Given the extreme political turmoil in the UK in October 2022 – namely having three different Prime Ministers in No. 10 Downing Street in just a few months without a General Election – I thought it would be interesting to delve into what the pollical landscape in Britain was like a century ago.

Both the BBC and ‘The 1922 Committee’ of the Conservative backbench MPs, were formed, independently of each other of course, in October 1922. 'The 1922 Committee' gets its name from the year in which a momentous vote took place - Conservative MPs voted to bring down the Coalition Government that they were part of, led by the Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George. This marked a return to distinct party politics in Britain, rather than a broad political coalition, which had existed - in one form or another - since 1915.

Until the 1980s (and perhaps again until very recently), Lloyd George’s quasi-presidential regime is the nearest Britain has come to a populist dictatorship, but after the events of 1922, he'd never hold public office again. So, how did someone apparently so mighty fall from power so quickly?

In the most recent series of ‘Barry’s Forgotten Musical Masterpieces’ for BBC Radio 2 (available to listen to here on BBC Sounds for just a three more days) there’s a passing mention to the 1922 cash-for-honours scandal involving Lloyd George – a barony apparently cost upwards of £50,000 and this accumulated a fund of between £1 million to £2 million in total.

Yet, this wasn’t the only reason for his eventual political demise...

His decision to involve Britain in hostilities between Turkey and Greece was important too, as was his failure to stop meddling in the impact of The Treaty of Versailles on Germany. The Treaty had been signed on 7th June 1919, but it had failed to solve the German problem. Robert Skidelsky in his book 'Britian Since 1900' states that, “Lloyd George spent the first six months of his peacetime premiership negotiating the treaty with Germany and much of the rest of it trying to undo its consequences”.

Also, the economic situation in Britain in 1922 was not great. The cost of fighting the First World War were long lasting. ‘Economy’ was the watch word of the era after hostilities ended – today it’s called ‘austerity’ instead! – and public spending was slashed and ‘social reform’ initiatives died a sudden death. The fledgling welfare state remained essentially the same as it was in 1914. The widely-publicised and popular new national housing programme – to build 500,000 homes for working-class war heroes – was extensively scaled back. This was seen as a huge betrayal by those who had supported Lloyd George’s promised continuing welfare reforms.

The Conservatives, in 1922, decided they no longer needed Lloyd George and to stay in power. They took their chance and there was a General Election. As mentioned in Barry's Forgotten Musical Masterpieces, the results of the election were the first be broadcast on the wireless.

Who was David Lloyd George and how did he become PM?

He's been called ‘the most famous Welshman ever born in Manchester’. He was born on 17th January 1863, the son of a schoolmaster. David's Dad died the following year, this tragedy, prompted his mother to move with her two sons to Caernarvonshire to reside with her brother. There the young David grew up in a Welsh-speaking Nonconformist household, aware of the growing Welsh nationalist feeling against English influence. David did well at school and became a solicitor, before marrying the daughter of a local farmer.

In 1890, David was selected as the Liberal candidate for Caernarvon and became the youngest member of the House of Commons at the tender age of 27. He was a very good orator. He was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1908 by Henry Asquith. DLG was determined, “to lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor,” and sought to achieve this by guaranteeing an income to those who were too old to work – the old age pension was born! The Old Age Pension Act provided 1-2 shillings per week to people over seventy years of age. The National Insurance Act, in 1911, which provided British workers with insurance against illness and unemployment.

One year later, in 1912, the first whiff of scandal began to drift around David Lloyd George. A political magazine accused him of corruption, by profiting from shares connected to a large government contract to the Marconi Company to build a chain of wireless communication stations. Officials eventually confirmed that while he did profit, they found that he hadn't actually been corrupt in doing so. Hmm...

Around the same time, rumours began to circulate about irregularities in his private life too. His wife hadn't moved to sooty London and Lloyd George found distractions elsewhere. These indiscretions were, in the main, kept out of the newspapers though, thanks to his good connections with the press.

By July 1914, it was clear that Britain was on the verge of war with Germany. Lloyd George was a pacifist, but emerged an inspirational war time leader - first, as Minister of Munitions and, later, as Prime Minister of the Liberal-led wartime coalition.

In order to become Prime Minister, Lloyd George upset many in his own party, in 1916, when he agreed to collaborate with the Conservatives and form a new coalition, thereby deposing the incumbent – and fellow Liberal – Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith. Lloyd George received much of the credit for Britain’s eventual victory in the First World War.

The unravelling of the Lloyd George run coalition in 1922 (as discussed in the first section of this article) when Conservatives MPs decided to end their support for the Liberal Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, that not only led to a General Election, but to the end of the Welshman's political career. David Lloyd George never held public office again.

Thanks for reading. More news on the events of 1922 coming soon!