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Cymru Fyw
17 January 2013
Last updated at
07:20
In pictures: David Lloyd George election posters
David Lloyd George's reputation as one of the highest profile British politicians of 20th Century endures
As these campaign posters from the 1910 and 1929 general elections show, his fame, or notoriety as that era's Conservative Party propagandists would have had voters believe, stemmed initially from his great reforming budget of 1909
A year after being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, the Manchester-born solicitor declared war on poverty, raising taxes on luxuries, alcohol, tobacco, incomes and land to finance a raft of ambitious new social welfare measures - and new battleships
His People's Budget, which targeted the rich upper class, won him the disapprobation of the Conservative Party and prompted the first of two general elections in 1910 when it was thrown out by the House of Lords
In the run-up to the January 1910 election, the Conservatives attacked the taxes and went after Lloyd George personally. The party is reported to have produced 50 million printed posters, leaflets and other propaganda items over the period, many of which were posted on horse-drawn hoardings
Following a hung parliament the Liberals clung on to power with support from the Irish Nationalists, but the uneasy balance of power resulted in a second election in December 1910
During the year the Liberal Party printed 40 million posters and leaflets of its own and Labour weighed in with five million leaflets, 800,000 manifestos and 50,000 posters. But the propaganda war apparently achieved little as in the second election no party gained or lost more than two seats
Lloyd George's National Insurance and Unemployment Insurance acts were finally passed in 1911 and the welfare state was born
After serving as Prime Minister between 1916-22, Lloyd George succeeded Asquith as party leader in 1926 and led the Liberals into the 1929 election
Lloyd George's removal from Downing Street, which coincided with a scandal over the sale of knighthoods and peerages, had damaged not just his party but his personal reputation, something the Liberal Party propaganda machine tried its best to address
After the 1929 election the Liberals propped up a minority Labour government but by the early 1930s the party, and Lloyd George, had been diminished
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Related Internet links
A life in the frame: David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George archive clips
Welsh Wizard: The art of the political nickname
The roots of the welfare state
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