Lloyd George. Soon after the Armistice he spoke vaguely of the Government’s intention to ‘satisfy Irish aspirations’, without injury to the rights and claims of Ulster: but he seems to have been far from comprehending how far Irish sentiment had travelled since the days of 1914. Prudence demanded that the Irish question should be taken up at once and in the most liberal spirit. The Times strongly advocated a measure of self-government for Ireland, without compulsion upon Ulster, and was the first to urge this measure on a reluctant Government. But the Cabinet (certainly its hands were full) dallied and postponed action while every month made the situation more difficult. It was the old fable of the Sibylline books. The price at which Irish peace might have been bought immediately after the war was contemptuously rejected at the beginning of 1920. Then followed one of the most terrible chapters of Ireland’s terrible history, a chapter of civil war, of murder, of repression and reprisals and when the final ‘settlement’ was made it was on terms and in a spirit which would have been incredible three years earlier.
The importance of the influence of the Irish settlement on the fate of the Lloyd George Government was not so much that it aroused any especial popular disapproval as that it definitely alienated an influential section of the Unionist Party. Lloyd George, when he superseded Asquith, had split the Liberal Party in two and he had no more embittered enemies than that half of the party which still followed Asquith. In spite of the concessions which he had made to the wage-earners during and immediately after the war, he had now lost the confidence of Labour as a whole, by a policy which, as in other spheres, lacked consistent principle. The predominant partner in the Coalition was the Unionist Party. On his ability to hold Conservative support the fate of his Government rested. The antagonism aroused among Conservatives by his Irish policy, therefore, was of serious importance. Its extent, however, should not be exaggerated. The policy which culminated in the Treaty of 1922 was loyally supported and indeed largely created by Conservative Ministers; and although a certain section of Conservatives doubtless found in it justification for a revival of their traditional mistrust of Lloyd George, the malcontents would not have been strong enough to overthrow him without allies from quite a different part of the Conservative camp.
Fall of the Coalition
What precipitated Lloyd George’s fall was the crisis in the Near East, with the Kemalist victory over the Greeks, the capture of Smyrna, and the Turkish threat to Constantinople and the little British force, now deserted by its allies, on the Dardanelles. The first intimation that the general public had of the seriousness of the situation was from a clumsily worded communication from the Government to the self-governing Dominions asking them whether Great Britain could count on their military support in case of war. The country was alarmed, and inevitably turned its wrath against the Government, which, outside of Parliament, had by now few friends.
In spite of the endeavours of Austen Chamberlain to keep the party in line, a conference of the Unionist members of the House of Commons held at the Carlton Club in November, 1922, decided by a vote of 186 to 87 in favour of party independence, and Bonar Law, recently recovered from serious illness, consented to act as the party leader. The decisive nature of this vote was due to the growing belief among a number of the younger Conservatives that the choice before them was neither more nor less than whether or not Lloyd George should become the leader of the Conservative Party. They were not in close personal touch with him and not under the spell of his personality. They were repelled rather than attracted by his dramatic and dictatorial methods of doing business. Bonar Law’s emergence gave them an alternative leader and their mistrust of Lloyd George became revolt. At the General Election, which followed immediately, the Coalition Liberals (now calling themselves National Liberals) returned less than 60 members against 344 Unionists. When the new Parliament assembled Lloyd George found himself in the corner seat behind the gangway, at the head of the smallest of the four parties. The official representation of the Opposition passed to the Labour Party.
Re-entry into Party
The result of the election undoubtedly surprised and wounded Lloyd George, who appears to have expected that he would be able to assert over a vast electorate that personal supremacy which he had consistently exercised for so long over smaller bodies. He lost little time, however, in repining, and was soon buoyantly at work trying to effect his re-entry into the Liberal Party. Although he had antagonized many to whom the Coalition was anathema, he was still in a strong position. He had his own powerful organization, equipped with the Coalition Liberal share of the party funds which had been collected to finance a national campaign, and his hold on the Welsh electorate gave him a strong territorial basis for claiming the leadership of a revived Liberal Party.
His efforts to reidentify himself with Liberalism continued to the end of his career with a success which was more apparent than real. He was readmitted to the fold, and, after the transference of Asquith to the House of Lords, consistently elected leader of the Liberal Parliamentary Party. But his leadership was always subject to fragmentary challenges and widespread distrust. The fund which came to be associated with his name was hated by a large section of Liberals even though it was being employed for the use of the Liberal Party. His failure to establish himself as a sectional leader was perhaps due to the same faults of character as had led to his downfall as a national leader, but it is at least doubtful whether the task would not have been beyond any man’s powers. He had to make an effective political force out of a party subject to suction both from the Right and from the Left, every item of whose policy might be claimed as its own by the one or the other of two parties, both of which had clearly a much better chance of carrying it out. The task before him was not merely to overcome prejudice against him within the Liberal Party; it was to transform a centre party into a focus of recruitment for itself rather than a source of recruitment for its rivals.
In this task he never succeeded. His committees of political research produced an agricultural and an urban policy in 1923. He himself produced an unemployment policy in 1929. In all these social and economic schemes he was undoubtedly the anticipator of the agreed and accepted policies of today, as he was the successor of the Liberal policies of the years before the war of 1914-18: but the only real electoral success – that of 1923 – was due not to new plans but to the old associations of Liberals with free trade. Between 1931 and the outbreak of the present war, he gradually retired into the position of an elder statesman, whose occasional irruptions into active politics continued to command more interest than agreement. Perhaps some of this shadow was due to the fact that his voice did not come well over the wireless. But in conversation his personality and his tongue remained as vivid as ever. For example, when asked what he thought of Mr Chamberlain’s visit to Munich, he grimly remarked: ‘In my day they came to see me.’ But it would not be unfair to say that he viewed all Governments with almost equal disfavour, and that he never felt that he himself could usefully fit into any possible team. At least he played no great part in public life either in the years immediately preceding the present war or in the war itself. He was greatly affected by the death of his first wife, Dame Margaret Lloyd George, in 1941. One source of great pleasure to him, however, was the success of his two children, Major Gwilym Lloyd George and Miss Megan Lloyd George, in their political careers. Between them and him there existed the very closest bonds of affection and devotion.
Looking back over Lloyd George’s remarkable career, it appears to fall quite clearly into three parts. In the first he appears as the crusading Radical, finding his inspiration in an ever-widening circle of problems and opportunities. In the second he is still a crusader, but a crusader on behalf of the whole nation. In the third he is trying to persuade himself that he is still a crusader, when he has become in fact a tactician. In every one of these phases his gifts of charm, of wit, of courage moved and attracted audiences, but in the last the prophetic power and hold had vanished. None the less, one of his political opponents once said of him that throughout the bitterest times of their controversy he had always felt that Lloyd George was on the side of the underdog, and this remained true to the end.
His countrymen at least will remember that he wrought greatly and daringly for them in dark times, in peace and in war, and will admit without distinction of class or party that a great man has passed away.
In 1919 he received the om, in 1920 the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour, and he was an honorary dcl of Oxford and an honorary ll.d of Edinburgh. He married, in 1888, Margaret, daughter of