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Profiles in Power
Lloyd George
In this new study, one of the first to appear in an important new series that will reassess key political figures in world history since the Renaissance, Martin Pugh provides a concise but comprehensive survey of Lloyd George's life, personality and political career. It is both an up-to-date synthesis of recent work that has appeared on Lloyd George and also an original interpretation of his place in the evolution of modern British politics.
Dr. Pugh challenges the traditional view of Lloyd George as an outsider in British politics. Instead, he sees him as a rebel who always knew how to make the system work for him.
He examines the key achievements of the career — the reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Edwardian Liberal governments who laid down our modern system of taxation and the welfare state; the Prime Minister who 'won the war' in 1916-18, and left a lasting impression on the nature and organisation of British government; and, in the interwar years, the effective early champion of a Keynesian approach to Britain's social and economic problems.
But, despite these domestic reforming achievements, Dr. Pugh concludes that Lloyd George was far from being a conventional radical or left-wing politician. From the beginning he was out of step with much of the Liberal tradition, and was instead attracted by Joseph Chamberlain's brand of politics: a mixture of state interventionism at home, and a bold, patriotic policy abroad. These two persistent themes in his career gave Lloyd George a footing in Liberal, Labour and Conservative politics, but a comfortable home in no party: hence his detachment and eventual isolation.
This is a thoughtful, balanced and highly readable assessment of a still-controversial career. It will make an auspicious debut for this ambitious new series.
Dr. Pugh challenges the traditional view of Lloyd George as an outsider in British politics. Instead, he sees him as a rebel who always knew how to make the system work for him.
He examines the key achievements of the career — the reforming Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Edwardian Liberal governments who laid down our modern system of taxation and the welfare state; the Prime Minister who 'won the war' in 1916-18, and left a lasting impression on the nature and organisation of British government; and, in the interwar years, the effective early champion of a Keynesian approach to Britain's social and economic problems.
But, despite these domestic reforming achievements, Dr. Pugh concludes that Lloyd George was far from being a conventional radical or left-wing politician. From the beginning he was out of step with much of the Liberal tradition, and was instead attracted by Joseph Chamberlain's brand of politics: a mixture of state interventionism at home, and a bold, patriotic policy abroad. These two persistent themes in his career gave Lloyd George a footing in Liberal, Labour and Conservative politics, but a comfortable home in no party: hence his detachment and eventual isolation.
This is a thoughtful, balanced and highly readable assessment of a still-controversial career. It will make an auspicious debut for this ambitious new series.
206 pages, Paperback
First published September 12, 1988
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About the author
Martin Pugh
32 books5 followersMartin Pugh is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, and was formerly professor of modern British history at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. His publications include State and Society and The Pankhursts.
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November 16, 2016Beginnings are difficult. So too are endings. And the middle part is not easy either.
Lloyd George had a long career. Sixteen years in opposition, followed with seventeen years in office, concluded by twenty-two years out of power.
This brief overview of Lloyd George as a politician is part of a series that I had always associated as being strictly an A-Level text book. This was wrong, it is an approachable account of everyday politics with the odd humorous turn of phrase from Lord Kitchener making a good poster (but nothing else) to Lloyd George, after his first visit to London from North Wales in 1881, having a physical longing for the warm and friendly south - manifested in "Mediterranean holidays and houses in Surrey" (p6).
I read this as my bed book at the same time as reading Rome in the East as my day book. Rome in the East was a big, sprawling, wide ranging study covering hundreds of years and dozens of kingdoms, this a small, short book dealing with one man. The first was very simple to review and sum up, this very complicated.
My attention had been caught by Lloyd George firstly as first minister and then Prime Minister of one of, in my opinion, Britain great governments. One that brought the country the extension of the franchise, progressive taxation, old age pensions, the crushing of the House of Lords - although admittedly it also provided Britain with civil war in Ireland a delay in the extension of the franchise , and the First World War . Secondly by AJP Taylor's comments in Essays in English History, although these did not do full credit to Lloyd George's ability to leap out the frying pan, dance over the fire, and invent a workable political solution to a problem - an ability that led other politicians to absolutely loath him - in part because Lloyd George didn't give a tinker's cuss for traditional party boundaries -eg when dealing with the Irish he told them they'd best make a deal with him otherwise some real hard-liner would become UK-PM (this after the UK for alll the black and tans failled to achieve a military victory in the independence war so the Irish offered Dominion status & treaty ports, then he came back to the commons ans told them he was the only one who could achieve peace with the Irish and himself a working parliamentary majority even though he had only a liberal rump and was dependant on Conservative support. For Pugh this is because he was primarily a politician of the centre ground and would happily pull others from any party into his orbit provided this would allow him to accomplish his objectives.
This open mindedness led some to regard him as unprincipled. AJP Taylor argued that Lloyd George was the outsider in British politics in a way that no other Prime Minister ever has been - or is likely to be; a native Welsh speaker, a lay preacher at the Free Churches, a lower class background. He was outsider the dense family networks that dominate politics. Pugh takes the view that Lloyd George did have a consistent set of principles and sees him as a follower of Joseph Chamberlain - the great reforming Liberal mayor of Birmingham who became an imperialist Conservative Prime Minister of Britain - which rather sums up the problem. If your values cut across established Party lines you will be a controversial and difficult political figure.Reform at home and Empire abroad were a well matched pair, the empire need broad shouldered, sharp shooting men and the wide hipped women to bear them, hence the eugenic appeal of Darwin's cousin Galton or the contraceptive efforts of Marie Stropes, to limit the abilities of undesirables to reproduce.
Something that stood out was the sense of the limited boundaries of political life, or perhaps the duration of political issues - effectively Lloyd George was dealing with many of the same problems as contemporary British politicians; devolution, progressive taxation, reform of the House of Lords, the power of a conservative press, establishment of a viable third party in British politics, electoral reform, if one accepts a mixed economy (ie recognising the enormous power of the state in a market economy)how then best to intervene to produce desired social ends such as increased employment . The one issue that has dropped away completely is the Liberal wish to tax land and in particular increases in unearned value , the other one I suppose which has changed its spots is Imperialism.
The major issue which remains relevant in British politics is the question of achieving political power. Between 1906 and 1910 there were three general elections, the Conservative share of the vote varied between 43.4 and 46.8% of the electors yet the Liberal party on a far smaller share of the vote managed to form governments through alliances with the Irish Home Rule MPs and the Labour grouping. In the inter war period the Liberals were reduced to a third party as the party divided between Lloyd George and Asquith - who refused to stand down as party leader despite having been bumped out of office as Liberal Prime Minister in 1916. The Liberals offered to support a minority government in exchange for the introduction of Proportional Representation - which would probably guarantee a third party's position in government for ever more - but were talked down to an offer of a transferable vote system. Fond as I am of recalling that 'history repeats its self, first as tragedy and then as comedy' I hadn't been expecting that it would do so quite so precisely, and in such short order. Thank goodness political memories are short otherwise too many people would be embarrassed. At a time when the Labour party appears to be on the brink of splitting itself apart, and with both major parties having not come close to the loosing percentage of the vote of the Conservatives in 1906 for quite some time the issue of how to conduct 'big tent' politics is going to remain a live issue, and the ability of figures like Lloyd George to scramble up viable solutions and to reinvent themselves to face new challenges would remain a potent example if Politicians had a mind to read history .
Of, possibly unfortunate, continuing interest is the First World War. Lloyd George transferred from Chancellor of Exchequer to Minister of Munitions and was closely involved in trying to run the war in an effective manner. The problem, and here Pugh largely repeats AJP Taylor's opinions, was the unimaginativeness of the British generals, and the lack of any kind of unified allied command - which still amazes me, Llyoyd George limited his own room for manoeuvre by doing his best to constrict Lord Kitchener's role as minister of war, which wasn't helpful when he himself was bumped up to the war office from the ministry of munitions . There have been some attempts to rehabilitate various British Generals, but it still remains that their basic conception was that because the allies populations were greater than those of their enemies that they would win simply through attrition, so long as the war went on for long enough. I suppose this was true, if inconvenient for the millions of men slated to die on all sides in order to achieve this result. In addition they steadfastly demonstrated the value of their superior education in their ability to repeatedly blame others for their own failure to achieve tactical breakthroughs, one result of which was the closure of pubs during the day which persisted until the 1990s, just in case Sir John French wanted some more shells manufactured from the grave I suppose. This remains as impressive as it was frustrating to Lloyd George. However the political legacy was - after many deaths and years of stalemate, the domination of the war effort by politicians rather than by the military. Although arguably the army's current relentless 'can-do' attitude is as dangerous to soldiers as it's earlier 'can't-do' attitude.
Lloyd George remains the outsider, a hugely successful Liberal politician who the party system struggled to contain, misremembered as an adulterer - he reversed the standard pattern of having an affair with his secretary by making the woman he was in love with his secretary , a terrible constituency MP - he often did not even open letters let alone answer them - who gained support through his public stand on all-Wales issues, a regional politician who became Prime Minister, a political fixer who preferred the golf course to the House of Commons, a restless and inventive man who annoyed Keynes by having devised his own style of Keynesian economics before coming across Keynes, the man who started to fight the post war election with the motto 'homes fit for heroes' only to be frightened into changing to 'squeezing the last farthing out of Germany' by a hostile press. A distant figure, and a contemporary one.
Lloyd George had a long career. Sixteen years in opposition, followed with seventeen years in office, concluded by twenty-two years out of power.
This brief overview of Lloyd George as a politician is part of a series that I had always associated as being strictly an A-Level text book. This was wrong, it is an approachable account of everyday politics with the odd humorous turn of phrase from Lord Kitchener making a good poster (but nothing else) to Lloyd George, after his first visit to London from North Wales in 1881, having a physical longing for the warm and friendly south - manifested in "Mediterranean holidays and houses in Surrey" (p6).
I read this as my bed book at the same time as reading Rome in the East as my day book. Rome in the East was a big, sprawling, wide ranging study covering hundreds of years and dozens of kingdoms, this a small, short book dealing with one man. The first was very simple to review and sum up, this very complicated.
My attention had been caught by Lloyd George firstly as first minister and then Prime Minister of one of, in my opinion, Britain great governments. One that brought the country the extension of the franchise, progressive taxation, old age pensions, the crushing of the House of Lords - although admittedly it also provided Britain with civil war in Ireland a delay in the extension of the franchise , and the First World War . Secondly by AJP Taylor's comments in Essays in English History, although these did not do full credit to Lloyd George's ability to leap out the frying pan, dance over the fire, and invent a workable political solution to a problem - an ability that led other politicians to absolutely loath him - in part because Lloyd George didn't give a tinker's cuss for traditional party boundaries -eg when dealing with the Irish he told them they'd best make a deal with him otherwise some real hard-liner would become UK-PM (this after the UK for alll the black and tans failled to achieve a military victory in the independence war so the Irish offered Dominion status & treaty ports, then he came back to the commons ans told them he was the only one who could achieve peace with the Irish and himself a working parliamentary majority even though he had only a liberal rump and was dependant on Conservative support. For Pugh this is because he was primarily a politician of the centre ground and would happily pull others from any party into his orbit provided this would allow him to accomplish his objectives.
This open mindedness led some to regard him as unprincipled. AJP Taylor argued that Lloyd George was the outsider in British politics in a way that no other Prime Minister ever has been - or is likely to be; a native Welsh speaker, a lay preacher at the Free Churches, a lower class background. He was outsider the dense family networks that dominate politics. Pugh takes the view that Lloyd George did have a consistent set of principles and sees him as a follower of Joseph Chamberlain - the great reforming Liberal mayor of Birmingham who became an imperialist Conservative Prime Minister of Britain - which rather sums up the problem. If your values cut across established Party lines you will be a controversial and difficult political figure.Reform at home and Empire abroad were a well matched pair, the empire need broad shouldered, sharp shooting men and the wide hipped women to bear them, hence the eugenic appeal of Darwin's cousin Galton or the contraceptive efforts of Marie Stropes, to limit the abilities of undesirables to reproduce.
Something that stood out was the sense of the limited boundaries of political life, or perhaps the duration of political issues - effectively Lloyd George was dealing with many of the same problems as contemporary British politicians; devolution, progressive taxation, reform of the House of Lords, the power of a conservative press, establishment of a viable third party in British politics, electoral reform, if one accepts a mixed economy (ie recognising the enormous power of the state in a market economy)how then best to intervene to produce desired social ends such as increased employment . The one issue that has dropped away completely is the Liberal wish to tax land and in particular increases in unearned value , the other one I suppose which has changed its spots is Imperialism.
The major issue which remains relevant in British politics is the question of achieving political power. Between 1906 and 1910 there were three general elections, the Conservative share of the vote varied between 43.4 and 46.8% of the electors yet the Liberal party on a far smaller share of the vote managed to form governments through alliances with the Irish Home Rule MPs and the Labour grouping. In the inter war period the Liberals were reduced to a third party as the party divided between Lloyd George and Asquith - who refused to stand down as party leader despite having been bumped out of office as Liberal Prime Minister in 1916. The Liberals offered to support a minority government in exchange for the introduction of Proportional Representation - which would probably guarantee a third party's position in government for ever more - but were talked down to an offer of a transferable vote system. Fond as I am of recalling that 'history repeats its self, first as tragedy and then as comedy' I hadn't been expecting that it would do so quite so precisely, and in such short order. Thank goodness political memories are short otherwise too many people would be embarrassed. At a time when the Labour party appears to be on the brink of splitting itself apart, and with both major parties having not come close to the loosing percentage of the vote of the Conservatives in 1906 for quite some time the issue of how to conduct 'big tent' politics is going to remain a live issue, and the ability of figures like Lloyd George to scramble up viable solutions and to reinvent themselves to face new challenges would remain a potent example if Politicians had a mind to read history .
Of, possibly unfortunate, continuing interest is the First World War. Lloyd George transferred from Chancellor of Exchequer to Minister of Munitions and was closely involved in trying to run the war in an effective manner. The problem, and here Pugh largely repeats AJP Taylor's opinions, was the unimaginativeness of the British generals, and the lack of any kind of unified allied command - which still amazes me, Llyoyd George limited his own room for manoeuvre by doing his best to constrict Lord Kitchener's role as minister of war, which wasn't helpful when he himself was bumped up to the war office from the ministry of munitions . There have been some attempts to rehabilitate various British Generals, but it still remains that their basic conception was that because the allies populations were greater than those of their enemies that they would win simply through attrition, so long as the war went on for long enough. I suppose this was true, if inconvenient for the millions of men slated to die on all sides in order to achieve this result. In addition they steadfastly demonstrated the value of their superior education in their ability to repeatedly blame others for their own failure to achieve tactical breakthroughs, one result of which was the closure of pubs during the day which persisted until the 1990s, just in case Sir John French wanted some more shells manufactured from the grave I suppose. This remains as impressive as it was frustrating to Lloyd George. However the political legacy was - after many deaths and years of stalemate, the domination of the war effort by politicians rather than by the military. Although arguably the army's current relentless 'can-do' attitude is as dangerous to soldiers as it's earlier 'can't-do' attitude.
Lloyd George remains the outsider, a hugely successful Liberal politician who the party system struggled to contain, misremembered as an adulterer - he reversed the standard pattern of having an affair with his secretary by making the woman he was in love with his secretary , a terrible constituency MP - he often did not even open letters let alone answer them - who gained support through his public stand on all-Wales issues, a regional politician who became Prime Minister, a political fixer who preferred the golf course to the House of Commons, a restless and inventive man who annoyed Keynes by having devised his own style of Keynesian economics before coming across Keynes, the man who started to fight the post war election with the motto 'homes fit for heroes' only to be frightened into changing to 'squeezing the last farthing out of Germany' by a hostile press. A distant figure, and a contemporary one.
March 9, 2018
David Lloyd George has never wanted for biographers, yet there is a surprising dearth of first-rate works about him. Two historians, John Grigg and Bentley Brinkerhoff Gilbert, attempted multi-volume studies of his life and career, yet both died before they could complete their labors. There are comprehensive single-volume accounts, most notably Peter Rowland's David Lloyd George: A Biography, but Rowland's book suffers from a lack of analysis that would make sense of the details he provides.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that authors who attempt such an effort face is coming to terms with such a long and complicated life. Lloyd George's career can seem to be a mass of contradictions: the pro-Boer who supported Britain's entry into the First World War and who subsequently led the nation to victory, the radical who was prime minister of a Conservative-dominated government, the dynamic Liberal whose tenure as his party's leader saw its decline into political irrelevance. This is the great merit of Martin Pugh's short biography of Lloyd George. In less than 200 pages, he offers an analysis of his subject that reconciles these contradictions into a coherent political career. Pugh's Lloyd George is not so much contradictory as he is complex, with a political philosophy of "radical centrism" that was not at home in either party. Patriotic and reformist, his beliefs were reflected in policies as diverse as his advocacy of old age pensions and his support for imperial expansion, all of which combine to make his legacy a rich one that defined the country more profoundly than most other prime ministers.
Pugh advances his interpretation in clear and forceful prose. Though he confines his citations to published primary sources, it is a book that reflects both his prior archival research and his mastery of the considerable secondary source literature on his subject. Much has been added to this corpus since Pugh's book was first published, yet while it may no longer be up-to-date his analysis has weathered the years well. For anyone seeking to understand this complex and important figure, Pugh's biography is a worthy addition to their reading list.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that authors who attempt such an effort face is coming to terms with such a long and complicated life. Lloyd George's career can seem to be a mass of contradictions: the pro-Boer who supported Britain's entry into the First World War and who subsequently led the nation to victory, the radical who was prime minister of a Conservative-dominated government, the dynamic Liberal whose tenure as his party's leader saw its decline into political irrelevance. This is the great merit of Martin Pugh's short biography of Lloyd George. In less than 200 pages, he offers an analysis of his subject that reconciles these contradictions into a coherent political career. Pugh's Lloyd George is not so much contradictory as he is complex, with a political philosophy of "radical centrism" that was not at home in either party. Patriotic and reformist, his beliefs were reflected in policies as diverse as his advocacy of old age pensions and his support for imperial expansion, all of which combine to make his legacy a rich one that defined the country more profoundly than most other prime ministers.
Pugh advances his interpretation in clear and forceful prose. Though he confines his citations to published primary sources, it is a book that reflects both his prior archival research and his mastery of the considerable secondary source literature on his subject. Much has been added to this corpus since Pugh's book was first published, yet while it may no longer be up-to-date his analysis has weathered the years well. For anyone seeking to understand this complex and important figure, Pugh's biography is a worthy addition to their reading list.
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October 17, 2021Lloyd George is a complex man and an equally complex politician and it may seem surprising that Pugh can pull out a short biography of Lloyd George when all about him produce tomes. The work is balanced, although more critical of LG than I would be, but I can certainly see where Pugh comes from and so would recommend this as a starting point before going on to more deeper works.
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