Save the Date!

The next Lloyd George Society Weekend will take place on the weekend of 22nd February 2025.

Further details coming soon. 

David Lloyd George 1863-1945

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". 

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. 

Lloyd George standing by the boulder under which he was to be buried

 

Old Library Books

 As an avid reader of limited financial means I often find myself buying ex-library books from various websites. I understand that libraries have limited space and funds, and need to dispose of some books to free up the shelves and raise some money for new acquisitions.

But some of the books I've bought in this way make me stop and think about the way disposals are done.

My copy of Through Terror to Triumph, speeches by David Lloyd George in 1914 and 1915, has the bookplate of Manchester Central Library Reference Library - the Neville Laski Collection. 

Neville Laski was a member of the Laski family of Manchester, chairman of the Manchester Victoria Memorial Jewish Hospital, secretary of the Manchester Jewish Community Council, and a host of other appointments including President of the Board of Deputies. His family were closely involved in Manchester's public life - his mother Sarah being a councillor and later alderman on Manchester City Council for many years, and a strong advocate for women, children, and the poor.

So the Neville Laski collection could represent a significant insight into the life and works of one of Manchester's notable sons. Alas, I can find no mention of it on the Manchester Libraries website, and indeed the only trace seems to be in booksellers' catalogues. 

When a library disposes of a collection like this it breaks a link with the past - not only the library's past, but the past of the community. It erases a collective memory.

So what to do? At the least I would suggest keeping a catalogue of special collections, bequests, and the like. To know what was in the Neville Laski Collection - even if the books in it needed to be disposed of by Manchester - would enable anyone to recreate it in their own library - whether of physical books or electronic media. This is the sort of thing that volunteers can do - and do well. For example, the book cataloguing website LibraryThing has "Legacy Libraries" - catalogues of famous readers, authors, politicians, etc. 

The People's Insurance, by David Lloyd George

I was very pleased today to receive The People's Insurance by David Lloyd George. Originally published in 1912 it explains the scheme of National Insurance and National Health Insurance introduced by the Liberal Government in 1911. As well as speeches by Lloyd George both in the House and in the country, it includes extracts from explanatory memoranda issued by the government, as well as the text of the Act.

My copy is a modern print-on-demand facsimile produced by Gyan Books in India. Usually I prefer to buy originals, but this work is vanishingly rare. It's a handsomely produced volume, leather-bound, and clearly printed. The binding is sewn, and it lies flat. It makes an attractive addition to my shelves. I must say I am impressed, and shall be seriously considering further books from them - both for works I cannot find (or afford) originals of, and for reading copies of some of my more fragile books.

Lloyd George Knew Her Husband*

My pursuit of the writings of David Lloyd George has turned up Then and Now - Economic Problems after the War a Hundred Years Ago by Mrs H. A. L. Fisher, with an introduction by Lloyd George. Fisher compares the economic disruption following the Napoleonic Wars with that following the First World War. Lettice Fisher was an economist and historian, and chaired the executive of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

During the Great War she was a welfare worker amongst the munitionettes of Sheffield. The hardships she saw suffered by unmarried mothers led her to found the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, providing practical support to single mothers, as well as campaigning for reform of the Bastardy Acts. It is now Gingerbread.

Her husband, the historian H. A. L. Fisher, was appointed President of the Board of Education by Lloyd George in 1916. He raised the school-leaving age to 14, established the Burnham Scales for teachers' pay, and introduced a national pension scheme for teachers. His underwear played an important role in the Second World War, but that, oh best beloved, is another story.

My copy was withdrawn from John Ryland's Library. I'll be posting some thoughts on library disposals another day.

* Sorry about the title, I couldn't resist it.

Lloyd George Knew His Father

While browsing The Times digital archive the other day I came across a letter calling for a memorial to the poet Edward Thomas. It particularly caught my eye as it was signed by Stanley Baldwin and David Lloyd George, two very unlikely bedfellows. I asked the Edward Thomas Fellowship if they knew anything more about it. They were able to tell me both that this was the appeal which led to the memorial on Shoulder of Mutton Hill, above Thomas's home in Steep, and that Lloyd George knew Edward Thomas's father. Philip Henry Thomas, a civil servant, was a Liberal, standing for Clapham in the 1918 general election. He had known Lloyd George for some time before this, and they even used to travel together into London to work. 

Lloyd George was also to write a foreword to John Moore's Life and Letters of Edward Thomas in 1939. I shall have to look out for a copy. 

In Memoriam: Easter 1915

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood

This Eastertide call into mind the men,

Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

Have gathered them and will do never again

Books and rumours of books

One of the most frustrating things about book collecting is chasing books which turn out to (probably) not exist at all. You see them as results in Amazon searches, but they are never available, they may even be even cited in other works, but you find no trace of them in any copyright library. You may even find an ISBN or an entry in a publisher's catalogue - but even those trails peter out eventually.

For the student of David Lloyd George this adds to other frustrations - the unfortunate deaths of various biographers before they complete their planned series, the lack of bibliographical information about Lloyd George's own works (let alone an index of his numerous writings for newspapers and magazines), and the shear volume of works about him over the years. Just the other day I found a reference to The Future of Liberalism, a pamphlet of speeches by Lloyd George in Manchester, Oxford, and Llandrindod Wells, which not only had I never heard of before, but of which I can find no trace beyond its advertisement in the Lloyd George Liberal Magazine. At thruppence a copy post free it sounds like excellent value.

Two books, or rumours of books, stand out in particular. Collected Speeches of David Lloyd George, and Collected Correspondence of David Lloyd George and Winston S. Churchill, 1904-1945, both by Ian Hunter (whose Winston and Archie: The Letters of Winston Churchill and Archibald Sinclair certainly exists and which I have just ordered). Both would be of immense value to anyone interested in Lloyd George, the history of Liberalism and the Welfare State, and indeed to Churchill aficionados. I once saw the Collected Correspondence advertised on (I think) Portuguese Amazon, but I lacked the funds at the time for the £80 asked.

Still, I suppose it gives one something to hope for - one day a lucky google, or the back room of a dusty bookshop, will turn up something I had become convinced did not exist.