David Lloyd George died this day, the 26th of March 1945.
Countless words have been written about him, and he has defeated all his biographers - I think perhaps Peter Rowland's 1975 effort is the best. He really needed - needs - a Martin Gilbert to take him on.
I want today to concentrate on just a couple of episodes in his long and eventful life.
He was perhaps the most outspoken British opponent of the Boer War, speaking out against both its origins and its conduct. When he learnt of the concentration camps into which the British Army corralled Boer women and children he said "If I were to despair for the future of this country it would not be because of trade competition from either America or Germany, or the ineffectiveness of its army, or anything that might happen to its ships; but rather because it used its great, hulking strength to torture the little child".
On 18th December 1901 Lloyd George went to Birmingham to speak against the War. Why Birmingham? It was the power-base of Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, responsible for starting the War and whose family firms, including Kynoch's, were not only major employers there but also made millions supplying both British and Boer with ammunition.
Some 50,000 (some estimates say up to 200,000) supporters of Chamberlain and the War turned out armed with knives, bricks, and hammers. Amidst cries of "Kill 'im! Kill the bloody traitor" the town hall was attacked and the platform rushed. Lloyd George tried to speak, but eventually had to retreat, disguised as a policeman. Every window in the town hall was smashed by the crowd, two people were killed, and Joseph Chamberlain "openly regretted Lloyd George's escape".
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| PC William Thomas's helmet and whistle, worn by Lloyd George in his escape |
Lloyd George was burnt in effigy in his constituency, his primary source of income (MPs were unpaid) the law practice of Lloyd George & George lost clients, and his family were ostracised. His son Richard was bullied so badly that he had to change school.
Lloyd George shewed great courage - moral and physical - in his opposition to the Boer War. He did so not out of any anti-British or even anti-Imperial sentiment, but out of a belief that Britain should be better. As Marvin Rintala put it "Sympathize with the enemy Lloyd George certainly did, because he was human, and ashamed of British behavior in South Africa he certainly was. Anti British he was not. He merely expected more from the Britain he loved. The British flag was not, in his view, Joseph Chamberlain's pocket-handkerchief".
The other is his burial.
In 1944 Lloyd George moved back to his childhood village of Llanystumdwy, and he died there on this day 1945. His old friend, colleague, and rival Winston Churchill had offered him a state funeral and burial at Westminster Abbey, among the great and good of the nation, the resting place of Kings and of the Unknown Warrior of the Great War - a fit end for "the Man who Won the War".
Lloyd George refused. Many years before he had chosen the place he wanted for his grave. It was to be a boulder on the banks of Afon Dwyfor, a place he had sat and played as a child. He once told Lucy Masterman "If we had kept the law about trespassing when we were children we would have had nowhere to play but a dusty strip of grass by the highroad" and she was to say that "I never remember during all our visit passing a 'trespassers will be prosecuted' notice without him remarking “I hate that sort of thing”".
His choice of burial place, and his attitude to "Keep Out" and "No Trespassing" signs say something to me about the man. As a young boy I lived in a little village on the north coast of Cornwall. We never concerned ourselves too much with such signs, and I hope that children still ignore them.
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| Lloyd George standing by the boulder under which he was to be buried |
