Lloyd George Essay

Submitted By Daniel618
Words: 1199
Pages: 5

Lloyd George’s fall from power in 1922 was the result of the Chanak Crisis”. How far do you agree?
David Lloyd George is one of the most controversial prime ministers of the early 20th century, as the majority of the British felt that DLG was one of the best politicians of his era, this was then contradicted by the fact that the British parliament strongly disagreed with many of his policies. one of the main policy’s that parliament disagreed with was that of the chanak crisis which some people have said as being the sole reason for DLGs fall from power. Other events in history disagree with this statement because although Chanak was a big factor I don’t think it is the sole reason as there are many others such as the Ireland crisis and the fact that he was a PM without a party and many more which I will now discuss.
The fact that DLG had no obvious party to support him was one of the greatest reasons for his fall from power because, During the First World War a coalition government was formed including the 3 main party’s (conservative labour and the liberals) This system then worked very well as all the party’s had a common goal to strive for and therefore ended up winning the war. At the end of the war in 1918 a general election was held which voted in favour of keeping the war time coalition with DLG as PM. Now although DLG was PM he had still caused a rift in his liberal party due the Maurice debate 9th of May which then led to his falling out with Asquith and therefore a rift in the liberal party leaving as…. Put it a pm without a party. Due to DLGs difficult political stance it meant every decision he made would have to please both the liberal and the conservative party, politically this would be impossible as both party’s differed on so many different occasions such as the Irish question where the liberals wanted self-determination for the Irish and the conservatives wanted to keep the union together. This clash of political ideas meant that Lloyd George would never be able to please both parties and would never have their support, due to a lack of this it meant that any decision DLG made would be on his own and parties could just use him as a scape goat rather than face up to their mistakes this would then make LG very unpopular with the public a prime example of this would be chanak as if lg had, had a party it would mean the mistake would not be solely blamed on him

LGs presidential style of leadership was a key part in his unpopularity in both parliament and public opinion: his unpopularity in both of these key areas would then, of course, lead to his fall from power. The reasons why his leadership style made him so unpopular with the government is because he abused his political position to make his life easier such as when he summoned his cabinet to inverness to coincide with his holiday. This event understandably led to not just his cabernet being annoyed but the rest of parliament as well as they felt he was using his power unfairly, because the party’s would then be annoyed at him it would then make Lloyd George’s ability to have power in the houses of parliament even harder therefore giving him less power and meaning he would have to make more decisions on his own. Due to DLG having to make more decisions on his own it would mean that they would of course be less informed such as the decision to fight in chanak, meaning that if Dlg had not used such a corrupt style chanak could have been avoided and Lloyd George would not have fallen form power.

The most recent of all of the political Issues the Chanak Crisis played a big part in the removal of DLG. The actual crisis was all based on the Dardanelles straits which a key military location because it offered so many different naval uses. The political crisis came when Turkish rebel leader Mustafa Kemal tried to claim back the Turkish land that was lost through the treaty of sevre, all this then led to a major clash between Greek forces (who were sponsored