Lloyd George: 'The first really modern prime minister'

Image caption, 'The first really modern prime minister.....he changed our world' - Historian and Labour peer Lord Kenneth O. Morgan of Aberdyfi
  • Author, David Cornock
  • Role, 大象传媒 Wales Parliamentary correspondent

What springs to mind when you think of David Lloyd George?

It's a question I've been asking historians and politicians on the 100th anniversary of his arrival as prime minister.

Kenneth O. Morgan (Labour peer Lord Morgan of Aberdyfi) delivers the History of Parliament Trust annual lecture on "Asquith, Lloyd George and the crisis of Liberalism" on Wednesday. It will be shown on 大象传媒 Parliament on Saturday.

He told me: "He was the first really modern prime minister. I won't say presidential prime minister but more dominant than any prime minister had been.

"He changed the method of government, created the cabinet office, special advisers, he spoke directly to the press."

That may come as a surprise to those who think presidential government arrived in the Thatcher or Blair era.

'Sense of doom'

Lloyd George didn't become Liberal leader until 1926. So how did he become prime minister?

"There was a great sense of doom," said Lord Morgan. "There'd been the Somme, Jutland hadn't gone very well, Lloyd George had seen failure to help the Balkans, particularly Romania. He told Maurice Hankey [the first cabinet secretary] 'We are going to lose this war'. And he said so in the House of Commons - 'the mocking spectre of too late'."

He added: "What really decided the issue, I believe, is the arguments over military conscription. Lloyd George supported it as did virtually all the Conservatives. They felt it was a sign a symbol that Britain was going to fight the war with all its resources, putting aside civil and legal considerations.

"Asquith had great doubts so that aroused serious tensions within the government and in the end there was a feeling, which was expressed in the private meeting that Lloyd George had with Bonar Law and Carlton that a new form of direction of the war was needed, a war council of very few people, and that is what caused the final split."

'Commitment'

The current (4th) Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor drew my attention to this letter </CPS/9081643> as evidence, of his great-grandfather's "utter commitment" to winning the war.

In the letter, written to a Frederick William Hughes, he writes: "Welsh Farmers can do much to conquer the German Submarine, and having accomplished this task the Prusian's [sic] last hope will be destroyed."

The current Earl told me: "I do believe that this letter shows, along with his account in the War Memoirs of the interplay, meetings and letters between him and Herbert Asquith at the time of the transfer of power, LL G's utter commitment, (which was paramount and to the exclusion of all other considerations), to the cause of victory."

You can watch my five-minute 大象传媒 Sunday Politics Wales film (with some archive of the man himself) here and read about Dan Snow's special 大象传媒 Wales programme on his great-great grandfather here.