Monday 18 January 2016

Lloyd George the first Prime Minister from a working class background and the only Welsh speaking PM ever.

'In his prime, his power, his influence, his initiative was unequalled in the land. He was the champion of the weak and the poor'.
‘He was the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors’.

Image result for david lloyd george quotes

Yesterday was the birth day of David Lloyd George 153 years ago and soon it will be 71 years since his death. He has always been one of my political heroes so I went on social media yesterday to remind people about Lloyd George. Simultaneously I was in the process of preparing this post for my blog when I was contacted by someone from the area informing me that the magnificent and impressive Museum in Llanystumdwy that commemorates the life of Lloyd George and his achievements was included on a very long list of options to be considered as cuts that Gwynedd County Council.

The Council faces a shortfall of some £50m in the authority’s finances by 2017/18 and a comprehensive and long list of cost reduction options have been drawn up.  A public consultation document called ‘Her Gwynedd/Gwynedd Challenge' has been made available to ratepayers requesting their views and opinions - apparently the authority has received some 2000 observations.  

The reference to the option regarding the Museum has the following :-

Lloyd George Museum The Museum was established in 1947 and run by Trustees until it was transferred to the Council in 1987. The Council now runs the museum and Highgate, the childhood home of David Lloyd George, which has been restored to show people what it was like when it was a cobbler’s workshop in the 1860s.
The museum is one of just two museums throughout Britain dedicated to a former prime minister and attracts between 6,000 and 7,000 visitors a year.

Option to close the Museum to save £27,000

Closing the museum would mean: • less opportunities to promote the history and influence of David Lloyd George on Britain and the world during a key period of remembrance to mark the centenary of the First World War and his time as prime minister • implications for the collections and Highgate itself, which have been donated to the Council and the Frances Lloyd George Fund charity • an impact on the area’s economy in terms of tourism as it is a high-profile attraction • depriving schools, colleges and societies of education and research opportunities.

I earnestly hope that this historic place will be saved the axe because it so indelibly part of Wales’s heritage. Indeed there needs to be established a public fund to enable people to contribute towards the running of the Museum.   

I have several recollections of visiting the Museum over the years and I specially recall when in October 1985 to mark the launch of the Lloyd George Society members of the Alliance Committee for Wales and others led by Sir Winston Roddick held a ceremony at the great man's graveside.  It is a very peaceful and tranquil place and then his surviving daughter Lady Olwen was with us. Few brief speeches were made and we sang Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau. For me it was a very moving experience.

As we left the graveside I asked Lady Olwen what would her father had said to Steel and Owen who were at the time were having problems agreeing over Defence policy in particular and as a consequence the Alliance was being damaged in the polls. Her answer was ‘he would have told them to just get on with it’!

Lloyd George was a social reformer, probably the first social liberal, and he brought in reforms when Chancellor of the Exchequer that benefited the majority of society. Reforms such as the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 and the National Insurance Act of 1911, both did much to aid the poorest in society and the most vulnerable. Indeed the forerunner of the Welfare State.

Without doubt Lloyd George and Churchill are the twin giants of 20th-century British history. Of course they had their differences. But the fact remains that the relationship of these two titans was indeed, as Lloyd George claimed in 1938, 'the longest friendship in British politics'. In fact it is hard to think of another that comes close.

For nearly 40 years Lloyd George was the only man to whom Churchill consistently deferred. Sometimes he did not like this subordination and apparently often he raged at Lloyd George behind his back; but he always acknowledged the older man's superiority. After a period of years had gone by without meeting up they did on one occasion and Churchill said 'Within five minutes the old relationship between us was completely re-established; the relationship between Master and Servant, and I was the Servant.'

Here is an extract of Winston Churchill’s memorable speech of tribute in the House of Commons March 28 1945 to David Lloyd George  :-

‘When I first became Lloyd George's friend and active associate, now more than 40 years ago, this deep love of the people, the profound knowledge of their lives and of the undue and needless pressures under which they lived, impressed itself indelibly upon my mind.
Then there was his dauntless courage, his untiring energy, his oratory, persuasive and provocative. His swift, penetrating, comprehensive mind was always grasping at the root, or what he thought to be the root, of any question. His eye ranged ahead of the obvious. He was always hunting in the field beyond. I have often heard people come to him with a plan, and he would say "That is all right, but what happens when we get over the bridge? What do we do then?"

In his prime, his power, his influence, his initiative were unequalled in the land. He was the champion of the weak and the poor. These were great days. Nearly two generations have passed.

Most people are unconscious of how much their lives have been shaped by the laws for which Lloyd George was responsible. Health insurance and old age pensions were the first large-scale State-conscious efforts to set a balustrade along the crowded causeway of the people's life and, without pulling down the structures of society, to fasten a lid over the abyss into which vast numbers used to fall, generation after generation, uncared for and indeed unnoticed.


Now we move forward confidently into larger and more far-reaching applications of these ideas. I was his lieutenant in those bygone days, and shared in a minor way in the work. I have lived to see long strides taken, and being taken, and going to be taken, on this path of insurance by which the vultures of utter ruin are driven from the dwellings of the nations.

The stamps we lick, the roads we travel, the system of progressive taxation, the principal remedies that have yet been used against unemployment—all these to a very great extent were part not only of the mission but of the actual achievement of Lloyd George.

His long life was, from almost the beginning to almost the end, spent in political strife and controversy. He aroused intense and sometimes needless antagonisms. He had fierce and bitter quarrels at various times with all the parties. He faced undismayed the storms of criticism and hostility. In spite of all obstacles, including those he raised himself, he achieved his main purposes.

As a man of action, resource and creative energy he stood, when at his zenith, without a rival. His name is a household word throughout our Commonwealth of Nations. He was the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors.

Note:

The italicised section of Churchill’s tribute was something I used in a speech in Blackpool 1988 when addressing the first conference of the Social and Liberal Democrats on the occasion of Paddy Ashdown’s first speech as leader.