Ffion Hague - The Pain and the Privilege - The Women in Lloyd George’s Life

Uncle Lloyd was able to supervise his nephew’s studies more closely after the family left Highgate and took up residence in Criccieth in 1880. Even though the move brought them only a mile closer to Porthmadoc, it was no longer deemed necessary for Lloyd George to lodge near the office, and he began to walk the ten-mile daily round trip from Criccieth. He undoubtedly benefited from the extra discipline that Uncle Lloyd imposed on his studies. By 1881 he felt ready to take his next examination, and travelled to London where it was held. He felt the weight of expectation on his shoulders as he recorded his feelings after the exam: ‘There has been a mixture of hope and fear—hope predominating. I must now abide the result. If the verdict be adverse, I scarcely know what to do—to face friends and others who are so sanguine and seem to have no doubt about the result will be terrible. I can scarcely conceive really the consequences of an adverse verdict. I will be disgraced—lowered in the estimation of my friends and gloated over by mine enemies.’ 5

While he waited anxiously in London for the result he took the opportunity to see the sights, visiting Madame Tussaud’s and the Law Courts. With great excitement he went to Charing Cross station to see for himself the new phenomenon of electric light, noting that it was ‘a sort of pale blue—melancholy—but unquestionably stronger than gas’. Later, he was contemplating the statue of Demosthenes in the British Museum when to his surprise he was hailed by Mr Lloyd, the Tremadoc parson. But the highlight of the trip was to be his first visit to the House of Commons:

Sat 12 Nov. Went to the Houses of Parliament—very much disappointed with them. Grand buildings outside but inside they are crabbed, small and suffocating, especially House of Commons. I will not say but that I eyed the assembly in a spirit similar to that in which William the Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor as the region of his future domain. Oh, vanity. 6

Even as he took the next step towards a career in law, the young David Lloyd George was regarding the House of Commons as his ‘region of future domain’.

There was no inherent contradiction between Lloyd George’s pursuit of a law qualification and his desire, ultimately, to make his name in politics. MPs were not paid a salary until 1911, so it was very difficult for someone without money to enter Parliament. An aspiring politician needed either a private income or a profession that was flexible enough to combine with a parliamentary career. Law was ideal, and men like Herbert Asquith, Edward Carson and Rufus Isaacs had all used it as a stepping-stone to a career in public life.

It was necessary to have an ongoing source of income when in fulltime politics, and it seems that Lloyd George had a plan from the very beginning. He needed training within an established law firm, and Breese, Jones & Casson fitted the bill perfectly, but he never seriously considered staying with the firm beyond the initial five years of his articles. After he had passed his final examinations as well, to become a fully-qualified solicitor in 1884, Randall Casson would ask him to supervise the firm’s new Dolgellau office. It was a good offer, but Lloyd George was impatient to be his own master. 7 He left the firm and set up on his own, working from the back room of the family home in Criccieth. His plan was neat and unashamedly self-serving. Randall Casson had taken William George on as an articled clerk, and Lloyd George only had to wait until William too was qualified before his brother could join his own firm and take over the donkeywork. In the meantime, while he built up the practice, he concentrated on the real love of his life, and the only mistress to whom he was completely faithful: politics.

David Lloyd George came to believe very early in life that he was destined for a career in politics. There was no sudden moment of realisation: politics was in his nature, and he was raised to believe that public life was the highest possible calling for a man of talent—apart from religion, which for him was never a serious option. Richard Lloyd encouraged his ambition, and introduced him at an early age to political debate to encourage his confidence and independence of mind. There was always plenty of debate around the workshop in Llanystumdwy, and there was also scope for extending Lloyd George’s education at the ‘Village Parliament’, a debating society that met in the smithy to discuss religious and philosophical topics, providing an intellectual outlet for the working men of Llanystumdwy. Highgate too was not a typical village cottage, in that practically every periodical published in Wales, some twenty-eight of them, was delivered to its door. In this way the young Lloyd George absorbed the issues of the day, and although he lived in a remote part of North Wales, he was connected to the debates and topics of the wider world by a chain of ideas.

Lloyd George’s upbringing, his uncle’s political views and his nonconformist background all made him a natural Liberal, but in Porthmadoc he came into contact for the first time with radical ideas such as the need for social reform and the disestablishment of the Church in Wales. He found a mentor in John Roberts, a prominent member of the Porthmadoc Baptist community who often held political debates in his candle-making workshop. In his diary Lloyd George described his new friend as ‘a socialist and an out and out one’, 8 and Roberts held views that went far beyond the accepted orthodoxy of the Liberal Party. He was a fierce opponent of the extravagance of the upper classes, especially the royal family, and spoke passionately about justice for the poorer people in society. 9

This was socially and politically risky. There had been a time when the Calvinistic Methodists, the largest group of nonconformists, had mostly supported the Conservative Party, which chimed with their belief in self-reliance, independence from the state and individual determination. Although their unease at the widening division in Wales between the landlords and the working classes had eventually aligned them with the Liberal Party, they strongly disapproved of its more radical fringes. When the young Lloyd George found himself at the heart of a group of radicals in Porthmadoc, he risked alienating the Welsh-speaking chapel-goers who would be his natural political support base.

Nevertheless, he put his toe in the water by joining the Liberal campaign in Criccieth during the general election of March 1880. He was put to work checking the register of voters, which in view of his legal apprenticeship he was well qualified to do. Nationally, the election resulted in a victory for the Liberals under William Gladstone. *The Liberal Party won all but four seats in Wales, including Caernarvon Boroughs, the constituency that included Criccieth, where Watkin Williams defeated George Douglas-Pennant, Lord Penrhyn’s son, who had captured it for the Conservatives in 1874.

Later that year, as he gained confidence in his political views, Lloyd George tried his hand at journalism. The general election was followed in December by a by-election in Caernarvonshire, caused by the appointment of Watkin Williams as a High Court judge, which meant he had to resign his seat as an MP. Using the pseudonym ‘Brutus’, Lloyd George sent an article to the North Wales Express . His subject was the Tory Party, soon to undergo a change of leadership from Disraeli to Lord Salisbury, and much to his delight it was published on 5 November. He was sufficiently encouraged to write a second piece, this time a response to an address by the Tory by-election candidate, his old Llanystumdwy adversary Hugh Ellis-Nanney. This too was published, albeit with one particularly aggressive passage omitted. Over the next few weeks ‘Brutus’ appeared several times in the press, and Lloyd George was even able to see his ‘Address to the Electors’ printed in large characters on North Wales Express posters around the town.