From the start of his legal career, Lloyd George was active in local Welsh politics; in1890 he was elected to parliament. In 1890, Lloyd George entered the Commons as a liberal representing the Welsh Caernarfon Boroughs. At the turn of the century he had a reputation for spirited oratory on behalf of Welsh causes.Lloyd George’s dramatic oratory soon brought him to the attention of the leaders of the Liberal Party in the house of commons. However, it was felt he was too radical and they suspected that he would lose his seat in the 1900 General Election because of his opposition to the Boer War. However, in caernarvon he was seen as the most important figure in Parliament defending Welsh rights and was re-elected. The leadership of the liberal party disapproved of Lloyd George’s role in the campaign against the 1902 Education Act. In his speeches on this issue he appeared to be encouraging people to bring in the law by supporting John Clifford and his National Passive Resistance Committee. As a result of Clifford’s campaign, over 170 Nonconformists went to prison for refusing to pay their school tax.
He was radical in his social views, and supported Welsh nationalism. After the 1906 general election, the leader of the liberal party, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman became the new Prime-Minister. Lloyd George was given the post of President of the Board of Trade. Impressed by his performance as a minister, Campbell-Bannerman promoted him in 1908 to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd George now had the opportunity to introduce reforms that he had been campaigning for since he was first in the House of Commons.
Lloyd George had been a long opponent of the Poor Law in Britain. He was determined to take action that in his words would ‘lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor”. He believed the best way of doing this was to guarantee an income to people who were too old to work. This was based on the ideas of Tom Paine that first appeared in his book Rights of Man in1791, Lloyd George’s measure, the Old Age Pensions Act, provided between 1s. and 5s. a week to people over seventy.
To pay for these pensions Lloyd George had to raise government revenues by an additional £16 million a year.In 1909 Lloyd George announced what became known as the Peoples Budget. This included increases in taxation. Whereas people on lower incomes were to pay 9d. in the pound, those on annual incomes of over £3,000 had to pay 1s. 2d. in the pound. Lloyd George also introduced a new supertax of 6d. in the pound for those earning £5,000 a year. Other measures included an increase in death duties on the estates or the rich and heavy taxes on profits gained from the ownership and sale of property. Other innovations in Lloyd George’s budget included labour exchanges and a children’s allowance on income tax.
David Lloyd George continued to campaign for progressive causes. During the 1920s Lloyd George produced several reports on how Britain could be improved. This included Towns and the Land (1925), Britain’s Industrial Future (1928) and We Can Conquer Unemployment (1929).
This budget he submitted in 1909 contained numerous appropriations for social legislation benefiting the workers, and it met with vigorous opposition from the Conservatives and from the House of Lords, which voted it down. In a speech made in The Limehouse parish of London in 1909, Lloyd George defended his budget and abused His opposition so vociferously that the term limehouse has remained in the English language as a synonym for denunciation of one’s political opponents. Shortly thereafter the House of Lords was forbidden by law to consider finance bills, and many of Lloyd George’s reforms were adopted, including national sickness and invalidity insurance and unemployment insurance. Lloyd George’s next reform was the 1911 National Insurance Act.
At the beginning of World War 1, Lloyd George, as chancellor of the Exchequer, secured Britain’s credit and placed the country in a financial position strong enough to endure the War. In 1915 he was appointed to the newly created ministry of munitions, and in 1916 he was made secretary of state for war. He proposed limiting the war cabinet to a smaller, more efficient membership, headed not by the prime- minister but by someone concentrating soley on the problems of war. The liberal prime minister Herbert. Asquith Resigned, and Lloyd George became prime- minister of a coalition government. He reduced the policymaking cabinet from 20 to 5 members and worked for a unified Allied command. He proved a capable wartime leader. The victory achieved in 1918 was won despite conflicts with Douglas Haig, the Commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Forces, known for tremendous losses of troups in battle, and General Robertson, chief of the imperial staff.
After the armistice, he participated in the peace conference and helped frame the Treaty of Versailles. At the Paris peace conference he met with great success, but at home the country was facing an economic shock to the system resulting from the return to civilian life or nearly four million soldiers. In Ireland, violence leads to the establishment of an Irish Free State in 1920. Conservatives were not happy and the coalition began to fall apart. A scandal over campaign finance led to further loss of Conservative support. In 1920 he introduced the Home Rule Bill for Ireland; largely through his efforts the Irish state was established. The Conservatives withdrew from his coalition government in 1922 in protest against Irish Home Rule and support by Britain of Greece against Turkey; Lloyd George resigned, and a general election was called in which the Conservatives were elected to power. He never served in government again. He led the liberal party from 1926 to 1931, but they continued to lose at the polls. While a reformer, an early architect of social welfare programs and the man who led the country to victory in World War 1, the Lloyd George remembered by many liberals is the one who ousted Asquith in 1916. He was made an Earl shortly before his death on March 26, 1945.