In My Own Time

by Jeremy Thorpe

  I was privileged to give the address in Westminster Abbey on the occasion of the unveiling of Lloyd George’s memorial stone by the Prince of Wales in July 1970. The original plan was that Harold Wilson, as Prime Minister, would give the address, and that Ted Heath, as Leader of the Opposition, and I, as Leader of the Liberal Party, would each read a lesson. However, the June election brought about a change of government, and Heath was Prime Minister. Dingle Foot, coming from a radical background, coordinated the service. He said to me: ‘I’m damned if I am going to have a Tory Prime Minister delivering the tribute. You must do it, Jeremy.’ It was a matter of days after my wife Caroline’s fatal accident and although it was a colossal responsibility I saw merit in throwing myself into work; in any event Lloyd George has always been one of my heroes, so it was a labour of love.

  The Rt Hon. Jeremy Thorpe, speaking at Westminster Abbey at 12 noon on Monday, 27 July1970, on the occasion of the unveiling of a memorial stone to:

  David Lloyd George by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales

  Those of us who were present twenty-five years ago in this Abbey at Lloyd George’s memorial service will feel that this recognition has not come a moment too soon.

  Lloyd George had none of the advantages of birth or fortune. His father died before he was two years of age, and one can never over-estimate the debt which he owed to his uncle, Richard Lloyd, the shoemaker at Llanystumdwy, whose cottage became a home for Lloyd George, his widowed mother and brother. Uncle Lloyd determined that Lloyd George should become an advocate, and finding that the examinations required a knowledge of Latin and French, the cobbler, at fifty years of age, taught himself these languages so that he could in turn instruct David, who was then fifteen years old. Lloyd George duly qualified and, like Abraham Lincoln, of whose career he was a very close student, he started as an advocate; went on to establish a reputation as a superb orator; and as with Lincoln, eventually held the highest office, in which, without any military training, he proved himself to be a supremely successful war leader. Throughout Richard Lloyd’s life, uncle and nephew would regularly correspond with each other on all the great issues of the day. And on one memorable occasion Richard Lloyd, by then an old man, was persuaded to leave Criccieth to make his first ever visit to London to hear a debate in the House of Commons and to spend the night at No. 11 Downing Street, where his nephew was ensconced as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  Lloyd George was a single-minded warrior. Before the First World War he was dedicated, in his own words, ‘To wage implacable warfare against poverty’. With his colleagues, led by Asquith, and in the face of bitter opposition, he was the chief advocate of old age pensions and the main architect of unemployment benefit and national insurance. He thereby helped to lay the foundations of the welfare state. The fact that this involved the introduction of the 1909 Budget and a massive constitutional struggle with the House of Lords, was, if anything, something which he relished. Had his career ended in 1914 he would still rank with Shaftesbury and Wilberforce as one of the great social reformers of this country.

  But from 1914–18 he was literally at war with those who threatened the very existence of this country. As Minister of Munitions, as Chancellor of the Exchequer and finally as Prime Minister, he placed this country on a total war footing. The story is told how Kitchener, as Secretary of State for War, advised the Minister of Munitions that four machine guns per battalion was sufficient for the Army. Lloyd George’s reaction was typical: ‘Take Kitchener’s maximum: square it; multiply that by two; and when you are in sight of that, double it again for good luck.’ Accordingly, the British Army was provided with 250,000 machine guns. He overruled the First Sea Lord and introduced the convoy system; he created the concept of a War Cabinet and Allied Supreme Headquarters.

  It is therefore particularly appropriate that his stone in the Abbey should lie near to the tomb of the Unknown Warrior. He was Prime Minister when the tomb was unveiled by King George V, and as Prime Minister was one of those responsible for its conception. Likewise it is right that his stone should lie hard by that of his friend and colleague of a lifetime, Winston Churchill. For these two men, as war leaders in the First and Second World Wars respectively, inspired this nation to resist the greatest dangers that it had faced since the days of Napoleon. Indeed, Churchill, Lloyd George and Chatham may be accounted the three greatest war leaders that this country has ever produced.

  Churchill and Lloyd George were Cabinet colleagues over sixty years ago. For Churchill their relationship must have been an unusual one. When Churchill, who had rejoined the Conservative Party, became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924, the two men had already drifted apart. But Churchill soon after wanted to consult Lloyd George about a passage in the last volume of the World Crisis, Lord Boothby was requested to bring about a meeting. After Lloyd George had gone, Lord Boothby waited for a summons; none came; he went into the Chancellor’s room to find Churchill brooding before the fire. ‘How did it go?’ he asked. ‘It couldn’t have gone better’, Churchill replied. ‘It is a remarkable thing that within a few minutes the old relationship was completely re-established.’ He then looked up with a twinkle in his eye and added: The relationship of master and servant – and I was the servant.’

  Both men had intense courage; both were the subject of bitter attacks throughout most of their careers. But their backgrounds could not differ more. Churchill was laid to rest at Bladon, within sight of Blenheim Palace, which for him must have symbolised the tradition and sense of history that inspired his life. Lloyd George was buried on the banks of the river Dwyfor, where he played as a child within sight of Snowdon: in the heart of the Welsh countryside from which he had drawn his strength and inspiration. Today the memory of both is intertwined in Westminster Abbey.

  After the war Lloyd George was to leave office, never to return. But from 1928 to 1936 he waged his third war, this time against unemployment. He had a genius for gathering around him men of the calibre of Maynard Keynes, Philip Kerr, William Beveridge and Walter Layton – and although his schemes for curing unemployment were never accepted by his own fellow countrymen, they were successfully adopted by Franklin Roosevelt and formed the basis of the ‘New Deal’.

  Lloyd George sat in Parliament for fifty-five years; a span in which he could count as colleagues his fellow Liberal, William Ewart Gladstone and fellow Celt, Aneurin Bevan.

  As an orator he was without parallel. As a debater he was devastating. He was a brilliant conversationalist but equally a receptive listener. One of his most famous perorations is to be found in the speech which he made at the beginning of the war in which he described a valley in North Wales between the mountain and the sea and how the boys were in the habit of climbing the lull above the village. It was to be one of his first rallying cries to the nation: ‘We have been living in a sheltered valley for generations. We have been too comfortable and too indulgent – many, perhaps, too selfish – and the stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the everlasting things that matter for a nation – the high peaks we had forgotten of honour, duty, patriotism, and, clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to heaven.’

  ‘We shall descend into the valleys again; but as long as the men and women of this generation last, they will carry in their hearts the image of those great mountain peaks whose foundations are not shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the convulsions of a great war.’

  To me Lloyd George was ‘taid’, or grandfather. He loved children and I have memories of his white hair and flowing cloak, making a tour of his fruit trees at Churt or pointing out the names of the wild flowers in the hedgerows around Brynawelon at Criccieth. At his home there was laughter, brilliant conversation and he had an amazing ability, not always to be found with the great, to draw out each person there and make them feel they had something vital to contribute. Perhaps one of his greatest joys was when two of his children, Megan and Gwilym, joined him as Members o
f the House of Commons.

  Baldwin said it would take ten men to write his life. But let Churchill’s tribute suffice. ‘He was the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors.’ Today he could be granted no greater national recognition than that his memorial stone, fashioned by two of Wales’ greatest craftsmen, is to be unveiled by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales here in the Abbey. Indeed Lloyd George, as a former Constable of Caernarvon Castle, was pre-eminent in recognising the historic significance of the Prince of Wales in the life of the Principality. But today we salute Lloyd George not only as a great Welshman but as a great statesman of Britain.

  It was Churchill again who said: ‘When the British history of the first quarter of the twentieth century is written, it will be seen that the greater part of our fortunes in peace and in war were shaped by this one man’.

  Asqulth’s and Lloyd George’s daughters

  The Red Queen and the White Queen [Article written for Business and Professional Woman, Spring 1970]

  Two women have exercised a profound influence on my political life. Both were brilliant orators; both were a living link with the most exciting and turbulent periods in the life of this country; both were fearless in defence of great causes; both were daughters of dynamic Liberal Prime Ministers and in their loyalty to the memory of their respective fathers each became the symbol of the bitter dynastic struggles which split the Liberal Party.

  For historical reasons neither liked the other. I adored both!

  I refer of course to Lady Violet Bonham Carter, latterly Lady Asquith, and Lady Megan Lloyd George. Had neither possessed qualities in their own right, the experiences which each had enjoyed during the political careers of their famous fathers would in themselves have been totally absorbing.

  As a child of six, Violet Asquith was taken to No. 10 Downing Street to meet the formidable William Gladstone. Winston Churchill was one of her father’s junior ministers, and her life-long friendship with him is contained in her brilliant and penetrating book, Churchill as I Knew Him.

  For her the triumphs of the 1906 government; the battle of the suffragettes; the bitter debates on House of Lords reform and the 1909 Budget were vivid memories. Indeed, she was in the Lords Gallery for most of the debates during the clash between the two Houses.

  Lady Megan, like Lady Violet, spent part of her youth at No. 10. In 1916 Asquith fell from power and was succeeded by Lloyd George, so as a young girl Megan accompanied her father to the Peace Conference at Versailles and there met Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, Briand – in fact all the leading statesmen of Europe. In the ’30s, with her father and brother Gwilym, she met Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Like Violet, she had met and usually knew every leading political figure of the past fifty years!

  Both of these remarkable women were politicians to their fingertips. Megan sat in the Commons for over thirty years. Violet twice fought unsuccessfully to gain a seat in the Commons, and in 1964, after inexcusable pettiness had prevented her from becoming a life peeress, the present Prime Minister [Harold Wilson] on taking office immediately recommended her for a life peerage.

  In appearance and in character they were totally different, but both drew much of their strength from their immediate family.

  Megan I knew from childhood, since she had been my mother’s bridesmaid. She was minute, with tiny but beautiful little hands and feet, and eyes that at once revealed her vivacity. She was a fierce Welsh patriot and was happiest in her garden in Criccieth which, in itself, was testimony to her good taste and extravagance! Her sense of fun was irrepressible.

  Like Violet she was extraordinarily well read, an excellent broadcaster and a polished French speaker. Like Violet she would defend a colleague with whom she agreed like a tigress. In debate she could be formidable and would tear into her opponents with her left index finger crooked, jabbing the air – an identical gesture to that of her father.

  Despite their antipathy, Violet and Megan agreed on countless radical issues – from opposition to appeasement in the ’30s to the implementation of the Beveridge Report.

  Violet in many ways was more intense. Once roused by an issue she would ‘bear down’ (her own phrase) on those whom she generally admired but who on a particular issue she felt misguided. One of the last to receive this treatment was the present Archbishop of Canterbury, over abortion reform, which Violet supported! I doubt if she ever compromised on any major principle in her life.

  Her profile, her lucidity, her wit and courage are still a recent memory to millions of television viewers. What is not so well known is her service to the arts: Glyndebourne, the Old Vic, the BBC.

  In debate her tongue could lacerate. As a relentless politician, within weeks of her death she was leading a deputation to the Prime Minister on Biafra and attending a European conference in The Hague.

  In such a brief summary I can do justice to neither of these dynamic women. Both gave me their affection and their loyalty, which was returned in full measure.

  Alas, both of them have now left the battlefield.

  Platform gems: Lady Violet Bonham Carter (Lady Asquith of Yarnbury)

  Violet Bonham Carter, the formidable daughter of Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, had, in common with Megan Lloyd George, a facility for worshipping her father on a Chinese scale, which led Philip Guedalla to comment: ‘In her youth, Violet Asquith over-indulged in mental incest’. In 1916, Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, displaced Asquith as Prime Minister. This created bitterness, the traces of which are still to be found.

  One example of the Lloyd George/Asquith feud: in the 1951 general election, Violet, largely at the behest of Churchill, was not opposed by a Conservative candidate in the Colne Valley constituency, and actually had Churchill to speak in her support. Many Liberals felt that the straight fight was digestible, but the appearance of the Leader of the Conservative Party was not. At the meeting of the Liberal Party Council following the election, Frank Byers complained that Violet had made the task of Liberals fighting Conservatives more difficult and this was to be deplored. As far as Megan was concerned, she had been asked for messages of support for Labour candidates where no Liberal was standing. She steadfastly declined, and this was to be commended. Violet rose to reply: ‘If’, she said, ‘having the greatest European and architect of victory in the Second World War on my platform was a sin, then I glory in my sin’. This was too much for Megan, who rose: ‘Well, Colonel Byers, you are correct to say that certain Labour candidates did indeed ask me for messages of support, which I declined. If that be a virtue, then for my part, I glory in my virtue.’

  I remember in particular two of Violet’s speeches. The first was at the Torrington by-election in 1958, when the local MP, sitting as a National Liberal Conservative succeeded to his father’s viscountcy, thereby causing a vacancy. Violet’s son, Mark Bonham Carter, who had already fought the Bideford end of the seat when he had contested the old Barnstaple constituency in 1945, was invited to stand as Liberal candidate for the Torrington by-election. There has been some suggestion that Ambrose Fulford, the then current prospective Liberal candidate, was pushed aside to make way for Mark. This is far from the truth. The previous year at his home, Ambrose took Jo Grimond and me aside to say that he would fight a general election, but a by-election should have a national figure, and that in any event he was suffering from diabetes and was fully aware of the additional strains involved in a by-election as opposed to a general election.

  Violet had deliberately been kept back to enable Mark to establish himself on his own account. When she did arrive, I drove her in my pocket-size Austin A30 to a meeting in the Pannier Market at Okehampton. Violet was in sparkling form. Addressing the meeting, she said:

  ‘I have been straining at the leash and am delighted to be here. Not surprisingly I have known the Liberal candidate longer and better than any of you, and I shall say a word about him in a moment. But first, what is the line-up? There is a Mr Leonard Lamb,
appropriately named for the slaughter. We have yet to discover whether his socialism is of the palest pink or flaming crimson. Then there is Mr Royle, standing – please correct me if I have it wrong – as a National Liberal Conservative. I have never seen an animal to compare with a National Liberal Conservative, except once, with a horse in a pantomime. The man playing the front legs had a wonderful time – he could actually see where he was going. The man playing the hind legs was crouched up and had to go where the front legs told him. In the Torrington Stakes on Thursday next you can vote for my son, a real live Derby winner, or you can vote for the hind legs of a Tory pantomime horse.’

  This was devastating ridicule and the reaction of the audience was like the parting of the Red Sea. Liberals, who had been the underdogs, rocked with laughter, whilst the Tories present looked alternately sheepish and infuriated. In the end, the Liberals won by a majority of 219, only alas to lose the seat in 1959, but the Liberal Democrats regained it in 1997.

  The second speech of Violet’s marking the Torrington by-election, and delivered at the National Liberal Club, lasted for a few moments, but moved many of its hearers to tears. She remarked that she had celebrated her father’s by-election victory in Paisley, and now celebrated that of her son with equal pride and joy. Then she turned to the attack: ‘When I went to Torrington, I had a strange feeling that I was a member of an army of liberation, setting out to free territory which had been held by Quislings and collaborators [this refers to the Liberal Nationals (subsequently renamed National Liberals) whom I deal with elsewhere], whose day was at an end. There are still thousands of Liberals living in occupied territory, whom we have yet to liberate. The message which goes out to them today is: “Hold on, hold out, we are coming, and we are!”’