David Lloyd George

David Lloyd George was British prime minister through the second half of the First World War and laid the foundations of the welfare state. Born in Manchester in 1863 to Welsh parents, he was raised in Caernarvonshire by his uncle, a shoemaker and Baptist minister, after his father died. He qualified as a solicitor and entered parliament for Caernarvon Boroughs in 1890, holding the seat for fifty-five years. He made his name opposing the Boer War at considerable personal risk, escaping a Birmingham meeting disguised as a policeman. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1908 he introduced old age pensions and, in the People's Budget of 1909, land and income taxes on the wealthy to pay for them. The Lords rejected it, which produced two elections and the Parliament Act of 1911 removing their veto. The National Insurance Act of 1911 established contributory health and unemployment insurance. He was Minister of Munitions from 1915, transforming shell production, and became prime minister in December 1916 by displacing Asquith, splitting the Liberal Party permanently. He centralised the war effort in a small cabinet, forced the Admiralty to adopt convoys against its judgement, and established a unified allied command under Foch in 1918. At Versailles he stood between Wilson's idealism and Clemenceau's demands. He negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 after authorising the Black and Tans, and was brought down in 1922 partly over the sale of honours. He never held office again, and died in 1945. He was made Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor months before his death, and his warnings about German rearmament in the 1930s were undermined by his own admiring visit to Hitler in 1936.

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