“He was confronted with the ghost of his own angry youth.”
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David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. 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.
politics · Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922 · politician · diplomat · solicitor · civil servant · writer · official · jurist · head of government · author · member of parliament · also David Lloyd George, David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, George David Lloyd, George Lloyd, Earl Lloyd-George, Lord Lloyd-George
Born 17 January 1863 · Died 26 March 1945 · Q134982
96 published statements · 0 followers
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David Lloyd George on Unemployment, 1929
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20267 items
“You say I have my weakness. So has anyone that ever lived & the greater the man the greater the weakness. It is only insipid, wishy washy fellows that have no weaknesses”
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“s behaviour as tantamount to resignation, the same as if a Cabinet Minister had refused to abide by the principle of collective responsibility. Twelve leading Liberals wrote in Asquith”
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“wanted to take advantage of Caporetto to gain”
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“the fight must be to a finish—to a knockout”
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“should 500 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?”
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Tribute Archive: David Lloyd George Sproule Obituary | Castle Fallsview Funeral Home | West Saint John, NB
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20071 item
Historian John Shepherd wrote in History Today:
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On the Ffestiniog Railway, is named after him
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“What are you going to do, my boy, when you grow up?”
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194513 items
Died 1945-03-26.
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“I am a man of the people, bred amongst them, and it has been the greatest joy of my life to have had some part in fighting the battles of the class from whom I am proud to have sprung.”
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“I believe there is a new order coming for the people of this country. It is a quiet but certain revolution.”
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“A free religion and a free people in a free land.”
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“But they say, "It is not so much the Dreadnoughts we object to, it is pensions". If they objected to pensions, why did they promise them? They won elections on the strength of their promises. It is true they never carried them out. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all.”
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“Mr. Chamberlain is right in so far as he says that things are not well in this country. We cannot feed the hungry with statistics of national prosperity, or stop the pangs of famine by reciting to a man the prodigious number of cheques that pass through the clearing-house. We must therefore propose something better than Mr. Chamberlain.”
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“Free Trade is a great pacificator. We have had many quarrels, many causes of quarrels, during the last fifty years, but we have not had a single war with any first-class Power. Free Trade is slowly but surely cleaving a path through the dense and dark thicket of armaments to the sunny land of brotherhood amongst nations.”
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“[The House of Lords] is the right hon. Gentleman's poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to. And we are told that this is a great revising Chamber, the safeguard of liberty in the country. Talk about mockeries and shams. Was there ever such a sham as that?”
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But died before he could take his seat in the House of Lords
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“When I talk about trade and industry, it is not because I think trade and industry are more important than social reform. It is purely because I know that you must make wealth in the country before you can distribute it.”
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“Free Trade may be the alpha, but it is not the omega, of Liberal policy.”
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“The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal in the earth. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales. Who laid the foundations of the mountains? Was it the landlord? And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll—for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks—eight millions a year.”
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“As our fathers had freed our trade there was another work to accomplish. This was to free the land from the chains of feudalism, the schools from the dominion of the priest, and the people from the deadly grip of drink.”
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19401 item
Refused to serve in Churchill's War Cabinet
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19351 item
Career landmark: member of the 37th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1935–1945).
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19331 item
Warned that if Adolf Hitler were overthrown, communism would replace him in Germany
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19312 items
Career landmark: member of the 36th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1931–1935).
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An illness prevented Lloyd George's joining the National Government when it was formed
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19292 items
Lloyd George became Father of the House (longest-serving member of the Commons), an honorific position without power
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Career landmark: member of the 35th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1929–1931).
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19271 item
Lloyd George gave £300,000 and an annual grant of between £30,000 and £40,000 for the operations of the Liberal headquarters
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19261 item
Career landmark: leader of the Liberal Party (1926–1931).
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19243 items
Lloyd George, realising that Liberal defeat was inevitable and keen to take control of the party himself, spent only £60,000
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Left the Liberals as a weak third party in British politics behind the ascendant Labour Party, with just over 40 MPs
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Career landmark: member of the 34th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1924–1929).
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19232 items
Career landmark: member of the 33rd Parliament of the United Kingdom (1923–1924).
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Lloyd George led the weak Liberal Party from 1926 to 1931
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19223 items
Decided to support Greece in a war against Turkey
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Career landmark: member of the 32nd Parliament of the United Kingdom (1922–1923).
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When it became known that Lloyd George had essentially sold peerages (from 1917 to 1922 more than 120 hereditary peers were created) and lesser honours such as knighthoods, with a "price list for peerages" (£10,000 for a
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19214 items
“We have murder by the throat!”
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Lloyd George successfully concluded the Anglo-Soviet Trade Agreement
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“Your proposal to leave the six counties under the Northern Parliament would stereotype a frontier based neither upon natural features nor broad geographical considerations by giving it the character of an international boundary. Partition upon these lines the majority of the Irish people will never accept, nor could we conscientiously attempt to enforce it.”
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Damaged Lloyd George's credibility
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19202 items
And unemployment rose; spending cuts followed in 1921–22, and in 1922 he became embroiled in a scandal over the sale of honours and the Chanak Crisis
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Where the League of Nations designed the Mandate for Palestine and conferred it upon Britain
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19191 item
The government set up the Ministry of Health, a development which led to major improvements in public health in the years that followed
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19183 items
Career landmark: member of the 31st Parliament of the United Kingdom (1918–1922).
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Before the Americans were present in strength, Lloyd George wrote (wrongly) that the Germans would not attack and would fail if they did
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Hated in the Labour movement for his handling of industrial issues after 1918, and disparaged by Conservatives for his radicalism
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19175 items
“If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course, they don”
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Lloyd George called the 1917–18 Irish Convention in an attempt to settle the outstanding Home Rule for Ireland issue; however, the upsurge in republican sympathies in Ireland following the Easter Rising coupled with Lloy
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As Lloyd George wanted, would have been politically impossible given Conservative anger at the return of Churchill (still blamed for the Dardanelles) to office as Minister of Munitions in July, and Lloyd George's preoccu
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Had to reluctantly approve Field Marshal Douglas Haig's plans for the Battle of Passchendaele, which resulted in huge casualties with little strategic benefit
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Announcing an official British commitment to support an eventual Jewish homeland in Palestine
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19165 items
Career landmark: Secretary of State for War (1916–1916).
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Whilst politically Britain had to give wholehearted support to what would probably be the last major French effort of the war
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Wanted to send machine guns to Romania (insufficient amounts were available for this to be feasible)
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Career landmark: Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1916–1922).
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Was appointed Secretary of State for War but was frustrated by his limited power and clashes with Army commanders over strategy
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19155 items
Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions and expanded artillery shell production for the war
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Lloyd George became a strong supporter of general conscription, an issue that divided Liberals, and helped the passage of several conscription acts from January 1916 onwards
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Argued for the sending of British troops to the Balkans to assist Serbia and bring Greece and other Balkan countries onto the side of the Allies (this was eventually done—the Salonika expedition—although not on the sc
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And 1916, setting the stage for his move up to the height of power
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Career landmark: Minister of Munitions (1915–1916).
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19131 item
Lloyd George, along with Rufus Isaacs, the Attorney General, was involved in the Marconi scandal
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19111 item
And as with Home Rule the initial bill (1912) was delayed for two years by the Lords, becoming law in 1914, only to be suspended for the duration of the war
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19103 items
With the National Insurance Act 1911 and other measures helping to establish the modern welfare state
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Career landmark: member of the 29th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1910–1910).
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Career landmark: member of the 30th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1910–1918).
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19092 items
Denounced the Conservatives and the wealthy classes with all his very considerable oratorical power
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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
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19082 items
Career landmark: Chancellor of the Exchequer (1908–1915).
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Lloyd George replaced him as Chancellor of the Exchequer
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19071 item
Lloyd George would tell Herbert Lewis that he had thought Chamberlain's plan for a federal solution to the Home Rule Question correct in 1886 and still thought so, and that "If Henry Richmond, Osborne Morgan and the Wels
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19062 items
Career landmark: member of the 28th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1906–1910).
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Career landmark: Member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom (1906).
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19052 items
Lloyd George entered the new Liberal Cabinet of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as President of the Board of Trade
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Career landmark: President of the Board of Trade (1905–1908).
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19003 items
Awarded Order of Merit.
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Awarded Cross of Liberty.
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Career landmark: member of the 27th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1900–1906).
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18981 item
Lloyd George created the Welsh National Liberal Council, a loose umbrella organisation covering the two federations, but with very little power
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18972 items
A close friend of Lloyd George Dr David Edwards alleged that his wife Mrs Catherine Edwards had given birth to a child to which he was not the father
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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
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18952 items
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
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Career landmark: member of the 26th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1895–1900).
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18941 item
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
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18921 item
Career landmark: member of the 25th Parliament of the United Kingdom (1892–1895).
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18902 items
“the Imperial Parliament is so overweighted with the concerns of a large empire that it cannot possibly devote the time and trouble necessary to legislate for the peculiar and domestic requirements of each and every separate province”
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"the Imperial Parliament is so overweighted with the concerns of a large empire that it cannot possibly devote the time and trouble necessary to legislate for the peculiar and domestic requirements of each and every sepa
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18891 item
Lloyd George became an alderman on Carnarvonshire County Council (a new body which had been created by the Local Government Act 1888) and would remain so for the rest of his life
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18881 item
That he was a "Welsh Nationalist of the Ellis type"
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18871 item
1894, 1897, 1902, 1907 and 1911, whilst the Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes had been invited to attend the Cabinet and War Committee on his visit to the UK in the spring of 1916
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18841 item
After being articled to a firm in Porthmadog and taking Honours in his final law examination
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18631 item
Born 1863-01-17.
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