Lloyd George's first speech as prime minister

At ten past four in the afternoon on 19 December 1916 David Lloyd George rose in a crowded House of Commons to set out his government’s programme for the first time as prime minister. The speech had been planned for 12 December, but the Prime Minister had fallen ill with a throat complaint and, as he noted at the outset, was still not fully recovered. Formally he was moving the second reading of the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill. He spoke for nearly two hours. The British chronology of the war records under this date two decisions he announced: the introduction of universal national service and the summoning of an imperial conference with the dominions. At home and abroad, however, the most attention was drawn by the first part of the speech, the answer to the German peace offer.

“Head into a noose”

The Prime Minister began with the note of the Central Powers, which the United States had passed to the British government without comment. He said that the note was in substance a repetition of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg’s speech in the Reichstag, that the Allies had discussed it among themselves and each had separately reached the same conclusions, and that precedence in replying belonged to France and Russia, which had made the greatest sacrifices and on whose soil the enemy still stood. The Allies were to deliver a formal joint reply within a few days.

Lloyd George himself, however, left no doubt as to what it would be. He recalled the terms repeatedly stated by his predecessor Herbert Henry Asquith: “complete restitution, full reparation, effectual guarantees” against a repetition of aggression. Germany had put forward no proposals. To enter a conference at the invitation of a Germany proclaiming itself the victor, without knowing its terms, would be, in the Prime Minister’s words, “to put our heads into a noose with the rope end in the hands of Germany”. He also recalled Belgium, whose neutrality Germany had violated in 1914, and ended this part with the words that the British would rather trust “an unbroken army than a broken faith”.

The war and affairs at home

The Prime Minister then warned against expecting a quick victory from the new government. He called Romania’s defeat the “Roumanian blunder”, which would prolong the war but not change its essential picture, and might lead the Allies to remedy the obvious shortcomings in their cooperation. He gave assurances that the government had taken “very strong action” in Greece and had decided to recognise the representatives of Eleftherios Venizelos. He also defended the new five-member War Cabinet: a war, he said, could not be run by a “Sanhedrin”, and one member of the cabinet (meaning the Leader of the House of Commons, Andrew Bonar Law) would “stand sentry outside”, guarding the council room against attacks while the others worked. He announced that the cabinet would keep minutes, something the old cabinet had never done, and Asquith interrupted him to explain that until then the only record of proceedings had been the prime minister’s letter to the King.

The Prime Minister devoted much of the speech to the economy. He announced that the state would take fuller control of the entire merchant fleet, as it had earlier of the railways, because shipping was the country’s “jugular vein”, and the shipowners’ huge profits had been driving up the prices of goods. The whole of coal mining was to be brought under control, not only the South Wales coalfield. On food he said that the problem was serious: the consumption of the well-off must not cause shortages among the poor, and “every available square yard” of land had to be given over to food production. He called on the nation to proclaim a “national Lent” for the duration of the war, and announced stricter measures against war profiteering.

National service

The most important domestic novelty was universal national service. Britain already had conscription for the army; now the aim was to mobilise labour. Lloyd George recalled that Germany had mobilised its entire population for war work, and declared that the War Cabinet had unanimously adopted the principle of universal national service. He admitted, too, that the decision had already been taken by the War Committee of the previous government. According to the Annual Register, Asquith’s cabinet even had a draft bill ready for compulsory service by men and women.

The plan provided for dividing industry according to its importance for the conduct of the war. Workers released from non-essential branches were to replace, in works important for the war, men who had until then been exempt from military service, and to go where labour was short. For the time being they were to be enrolled as volunteers, like munitions workers, on similar terms of pay. The Prime Minister made it clear, however, that if volunteers were lacking, the government would ask parliament for powers that would allow the plan to be carried out in full. National service was to be headed by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Neville Chamberlain, half-brother of the Secretary of State for India, Austen Chamberlain. Lloyd George admitted that he had had difficulty persuading him to accept the post.

Imperial conference

Towards the end of the speech the Prime Minister turned to the dominions. He thanked them for their contribution to the war, which had been voluntary, and said that the time had come for the dominions to be formally consulted on the course of the war, the steps needed for victory and the fruits of peace. The government therefore intended to summon an imperial conference “at an early date”. According to the War Cabinet’s report for 1917, the invitation to the dominion prime ministers had already been sent by telegram on 14 December. They were summoned not to an ordinary conference but to a series of meetings of the War Cabinet, of which they were to be members for the time. Representatives of India were also invited to the conference.

The Prime Minister ended on a personal note. He said that parting from Asquith was one of the greatest regrets of his life and that he had never had a kinder chief. Asquith replied with a speech full of dignity. He stressed that he was not speaking as leader of the opposition, defended the record of his government and likewise judged the German note to offer no basis for peace. The Prime Minister was, however, sharply criticised by the Irish nationalist John Dillon, who accused him of announcing nothing concrete on Ireland. The same day a similar statement was made in the House of Lords by Lord Curzon. He said that the country not only wanted to be led but was “almost clamouring to be driven”.

The announcements of 19 December did not come true in the form intended. Chamberlain’s voluntary national service got properly under way at the beginning of 1917 and produced poor results, and Lloyd George himself later wrote that this appointment was not one of his successful ones. The conference with the dominions, on the other hand, met in the spring of 1917 as the Imperial War Cabinet.