And another new Lloyd George Book!

A very welcome arrival this week - Paul Spackman's Lloyd George - Welsh Radical, World Statesman, published by Barnthorn Publishing. It's the first full-length "life" for many years, and the result of seven years research, and aims to give a more holistic portrait of the politician and the man.

Paul's approach is to "explore the specific and distinctively Welsh roots and influences" that shaped Lloyd George. He highlights the social reforms that laid the foundations of the Welfare State, Lloyd George's vital replacement of Asquith in the Great War, his treatment of Germany at Versailles, the Irish settlement, and the years after his all from power, with his development of creative and practical policies to address the great problems of the 1920s and 1930s. Lloyd George's legacy - and popular misconceptions of it - are re-examined, and Dame Margaret's important role is given proper attention.

It's a big book - over 700 pages, but then Lloyd George, for all his physical shortness, was a big man. Aneurin Bevan called him "a bigger man than Churchill", and in his parliamentary tribute "the most iridescent figure that ever illumined the British political scene". I shall read it with great pleasure and interest. 

New Lloyd George book

G. H. Bennett's Lloyd George and the Coalition Liberal Party - The Papers of Lieutenant-Colonel Scovell, General Secretary of the Party, 1919-1922 arrived at Ducky Towers yesterday. It's a welcome addition to the literature, looking at the role played by a much-neglected figure in the working of the Coalition Liberals, and giving a fuller picture of the workings of the party leading up to the 1922 general election. Dr Harry Bennett is Associate Professor in History at the University of Plymouth. His previous books include Hitler's Admirals, Hunting Tirpitz, and Destination Normandy: Three American Regiments on D-Day. Of particular interest to "Lloyd Georgians" are his British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919-24, The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919-22: Naval and Foreign Policy under Lloyd George, and The 1922 General Election Reconsidered - High Politics and the Birth of the Modern British Election.

The Cymdeithas Lloyd George / Lloyd George Society website has details of a discount kindly arranged by Professor Bennett with his publishers, Boydell & Brewer. 

13 March 1915 - intimations of December 1916

On 13th March 1915 Sir George Riddell recorded golfing and lunching with David Lloyd George (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading, the Lord Chief Justice). Isaacs had spent the weekend at Walmer with the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, and told Riddell that Asquith's great responsibilities sat lightly on him "except for two hours dealing with business ... he barely mentioned the war". 

Riddell asked Lloyd George if he thought the war was being prosecuted with sufficient energy, and was Asquith too easy going. LlG replied "Things are very unsatisfactory in that respect. Winston [Churchill] said to me the other day, 'We ought to make you a sort of Government Whiteley [the great department store], charged with the duty of providing each department with all the difficult and odd things it requires'". Isaacs replied "They should make you something more than that. A general supervisor and stimulator is badly needed".

All this was two months before Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions in response the the Shell Crisis, and a year and nine months before he was to replace Asquith as Prime Minister. 

Why we should not leave Twitter

There is a tendency among liberal-minded people to leave Twitter, saying they cannot justify being in such a toxic environment any more, it has become too right-wing, too Musky. Off to Bluesky, or for a brief time before that, Mastodon, they go. I'm on both, as well as Twitter. But I don't see me making either my primary venue for mumbling into the aether. Not only because some of the most interesting people are still on Twitter, but there is anothe rreason.

I think it's a mistake to leave - and worse, I think it is playing into the hands of the extremists to go. We might feel like we are crying in the wilderness, but surely that is our duty? Someone needs to be a voice for liberalism, for reason, for humanity. And as Granny used to say, "Well Duncan, are you someone or are you no-one?" To leave is to admit defeat, and to surrender the field to the forces of evil. 

In the aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848 and the crushing of Chartism, Arthur Hugh Clough wrote "The Struggle". It is as relevant now as it was then.

Say not the struggle naught availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd,

Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light;

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!

But westward, look, the land is bright!

Last Two Days!

 Not of this blog.., but the last two days to respond to the Lloyd George Society questionnaire. It's to help us plan the 2026 weekend. If you are interested in attending please do take a couple of minutes to answer the questions. You can find the questionnaire on the Society website at this link