The downfall of Lloyd George

After dark days in 1917 and 1918, when victory finally came in November 1918 Lloyd George was at the height of his power and popularity. He was 'the man who won the war', and the Conservative Party leader, Andrew Bonar Law, told Lord Beaverbrook that "he can be Prime Minister for life if he likes". There was no opposition within the Conservative Party to continuing the coalition into peacetime, as there were many difficult problems to be faced. The general election of December 1918 was a landslide: 529 coalition MPs were returned (382 Conservatives, 133 Coalition Liberal supporters of Lloyd George and 14 from minor parties), whilst the opposition was only 57 Labour MPs and 28 Liberal followers of Asquith.

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The problems began in 1920. Lloyd George’s attempt to secure his power base by encouraging the ‘fusion’ of the coalition parties was blocked, ironically by his Liberal followers who feared losing their identity. More importantly, the post-war economic boom collapsed, and the following recession produced two crucial effects. Rising levels of unemployment boosted the rise of the Labour Party, whilst the middle classes, under pressure from the great increase in taxation due to the war (the standard rate of income tax was 500% higher in 1919 than in 1913), became increasingly alienated from the coalition. There were frequent demands from the Conservative grass-roots for cuts in government spending to enable reductions in taxation, and a press agitation and by-election challenges under the banner of ‘Anti-Waste’ (founded in January 1921) put pressure on Conservative MPs in the safer seats.

Rifts and scandals

From the autumn of 1921 onwards, almost nothing seemed to go right for the coalition government. There were too many failures, U-turns and policies which strained Conservative support. These included a rift with France, overtures to Bolshevik Russia, and the failure to fulfill a pledge to reform the House of Lords so that its delaying powers would be strengthened – something that the Conservative grass-roots considered essential in case the Labour Party should win a majority in the House of Commons. The reversal of Irish policy to negotiate with the Sinn Fein rebels was unpopular, although the Conservative Party conference in November 1921 approved the Anglo-Irish treaty because its solution of partition safeguarded the position of protestant Ulster. Lloyd George’s tactical adroitness looked like lack of principle, and the atmosphere at the top of the coalition was seen as high-living, cynical and opportunistic. In the summer of 1922, a scandal over Lloyd George’s fund-raising by the sale of honours added a damaging whiff of corruption.

The last straw was the ‘Chanak crisis’ of September-October 1922, in which the belligerence of Lloyd George and leading cabinet ministers, including Winston Churchill (then still a Liberal), seemed likely to result in war with Turkey. By this time, party members in the safer Conservative seats, many backbench MPs, and some junior ministers had come to see Lloyd George as a liability, and the coalition as failing in its basic purpose – instead of preventing the rise of the Labour Party, its unpopularity was actually assisting it.

This deteriorating situation was made worse by the deficiencies of Austen Chamberlain, who became Conservative leader when Bonar Law resigned due to ill-health in March 1921. Chamberlain was inflexible, aloof and autocratic; he failed to signal his intentions clearly to his followers or respond to their concerns. Together with the other prominent Conservative cabinet ministers, he was seen as too captivated by Lloyd George and failing in his foremost duty of preserving party unity. Chamberlain and the most prominent Conservative leaders sought to suppress dissent from below, and to maneouvre the party against its will into another coalition election under Lloyd George. They were seen as arrogant and contemptuous, and regarded themselves as indispensible, when in fact they were discredited and out of touch.

Chamberlain was convinced that separating from Lloyd George and his Coalition Liberal supporters would fatally divide the ‘constitutional’ forces resisting the dangerous advance of Socialism, and crucially he did not believe that the Conservatives could win an election on their own. The government’s problems and unpopularity actually strengthened Chamberlain’s view that the coalition was essential, as he considered “the shoulders of the Coalition are broader than the shoulders of the Party.” However, most of his followers took the opposite view: that the coalition’s discredit was dragging the Conservative Party down with it, and that Lloyd George would divide their party as damagingly as he had the Liberals. By the autumn of 1922, many Conservative MPs in the south and the midlands had promised their constituency associations to stand as ‘independent’ Conservatives at the next election, and the approaching party conference in November was almost certain to repudiate the coalition.

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The pro-coalition leaders sought to pre-empt this by calling a general election beforehand. Confident that he would secure approval of his strategy, Chamberlain summoned a meeting of all Conservative MPs for 11am on 19 October 1922. This was held at the Carlton Club because it was conveniently located and had a room of sufficient size, and most Conservative MPs were members.

After speeches had been made on both sides, the result of the secret ballot was a massive defeat for Chamberlain, by 185 votes to 88. Immediately afterwards, he resigned the party leadership and Lloyd George resigned as Prime Minister. Bonar Law’s last-minute emergence from retirement to attend the meeting and support ending the coalition was crucial in providing a credible alternative leader. He became Prime Minister and immediately called a general election, in which to the surprise of many the Conservative Party won an overall majority of 73. In Bonar Law’s government a new generation of Conservative leaders, including Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, rose to power and dominated British politics until the Second World War.

Stuart Ball CBE is Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at the University of Leicester and author of Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918–1945 (Oxford University Press, 2013)