Lloyd George, David

He was born in the family of a teacher, trained as a lawyer in the city of Porthmadog in Wales , taking an active part in local politics.

In 1890 he was elected as a deputy from the liberals to parliament. During the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, he sharply spoke out against British policy.

In 1905-1908, Lloyd George was Minister of Commerce in the office of G. Campbell-Bannerman , and in 1908 he occupied the post of Minister of Finance in the government of G. Asquith . In 1909, he presented his famous budget, which received in the liberal press the name "popular" and imposing increased taxes on luxury goods, incomes and vacant land of landlords . Adopted by the House of Commons , this budget was collapsed by a conservative majority in the House of Lords , but when, in 1910, the Liberal government received support in the elections, the budget was still adopted.
In 1911, Lloyd George passed through Parliament a law on state insurance, which gave the right to provide for sickness and disability, as well as the law on unemployment insurance.
With these reforms, he tried to gain popularity among the masses and prevent the creation of a revolutionary working-class party in England ^[2] .

When World War I began , Lloyd George remained for a year the Minister of Finance, and then became head of the newly created Ministry of Arms. In June 1916, after the death of Kitchener , he was appointed Minister of War.
By intrigue and collusion with the conservatives, at the cost of splitting the Liberal Party, Lloyd George achieved the fall of the liberal government and Asquith's resignation. On December 5, 1916, Lloyd George became Prime Minister of the coalition government.
During the war he defended the slogan of bringing the struggle to the complete defeat of Germany. He demanded the transfer of the center of gravity of the British military efforts from Western Europe to the Middle East, to the Balkans, to the straits, to the eastern Mediterranean. This strategy pursued expansionist goals: to shift the main burden of the war in Europe to the Allies, to block the path of the Russian armies to the Balkans, to ensure the complete domination of the British armed forces in the Middle and Middle East by the end of the war ^[3] .

After the October Revolution, Lloyd George supported military intervention against Bolshevik Russia and its blockade, assisted with arms and money to the leaders of the white armies - Denikin, Kolchak and Yudenich ^[3] .
“Lloyd George maneuvered between helping the White movement, the desire to trade with the Soviet government and the desire to maintain the independence of small states that emerged on the outskirts of the former Russian empire, ” writes D.I. Denikin biographer, D.V. Lekhovich. - He openly spoke for the fragmentation of Russia. The duality of British politics, the divergence of views between Churchill and Lloyd George, on the one hand, Russophilism, on the other, Russophobia, the absence of a well-thought-out program of action — all this made Denikin totally discouraged. ” ^[4]

Lloyd George signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 on behalf of Great Britain; at the talks when he signed it, Lloyd George showed restraint and flexibility.

In 1919-1921, there was a war for the independence of Ireland, as a result of which the Lloyd George government in December 1921 had to recognize the formation of the Irish Free State , which received the status of dominion .

In 1922, there was a crisis in the relationship between liberals and conservatives. As a supporter of strengthening the imperial positions in the Middle East and the Balkans, Lloyd George became the inspiration and organizer of the intervention in Turkey in order to brutally suppress the national liberation movement in the country and turn it into a British colony. Lloyd George’s policy led to the Greek-Turkish War (1920–1922) ^[3] . In the fall of 1922, supporters of Mustafa Kemal in Turkey won the war with Greece , which was supported by the United Kingdom, and on October 11 an armistice was concluded on conditions favorable to Kemal's supporters . This became a serious defeat for Lloyd George’s foreign policy, after which the conservatives refused to support him and on October 20, 1922 he resigned.
The decline of the Liberal Party led to the fall of Lloyd George’s political role, although he retained a certain influence in the country to the end of his life.

In the years 1926-1931 was the leader of the opposition.

After Hitler came to power in Germany, Lloyd George believed that German Nazism could be an anti-Soviet weapon harmless to Britain. Convinced of the opposite, he began to actively advocate for the Anglo-Soviet agreement and the unity of actions of England and the Soviet Union in order to curb German aggression ^[3] .

• Lloyd George is one of the main characters in the heroic-satirical play of V. V. Mayakovsky " Mystery-Buff ".

• Lloyd George D. Military Memoirs / Trans. from English I. Zvavicha. - M., 1934-1938. - 5 tons
• Lloyd George D. Speech delivered during the war: Memoirs. Memoirs. / Per. from English - Mn. : Harvest , 2003. - 208 p. - (Memories. Memoirs). - ISBN 985-13-1639-3

• General Kharkov

• Vinogradov C. B. David Lloyd George. - M .: Thought , 1970. - 412 p.
• Robert Lloyd George. David & Winston: How a Friendship Changed History. , 2008. ISBN 1-58567-930-5 . P 336.
• N.V. Ogarkov. David Lloyd George // Soviet Military Encyclopedia. - M: Military Publishing, 1978. - V. 5. - p. 15. - 688 p. - 105 000 copies

• The article in the Encyclopedia Krugosvet