent of the British Empire per se, but in a speech at Birkenhead (21 November ) he stressed that it needed to be based on freedom, including for India, not "racial arrogance".[34]:&#;61&#; Consequently, he gained national fame by displaying vehement opposition to the Second Boer War.
Following Rosebery's lead, he based his attack firstly on what were supposed to be Britain's war aims—remedying the grievances of the Uitlanders and in particular the claim that they were wrongly denied the right to vote, saying "I do not believe the war has any connection with the franchise.
It is a question of 45% dividends" and that England (which did not then have universal male suffrage) was more in need of franchise reform than the Boer republics. A second attack came on the cost of the war, which, he argued, prevented overdue social reform in England, such as old-age pensions and workmen's cottages.
As the fighting continued his attacks moved to its conduct by the generals, who, he said (basing his words on reports by William Burdett-Coutts in The Times), were not providing for the sick or wounded soldiers and were starving Boer women and children in concentration camps. But his major thrusts were reserved for the Chamberlains, accusing them of war profiteering through the family company Kynoch Ltd, of which Chamberlain's brother was chairman.
The firm had won tenders to the War Office, though its prices were higher than some of its competitors. After speaking at a meeting in Birmingham Lloyd George had to be smuggled out disguised as a policeman, as his life was in danger from the mob. At this time the Liberal Party was badly split as H. H. Asquith, R. B. Haldane and others were supporters of the war and formed the Liberal Imperial League.
Opposition to the Education Act
On 24 March Arthur Balfour, just about to take office as Prime Minister, introduced a bill which was to become the Education Act Lloyd George supported the bill's proposals to bring voluntary schools (i.e.
David lloyd george brief biography of martin luther David Lloyd George was born in Manchester, to a modest Welsh farming family in He was ethnically Welsh and considered Welsh to be his first language. At an early age, his family returned to Wales and his father took up farming in his native Pembrokeshire. However, his father died of pneumonia when he was still young, and thereafter his uncle played a crucial role in encouraging David to take up law and Politics. Influenced by his childhood poverty and family atmosphere of Liberal politics, David Lloyd George was attracted to joining the Liberal Party, though he briefly flirted with the Welsh independence party.religious schools—mainly Church of England, and some Roman Catholic schools in certain inner city areas) in England and Wales under the control of local school boards, who would conduct inspections and appoint two out of each school's six managers. However, other measures were more contentious: the majority-religious school managers would retain the power to employ or sack teachers on religious grounds and would receive money from the rates (local property taxes).
This offended nonconformist opinion, then in a period of revival, as it seemed like a return to the hated church rates (which had been compulsory until ), and inspired a large grassroots campaign against the bill.[37]:&#;52–7&#;
Within days of the bill's unveiling (27 March), Lloyd George denounced "priestcraft" in a speech to his constituents, and he began an active campaign of speaking against the bill, both in public in Wales (with a few speeches in England) and in the House of Commons.
On 12 November, Balfour accepted an amendment (willingly, but a rare case of him doing so), ostensibly from Alfred Thomas, chairman of the Welsh Parliamentary Liberal Party, but in reality instigated by Lloyd George, transferring control of Welsh schools from appointed boards to the elected county councils. The Education Act became law on 20 December [37]:&#;52–57&#;
Lloyd George now announced the real purpose of the amendment, described as a "booby trap" by his biographer John Grigg.
The Welsh National Liberal Council soon adopted his proposal that county councils should refuse funding unless repairs were carried out to schools (many were in a poor state), and should also demand control of school governing bodies and a ban on religious tests for teachers; "no control, no cash" was Lloyd George's slogan.
Lloyd George negotiated with A. G. Edwards, Anglican Bishop of St Asaph, and was prepared to settle on an "agreed religious syllabus" or even to allow Anglican teaching in schools, provided the county councils retained control of teacher appointments, but this compromise failed after opposition from other Anglican Welsh bishops.
A well-attended meeting at Park Hall Cardiff (3 June ) passed a number of resolutions by acclamation: county council control of schools, withholding money from schools or even withholding rates from unsupportive county councils. The Liberals soon gained control of all thirteen Welsh County Councils.
Lloyd George continued to speak in England against the bill, but the campaign there was less aggressively led, taking the form of passive resistance to rate paying.[37]:&#;52–57&#;
In August the government brought in the Education (Local Authority Default) Act giving the Board of Education power to take charge of schools, which Lloyd George immediately nicknamed the "Coercion of Wales Act".
He addressed another convention in Cardiff on 6 October , during which he proclaimed that the Welsh flag was "a dragon rampant,[b] not a sheep recumbent". Under his leadership, the convention pledged not to maintain elementary schools, or to withdraw children from elementary schools altogether so that they could be taught privately by the nonconformist churches.
In Travis Crosbie's words, public resistance to the Education Act had caused a "perfect impasse".[37]:&#;52–57&#; There was no progress between Welsh counties and Westminster until [38]
Having already gained national recognition for his anti-Boer War campaigns, Lloyd George's leadership of the attacks on the Education Act gave him a strong parliamentary reputation and marked him as a likely future cabinet member.
The Act served to reunify the Liberals after their divisions over the Boer War and to increase Nonconformist influence in the party, which then included educational reform as policy in the election, which resulted in a Liberal landslide.[40] All 34 Welsh seats returned a Liberal, except for one Labour seat in Merthyr Tydfil.[38]
Other stances
Lloyd George also supported the romantic nationalist idea of Pan-Celtic unity and gave a speech at the Pan-Celtic Congress in Caernarfon.[41]
During his second-ever speech in the House of Commons, Lloyd George criticised the grandeur of the monarchy.[42]
Lloyd George wrote extensively for Liberal-supporting papers such as the Manchester Guardian and spoke on Liberal issues (particularly temperance—the "local option"—and national as opposed to denominational education) throughout England and Wales.[19]
He served as the legal adviser of Theodor Herzl in his negotiations with the British government regarding the Uganda Scheme, proposed as an alternative homeland for the Jews due to Turkish refusal to grant a charter for Jewish settlement in Palestine.[43]
Further information: Education Act §&#;The failed Education Bill of
In , Lloyd George entered the new Liberal Cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as President of the Board of Trade.[37]:&#;63&#;
The first priority on taking office was the repeal of the Education Act.
Lloyd George took the lead along with Augustine Birrell, President of the Board of Education. Lloyd George appears to have been the dominant figure on the committee drawing up the bill in its later stages and insisted that the bill create a separate education committee for Wales. Birrell complained privately that the bill, introduced in the Commons on 9 April , owed more to Lloyd George and that he himself had had little say in its contents.[44]:&#;74–77&#; The bill passed the House of Commons greatly amended but was completely mangled by the House of Lords.[40] For the rest of the year Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, in defiance of the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the Act.
Lloyd George was rebuked by King Edward VII for these speeches: the Prime Minister defended him to the King's secretary Francis Knollys, stating that his behaviour in Parliament was more constructive but that in speeches to the public "the combative spirit seems to get the better of him".[44]:&#;74–77&#; No compromise was possible and the bill was abandoned, allowing the Act to continue in effect.[40] As a result of Lloyd George's lobbying, a separate department for Wales[c] was created within the Board of Education.[44]:&#;74–77&#;
Nonconformists were bitterly upset by the failure of the Liberal Party to reform the Education Act, its most important promise to them, and over time their support for the Liberal Party slowly fell away.[45]
At the Board of Trade Lloyd George introduced legislation on many topics, from merchant shipping and the Port of London to companies and railway regulation.
His main achievement was in stopping a proposed national strike of the railway unions by brokering an agreement between the unions and the railway companies. While almost all the companies refused to recognise the unions, Lloyd George persuaded the companies to recognise elected representatives of the workers who sat with the company representatives on conciliation boards—one for each company.
If those boards failed to agree then an arbitrator would be called upon.[44]:&#;69–73&#;
Chancellor of the Exchequer (–)
See also: David Lloyd George and the suffrage movement, –
On Campbell-Bannerman's death, he succeeded Asquith, who had become prime minister, as Chancellor of the Exchequer from to [44]:&#;81&#;[46]:&#;–&#; While he continued some work from the Board of Trade—for example, legislation to establish the Port of London Authority and to pursue traditional Liberal programmes such as licensing law reforms—his first major trial in this role was over the – Naval Estimates.
The Liberal manifesto at the general election included a commitment to reduce military expenditure. Lloyd George strongly supported this, writing to Reginald McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty, of "the emphatic pledges given by all of us at the last general election to reduce the gigantic expenditure on armaments built up by the recklessness of our predecessors." He then proposed the programme be reduced from six to four dreadnoughts.
This was adopted by the government, but there was a public storm when the Conservatives, with covert support from the First Sea Lord, Admiral Jackie Fisher, campaigned for more with the slogan "We want eight and we won't wait". This resulted in Lloyd George's defeat in Cabinet and the adoption of estimates including provision for eight dreadnoughts.[47] During this period he was also a target of protest by the women's suffrage movement, for he professed personal support for extension of the suffrage but did not move for changes within the Parliament process.[48]
People's Budget,
Further information: People's Budget
In , Lloyd George introduced his People's Budget, imposing a 20% tax on the unearned increase in the value of land, payable at the death of the owner or sale of the land, and 1&#;2&#;d.
on undeveloped land and minerals, increased death duties, a rise in income tax, and the introduction of Supertax on income over £3, There were taxes also on luxuries, alcohol and tobacco, so that money could be made available for the new welfare programmes as well as new battleships. The nation's landowners (well represented in the House of Lords) were intensely angry at the new taxes, mostly at the proposed very high tax on land values, but also because the instrumental redistribution of wealth could be used to detract from an argument for protective tariffs.[50]
The immediate consequences included the end of the Liberal League, and Rosebery breaking friendship with the Liberal Party, which in itself was for Lloyd George a triumph.
He had won the case of social reform without losing the debate on Free Trade.[51]:&#;&#;Arthur Balfour denounced the budget as "vindictive, inequitable, based on no principles, and injurious to the productive capacity of the country."[51]:&#;&#;Roy Jenkins described it as the most reverberating since Gladstone's in [51]:&#;&#;
In the House of Commons, Lloyd George gave a brilliant account of the budget, which was attacked by the Conservatives.
On the stump, notably at his Limehouse speech in , he denounced the Conservatives and the wealthy classes with all his very considerable oratorical power. Excoriating the House of Lords in another speech, Lloyd George said, "should men, ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed, override the judgement—the deliberate judgement—of millions of people who are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth of the country?".[52] In a break with convention, the budget was defeated by the Conservative majority in the House of Lords.
The elections of narrowly upheld the Liberal government. The budget was passed on 28 April by the Lords and received the Royal Assent on the 29th.[53] Subsequently, the Parliament Act removed the House of Lords' power to block money bills, and with a few exceptions replaced their veto power over most bills with a power to delay them for up to two years.
Although old-age pensions had already been introduced by Asquith as Chancellor, Lloyd George was largely responsible for the introduction of state financial support for the sick and infirm (known colloquially as "going on the Lloyd George" for decades afterwards)—legislation referred to as the Liberal Reforms. Lloyd George also succeeded in putting through Parliament his National Insurance Act , making provision for sickness and invalidism, and a system of unemployment insurance.
Examples of brief biography
He was the last Liberal prime minister; the party fell into third-party status towards the end of his premiership. Lloyd George gained a reputation as an orator and proponent of a Welsh blend of radical Liberal ideas, which included support for Welsh devolution , disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales , equality for labourers and tenant farmers, and reform of land ownership. In he won a by-election to become the Member of Parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs , in which seat he remained for 55 years. He served in Henry Campbell-Bannerman 's cabinet from After H.He was helped in his endeavours by forty or so backbenchers who regularly pushed for new social measures, often voted with Labour MPs.[55] These social reforms in Britain were the beginnings of a welfare state and fulfilled the aim of dampening down the demands of the growing working class for rather more radical solutions to their impoverishment.[citation needed]
Under his leadership, after the Liberals extended minimum wages to farmworkers.[56]
Mansion House speech,
Lloyd George was an opponent of warfare but he paid little attention to foreign affairs until the Agadir Crisis of After consulting Edward Grey (the foreign minister) and H.&#;H.
Asquith (the prime minister) he gave a stirring and patriotic speech at Mansion House on 21 July [57] He stated:
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.
National honour is no party question. The security of our great international trade is no party question.[58]
He was warning both France and Germany, but the public response cheered solidarity with France and hostility toward Germany.[59] Berlin was outraged, blaming Lloyd George for doing "untold harm both with regard to German public opinion and the negotiations." Count Metternich, Germany's ambassador in London, said, "Mr Lloyd George's speech came upon us like a thunderbolt".[61]
Marconi scandal
In , Lloyd George, along with Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General, was involved in the Marconi scandal.
Accused of speculating in Marconi shares on the inside information that they were about to be awarded a key government contract (which would have caused them to increase in value), he told the House of Commons that he had not speculated in the shares of "that company". He had in fact bought shares in the American Marconi Company.[62]
Welsh disestablishment
Lloyd George was instrumental in fulfilling a long-standing aspiration to disestablish the Anglican Church of Wales.
As with Irish Home Rule, previous attempts to enact this had failed in the – Governments, and were now made possible by the removal of the Lords' veto in , and as with Home Rule the initial bill () was delayed for two years by the Lords, becoming law in , only to be suspended for the duration of the war. After the