Although born in
Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, England, Lloyd George was a
Welsh-speaking man and
Welsh by descent and upbringing, the only Welshman ever to hold the office of
Prime Minister in the
British government. In March 1863, his father William George, who had been a
school teacher in Manchester and other towns, returned to his native
Pembrokeshire due to failing health. He took up
farming but died in June 1864 of
pneumonia, aged 44. His mother Elizabeth (1828-1896, daughter of David Lloyd,
shoemaker and
Baptist pastor, of
Llanystumdwy, Caernarvonshire), sold the
farm and moved with her children to her native Llanystumdwy, North Wales, where she lived with her brother Richard, a master
cobbler and later a lay Baptist preacher who, as a strong
Liberal, proved a towering influence on the boy, encouraging him to take up a career in
law and enter
politics; his uncle remained influential up until his death at age 83 in February 1917, by which time his nephew was Prime Minister. His
childhood showed through in his entire career, as he attempted to
aid the common man at the expense of what he liked to call "the
Dukes". There were three children; Mary Ellen was his elder sister and William was born posthumously to his father in 1865.
Articled to a firm of solicitors in
Porthmadog, Lloyd George was admitted in 1884 after taking Honours in his final law examination and set up his own practice in the back parlour of his uncle's house in 1885. The practice flourished, he established branch offices in surrounding towns and took his brother William into partnership in 1887. By then he was politically active, having campaigned for the
Liberal Party in the
1885 election in which he was attracted by
Joseph Chamberlain's "unauthorised programme" of reforms. The election resulted firstly in a stalemate, neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives having a majority, the balance of power being held by the Irish National Party and then in
William Gladstone's announcement of a determination to bring about Irish
Home Rule which in turn led to Chamberlain leaving the Liberals to form the
Liberal Unionists. Lloyd George was uncertain of which wing to follow, carrying a pro-Chamberlain resolution at the local Liberal Club and travelling to
Birmingham planning to attend the first meeting of Chamberlain's
National Radical Union but he had his dates wrong and arrived a week too early. In 1907, he was to say that he thought Chamberlain's plan for a federal solution correct in 1886 and still thought so, that he preferred the unauthorised programme to the
Whiggish platform of the official Liberal Party and that had Chamberlain proposed solutions to Welsh grievances such as land reform and disestablishment he, together with most Welsh Liberals, would have followed him.
On
24 January 1888, he married
Margaret Owen, the daughter of a well-to-do local farming family. Also in that year he and other young Welsh Liberals founded a monthly paper
Udgorn Rhyddid (Bugle of Freedom) and won on appeal to the Divisional Court of Queens Bench the Llanfrothen Burial case which established the right of
Nonconformists to be buried according to their own denominational rites in parish burial grounds, a right given by the Burial Act 1880 that had hitherto been ignored by the
Anglican clergy. It was this case, which was hailed as a great victory throughout Wales, and his writings in
Udgorn Rhyddid that led to his adoption as the Liberal candidate for
Caernarfon Boroughs on
27 December 1888.
In 1889, he became an
Alderman on the Caernarfon County Council which had been created by the
Local Government Act 1888. At that time he appeared to be trying to create a separate Welsh National Party modelled on
Parnell's Irish Parliamentary Party and worked towards a union of the North and South Wales Liberal Federations.
His flair quickly showed, and he was narrowly returned Liberal MP for Caernarfon Boroughs on
13 April 1890 at a by-election caused by the death of the former
Conservative member, his margin being 19 votes. When entering the House of Commons, he was the youngest MP in the house and he sat with an informal grouping of Welsh Liberal members with a programme of disestablishing and disendowing the
Church of England in Wales, temperance reform and Welsh
home rule. He would remain an MP until 1945, fifty-five years later.
As at that time, backbench members of the House of Commons were not paid, he supported himself and his growing family by continuing to practise as a
solicitor, opening an office in London under the title of Lloyd George and Co and continuing in partnership with William George in Criccieth. In 1897, he merged his growing London practice with that of Arthur Rhyrs Roberts (who was to become Official Solicitor) under the title of Lloyd George, Roberts and Co.
He was soon speaking on Liberal issues (particularly temperance, the "local option" and national as opposed to denominational education) throughout England as well as Wales. During the next decade, Lloyd George campaigned in Parliament largely for Welsh issues and in particular for disestablishment and disendowment of the
Church of England. He wrote extensively for Liberal papers such as the
Manchester Guardian. When Gladstone retired after the defeat of the second Home Rule Bill in 1894 the Welsh Liberal members chose him to serve on a deputation to
William Harcourt to press for specific assurances on Welsh issues and when those were not forthcoming they resolved to take independent action if the government did not bring a bill for disestablishment. When that was not forthcoming he and three other Welsh Liberals (
David Alfred Thomas, Herbert Lewis and
Frank Edwards) refused the
whip on
14 April 1892 but accepted
Lord Rosebery's assurance and rejoined the official Liberals on
29 May. Thereafter, he devoted much time to setting up branches of
Cymru Fydd (Wales Will Be) which, he said, would in time become a force like the Irish National Party. He abandoned this idea after being criticised in Welsh newspapers for bringing about the defeat of the Liberal Party in the
1895 election and when, at a meeting in
Newport on
16 January 1896, the South Wales Liberal Federation, led by
David Alfred Thomas and
Robert Bird moved that he be not heard.
He gained national fame by his vehement opposition to the
Second Boer War. He based his attack firstly on what were supposed to be the war aims – remedying the grievances of the
Uitlanders and in particular the claim they were wrongly denied the right to vote saying "I do not believe the war has any connection with the franchise. It is a question of 45% dividends" and that England (which then did not have universal manhood suffrage) was more in need of franchise reform than the Boer republics. His second attack was on the cost of the war which prevented overdue social reform in England, such as old age pensions and workman's cottages. As the war progressed he moved his attack to its conduct by the generals, who he said (basing his words on reports by
Burdett Coutt in
The Times) were not providing for the sick or wounded soldiers and were starving Boer women and children in concentration camps. But he reserved his major thrusts for Chamberlain accusing him of directly profiteering from the war through the Chamberlain family company Kynochs Ltd of which Chamberlain's brother was Chairman and which had won tenders to the War Office though its prices were higher than some of its competitors. His attacks almost split the Liberal Party as
H. H. Asquith, Richard Burdon Haldane and others were supporters of the war and formed the
Liberal Imperial League.
His attacks on the government's Education Act which provided that County Councils would fund church schools helped reunite the Liberals, his successful amendment that the County need only fund those schools where the buildings were in good repair served to make the Act a dead letter in Wales where the Counties were able to show most of the Church of England schools were in poor repair. Having already gained national recognition for his anti Boer War campaigns, his leadership of the attacks on the Education Act gave him a strong parliamentary reputation and marked him as a future cabinet member.
In 1903, after the
Kishinev Pogrom, Colonial Secretary
Joseph Chamberlain offered the
Zionist Movement the possibility of settling in
Uganda (modern Kenya). Lloyd-George represented the movement in drafting an agreement with the government, however the issue was controversial for both sides and eventually voted down by the Zionist movment at a special convention.