British Prime Ministers
Prime ministers of the United Kingdom
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- Rishi Sunak was born on 12 May 1980 in Southampton, Hampshire, England, UK. He has been married to Akshata Murty Sunak since 30 August 2009. They have two children.2022-
- Liz Truss was born on 26 July 1975 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK. She has been married to Hugh O'Leary since 2000. They have two children.2022
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Boris Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Have I Got News for You (1990), EastEnders (1985) and PMQs (2010). He has been married to Carrie Johnson since 29 May 2021. They have two children. He was previously married to Marina Wheeler and Allegra Mostyn-Owen.2019-2022- Theresa May was born on 1 October 1956 in Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, UK. She has been married to Philip May since 6 September 1980.2016-2019
- David Cameron was educated at England's most prestigious school, Eton College. He then attended Brasenose College, Oxford University, where he achieved a first class degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He became Member of Parliament for Witney at the 2001 general election. Following the Conservatives' third election defeat to Tony Blair's Labour, Cameron was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, beating the older right-winger David Davis. Cameron was dubbed the "heir to Blair" due to his uncanny similarity in looks, speech and style to the Labour Prime Minister. He embarked on a modernizing programme for the Tories, which included apologizing for Margaret Thatcher's Section 28, which had banned the promotion of homosexual relationships to children by local authorities.
Following Blair's departure from the position of Prime Minister in 2007, Cameron gained ground against Blair's replacement, the dour Gordon Brown. In the 2010 general election, Cameron became Prime Minister by forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. He also became the youngest Prime Minister in almost 200 years. He continued his modernization programme and introduced same-sex marriage with the support of the Lib Dems, despite opposition from a majority of his own parliamentary party. However, he became worried by the continuing split in the Conservative Party over Britain's membership of the European Union and the threat of UKIP, led by charismatic ex-Tory Nigel Farage. He promised a national referendum on the issue if he won the 2015 general election. He won the election but lost the referendum the following year, resulting in his decision to immediately resign as Prime Minister. He said introducing same-sex marriage was his greatest achievement in government in his final speech to the House of Commons.2010-2016 - Gordon Brown was born on 20 February 1951 in Govan, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He has been married to Sarah Brown since 3 August 2000. They have three children.2007-2010
- Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. On his resignation he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015. He serves as the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, established in 2016. As prime minister, many of his policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy. He is the only living former Labour leader to have led the party to a general election victory and the only one in history to form three majority governments.1997-2007
- John Major was born on March 29, 1943 in London. He was the son of Tom Major-Ball, a retired circus performer who was 65 when John Major was born. He attended Cheam Common Primary School and Rutlish Grammar School, where he had an undistinguished academic career. In the mid '50s, his family was forced to move to Brixton, a poor neighborhood in South London and live in a cramped flat on Coldharbour Lane. John Major did not do well in secondary school and dropped out at age 16. Much later, he said that he could have been a better student and wished he had stayed in school.
Throughout the early 1960s, John Major worked odd jobs, but was unemployed for much of the time. He occupied himself by joining the Young Conservatives. He finally found steady employment in 1963, working for the London Electricity Board. He also took a correspondence course in banking, which would become his main career. He took a job as an executive at the Standard Charter Bank, which sent him on a business trip to Nigeria in 1967. Nigeria was in the middle of the Biafra War and John Major almost died in a car crash there. He survived the car accident, but lost a kneecap. He married his wife, Norma Wagstaff, in October 1970 and they have two children.
In the 1979 General Election, John Major was elected Conservative MP for Huntington. He served in Parliament for twenty-two years. When neighboring MP John Wakeham was badly injured in the 1984 Brighton bombing, John Major acted as substitute MP for Wakeham's constituency. The following year, John Major was appointed Minister for Pensions and Social Security. He was appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1987 and in 1989, was appointed Foreign Secretary. He accompanied Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on the trip to Malaysia to meet with heads of other Commonwealth Countries. But after being Foreign Secretary for only three months, he was moved to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer.
In November 1990, Michael Heseltine contested Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Margaret Thatcher did not win the required two-thirds majority to remain leader, so a second ballot was held. Margaret Thatcher's cabinet all told her that she would lose a leadership ballot to Michael Heseltine and encouraged her to resign. So on November 22, 1990, Margaret Thatcher stood down as Prime Minister. But the Conservatives still had to elect a new leader. Michael Heseltine was in for the second ballot. John Major now entered the contest, as Margaret Thatcher's preferred candidate. So did Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary. John Major won the second ballot and went on to become Prime Minister.
John Major had some giant shoes to fill on becoming Prime Minister. At first, people welcomed his quiet, low-key and modest public manner, but it quickly became clear that John Major was just not up to the job. Nonetheless, he narrowly won the 1992 General Election for the Conservative Party. Major's term in office brought Britain's humiliating withdrawal from the ERM in late-1992. He tried to steer a middle course on Europe, but only angered both the pro-Europeans and the Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. His failure to ratify the Maastrict Treaty in Britain cost him. He tried to re-focus the Conservative Party on "basics"--rule of law, police, family values, education--but this backfired as the media was encouraged to start digging for scandal, and they found it.
His authority was so badly diminished that in 1995, he brought matters to a head by calling a leadership ballot for July and vowing to step down if he did not receive the required majority. His line to his opponents was "Put up or shut up." He won the ballot, but it resolved nothing and he spent his last two years in office marking time. The Conservative Party lost its majority in Parliament in December 1996, but John Major managed to stay in office for a few more months.
Finally, his term ran out and he called a General Election for May 1997. It was a long campaign, in which he hoped to stave off defeat and give the Labour Party, now led by Tony Blair, enough time to trip up and lose the election. But on 1 May 1997, the Conservative Party suffered its worst-ever defeat. Labour won by a landslide, with a 179 seat majority in Parliament. John Major held his seat, but a number of cabinet ministers went down to defeat. John Major resigned as leader of the Conservative Party immediately after the election, but he remained in Parliament until he stood down in the 2001 election.
As Prime Minister, John Major engaged in the first real negotiations with Sinn Fein to bring about peace in Northern Ireland and lay the groundwork for the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, which ended the thirty years of violence in Northern Ireland.1990-1997 - Additional Crew
Margaret Thatcher was born on October 13, 1925 in Grantham, England, the younger daughter of Alfred and Beatrice Roberts. Her father was a greengrocer and respected town leader, serving as lay-leader with their church, city-alderman and then as mayor. He taught Margaret never to do things because other people are doing them; do what you think is right and persuade others to follow you.
She attended Oxford University from 1943 to 1947 and earned a degree in Chemistry, but it was clear from early on that politics was her true calling. She stood as a Conservative candidate from Dartford in the 1950 and 1951 elections. She married Denis Thatcher in December 1951 and they had twin children, Mark Thatcher and Carol Thatcher. She practiced tax law for a time in the 1950s, but was elected to Parliament from Finchley in 1959. Two years later, she was appointed to the cabinet as Minister of Pensions. In 1970, she was appointed Minister for Education and earned the title "Thatcher the Milk Snatcher", for eliminating free milk for schoolchildren in a round of budget-cutting. After the Conservative Party lost both general elections in 1974, she defeated Edward Heath for the leadership of the party.
She was elected Prime Minister in May 1979 and served for eleven and a half years, longer than any other British Prime Minister in the 20th Century. As Prime Minister, she was staunchly capitalist and bent on wiping socialism from the face of Britain. During her tenure, she cut direct taxes, spending and regulations, privatized state-industries and state-housing, reformed the education, health and welfare systems, was tough on crime and espoused traditional values. Her time in office was eventful, having to contend with an economic recession, inner-city riots and a miners' strike.
Her first great triumph in office was the Falklands War in 1982, when she sent British troops to reclaim British possessions off the coast of South America that had been invaded and occupied by Argentina. The British won that war and it showed the world that Britain was once again a power to be reckoned with. Her time in office saw unprecedented economic prosperity among the middle and upper classes, but this was contrasted by unemployment levels not seen since the 1930s, a rise in homelessness and the end of Britain's major industries. She was a staunch political ally of Republican American President Ronald Reagan. They both advocated tough foreign and defence policies, but they also developed a constructive relationship with reforming Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev which helped to bring the Cold War to an end. Thatcher also persuaded President George Bush to send troops to Saudi Arabia right after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Her staunch advocacy of the Poll Tax and her refusal to endorse a common currency for Europe led the Conservative party to force her out of office in a bloody internal coup. She was forced to resign as Prime Minister in November 1990. Since she left office, she was introduced to the House of Lords in 1992 as Baroness Thatcher. She travelled the world, touring the lecture circuit promoting her causes and was president of numerous organizations dedicated to her causes. In the last few years, her health suffered and she no longer spoke in public.1979-1990- Jim Callaghan was born on 27th March 1912 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, to a Catholic father and Baptist mother. He was the only son and younger of 2 children. His father was a Royal Navy Chief Petty Officer of Irish ancestry, who died when Callaghan was aged 9. His father died when he was 9, plunging the family into poverty. They received no pension until Labour came into office in 1931 and paid the Callaghans a weekly pension of 10 shillings (then worth about $2).
He had an unspectacular education at Portsmouth Northern Secondary School, and left at 16 to work as a clerk for the Inland Revenue and became involved with the union (Staff Federation). He later met Harold Laski, the Chair of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee. Laski encouraged him to stand for Parliament. Callaghan served in the Royal Navy Patrol Service in World War II from 1943, but while on leave he was able to get selected as a Parliamentary candidate for Cardiff South, later Cardiff South East. He won the seat in the 1945 UK general election. He rose steadily through the party in Opposition, and stood for the leadership after Gaitskell's death in 1963.
In 1964 as Chancellor of the Exchequer, he decided not to devalue the pound, which proved to be a disastrous decision. He was forced to do so three years later and felt obliged to resign as Chancellor and became Home Secretary, where he was able to partially restore his reputation. During this time there was worsening violence in Northern Ireland and in 1969 he sent troops to the province, initially to protect the Catholic minority.
In Opposition Callaghan became Shadow Foreign Secretary, and in government after 1974 it was his job to renegotiate the terms of Britains EC membership. When Harold Wilson resigned unexpectedly, Callaghan was not the favourite to win the leadership, being the oldest candidate at 64. However, he was the least divisive candidate, and won the vote.
He was Prime Minister from 1976 to 1979. As a PM he presided over a sterling crisis, which led to negotiations with the IMF for a rescue package. However, problems became more difficult when Labour lost its overall small majority in 1977, following a succession of by-election defeats. They became dependent on the support of the Liberals to survive. However, Callaghan persevered in office even when this pact broke down.
During the 'Winter of Discontent' in 1978, industrial action over pay policy severely damaged the governments authority. Following a loss of a confidence motion on 28 March 1979 by just one vote, Callaghan was obliged to hold a general election, which was won by Margaret Thatcher 's Conservative Party. He resigned as leader of the Labour party in September 1980, shortly after the 1980 party conference.
In 1983, he became Father of the House as the longest continuously serving member of the Commons and one of only two survivors of the 1945 general election. The other one was Michael Foot , who, however, had been out of the House from 1955 to 1960. Callaghan remained an MP until the 1987 general election when he retired after forty-two years as a member of the Commons. The same year, he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Callaghan of Cardiff.
In 1988 his wife Audrey spotted a letter to a newspaper which pointed out that the copyright of Peter Pan was about to expire. Callaghan moved an amendment to the Copyright Bill then under consideration in the Lords to extend it permanently, and this was accepted by the government. (Royalties from Peter Pan go to the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital)
He was married for 67 years to Audrey Elizabeth Moulton. They had a son and two daughters. Margaret, born in 1940, became Baroness Jay of Paddington and was Leader of the House of Lords from 1998 to 2001. Julia was born in 1943 and Michael in 1946.
He died at his farm in Ringmer, East Sussex on 26 March 2005 on the eve of his 93rd birthday and just 11 days after the death of his wife Audrey.1976-1979 - Harold Wilson was born in Huddersfield,West Yorkshire in 1916. He had a sharp mind and after graduating from Oxford University, he became a lecturer in economics in 1937. He represented Huyton in parliament from 1945 until his retirement in 1983. He became President of the Board of Trade in 1947 and succeeded Hugh Gaitskell as the Labour party leader in 1963. He defeated Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the 1964 General Election with an overall majority of four. He was re-elected in 1966 and after a period in opposition between 1970 and 1974, he returned after the February election. He was re-elected for a fourth term in October 1974, but resigned unexpectedly on his 60th birthday in 1976. He was created a Knight of the Garter by HM The Queen and he received a life peerage in 1983, becoming Lord Wilson of Rievaulx. Following a long illness, he died in May 1995 aged 79, leaving a widow Mary.1964-1970, 1974-1976
- Edward Heath was born in 1916 in Broadstairs, Kent. His father was a carpenter, his mother was a maid and his background was very modest. He attended Balliol College at Oxford, where he earned a second-class degree in philosophy, politics and economics. He got active in Conservative Party politics while at Oxford, but opposed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
He served in the military during World War II, in the Royal Artillery. After the war, he entered the Civil Service in the Ministry of Aviation. In 1950, he was elected Conservative MP for Bexley. He would represent that constituency for more than fifty years. His rise through the ranks was rapid, being appointed a junior whip in 1951 and was promoted to Chief Whip in 1955. He was appointed Minister of Labour in 1959. He was also appointed Lord Privy Seal in 1960 and President of the Board of Trade in 1963.
The Conservative Party lost the 1964 election and its leader, Alec Douglas Home, stepped down shortly thereafter, but not after changing the leadership election rules, which made it easier for the rank and file to win the leadership. Edward Heath was elected leader of the Conservative Party in 1965, being the first commoner to lead the party. Edward Heath then went on to unexpectedly win the 1970 General Election for the Conservative Party on the 'Selsdon Platform', calling for more aggressive pro-growth economic policies.
Edward Heath's tenure as Prime Minister was very turbulent. His main accomplishment was to admit Britain into the European Community, which it joined in 1973. That was about his only major accomplishment as Prime Minister. The rest of Heath's time in office was not so happy. His Chancellor of the Exchequer, Iain McLeod, died within a month of winning the election and his successor, Tony Barber, was not nearly as capable. His Minister for Education, Margaret Thatcher, proved extremely capable, but attracted controversy when she abolished free milk in the schools, earning her the name 'Margaret Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher.'
Edward Heath's efforts to tame the power of trade unions did not match the rhetoric. The Industrial Relations Act did not deliver on its promises to curb trade union abuses. Northern Ireland was a source of continuing trouble. British soldiers fired on unarmed civilians in the Londonderry Massacre in 1972. The violence and disorder in Northern Ireland got so bad that Heath was forced to suspend the local government there and impose direct rule from London.
Back in Britain, the government caved before a miner's strike in 1972, after especially violent clashes between striking miners and police at Saltley Coke Depot; the police were withdrawn 'for their own protection' but it was a victory for the Miners' Union and thereafter, they had the power to make or break governments in Britain. Britain, like the rest of the Western World, was badly affected by the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, but Britain was especially hard-hit as the miners struck again. Heath put the country on a three-day workweek to conserve energy, and break the will of striking miners. This backfired and hurt Heath's government more.
In early 1974, Heath called an election on the question of 'Who Governs Britain?' The electorate had lost confidence in Heath and it showed. The election of February 1974 was inconclusive. The Conservative Party lost its majority in Parliament. The Labour Party won the most seats, but not a majority--therefore, it could not really form a government. But Ted Heath was no longer Prime Minister and he handed power over to Harold Wilson in March 1974. Because the result of the February 1974 election was so inconclusive, another election was soon called for October.
Labour won the October 1974 election by a tiny majority. This did not make Heath look good; he had lost three out of four elections. The mood of the Conservative Party was intense rage. Yet none of the Conservative Party establishment dared to cross him. However, Margaret Thatcher, his Minister of Education did challenge Heath for the party leadership in the next party election. On February 4, 1975, she defeated him in the party leadership election. Heath won only 119 votes to Margaret Thatcher's 130, but he had lost his grip on the party. He resigned as Leader of the Conservative Party on February 11, 1975, having handed it over to Margaret Thatcher.
From that point on, Heath refused to serve in the Shadow Cabinet or the front benches. Heath never recovered from his defeat, settling for being a glowering presence on the back benches of Parliament. He remained in Parliament for another twenty-five years. In late-1990, he flew to Iraq in an effort to bring about a diplomatic solution to the Invasion of Kuwait and met with Saddam Hussein; he was unable to persuade Saddam Hussein to pull out of Kuwait, though he did return home with a handful of British hostages.
In 1992, Edward Heath became the longest-serving MP in Parliament and thus became Father of the House, a position he held until he retired from Parliament in 2001 at the ripe old age of 85. Edward Heath was a lifelong bachelor. He never married. Politics was his main interest, but he had other hobbies which included sailing yachts and music. His favorite instruments to play were the piano and the organ. Edward Heath died at age 89 in 2005.1970-1974 - First elected to the House of Commons in 1931, served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Neville Chamberlain (1935-40). He lost his seat in the Labour Party landslide of 1945 and regained it at the next election. But his father the 13th Earl died in 1951, just a year after Alec regained his seat in the House. As a result, he had to resign and join the House of Lords of the 14th Earl of Home (which is pronounced "Hume"). Created a KT (Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Thistle) in 1962, the next year saw him chosen Prime Minister after his predecessor, Harold Macmillan, resigned due to ill health. The Peerage Act of 1963 allowed him to give up his title and, after a by-election, return to the House of Commons representing a new constituency. 15 months as PM was followed by a narrow defeat in the 1964 General Election. He spent 6 years in opposition, before becoming Foreign Secretary in Edward Heath's 1970 government. After 4 years, Heath was defeated in two elections within a year and Home accepted a life peerage, and returned to the House of Lords as Lord Home of the Hirsel. He died in 1995, and was succeeded as 15th Earl of Home by his son, David Douglas-Home.1963-1964
- Harold MacMillan was born in London in 1894, the grandson of publisher Daniel MacMillan. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, he joined the Grenadier Guards in 1914. Serving on the Western front, he was present at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. In 1924 he stood as Conservative candidate for Stockton-on-Tees, Co. Durham, and won. Although he lost his seat in 1929, he returned in 1931. His left-wing politics were unpopular with Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, but MacMillan managed to rise to senior government posts. In 1957, upon the enforced resignation of Sir Anthony Eden, MacMillan became Prime Minister.
His term of office was plagued by the Profumo scandal (as seen in the film Scandal (1989)), and he resigned in 1963 due to ill health. He was replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. In later years MacMillan was a fierce critic of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her right-wing domestic and foreign policies, as well as her stance on European integration. In 1984 he was given the first hereditary peerage in over 20 years, and became known as the Earl of Stockton. His son Maurice Victor was briefly known as Viscount MacMillan of Ovenden, but died the same year. The Earl died in 1986, and was succeeded by his grandson, Alexander Daniel Alam MacMillan.1957-1963 - Anthony Eden was born on 12 June 1897 in Windlestone, Durham, England, UK. He was married to Clarissa Spencer-Churchill and Beatrice Beckett. He died on 14 January 1977 in Alvediston, Wiltshire, England, UK.1955-1957
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Born in Blenheim Palace, the residence of his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. His father was the Duke's third son, Lord Randolph Churchill. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American financier.
After passing through famous English public schools such as Harrow, he went on to fulfill his ambition for a life in the army. He fought in various parts of the British Empire until in 1900 when he won the Conservative seat in Oldham in the general election. From here until 1929 he held various offices in British Parliament.
The 1930s saw fascism grow in strength throughout Europe with dictators such as Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler and Spain's Francisco Franco. When the UK and France declared war on Germany in 1939, Neville Chamberlain was British Prime Minister. On May 10, 1940 Hitler's forces invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg in order to invade France. Chamberlain was widely blamed for the failed British invasion of Norway, although realistically Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty was largely to blame for the failure of the Norwegian Campaign. Chamberlain recommended the King should ask Churchill to succeed him as Prime Minister. He made a speech on 13 May: "You ask: 'What is our policy?' I will say: 'It is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalog of human crime.' That is our policy. You ask: 'What is our aim?' I can answer in one word: 'Victory! Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.'"
The United States officially entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The US's participation was excellent news to Churchill and after success on D-Day and as the Nazi forces were gradually forced back, the war in Europe gradually drew to a close. He lost the 1945 General Election by a landslide, lost again in 1950, but was re-elected as Prime Minister in 1951 despite receiving fewer votes than Labour. Due to deteriorating health he retired in 1955. He died at Hyde Park Gate, London, on January 24, 1965 at the age of 90. He had succeeded in the uniting of thought and deed. He had succeeded in uniting everyone in the common purpose, inspiring them with fortitude and strength to face whatever hardships that would have to be incurred in the process of first surviving and ultimately winning the war. His daughter Mary wrote to him on his death bed: "I owe you what every Englishman, woman, and child owes you - liberty itself."
As one of the most significant British politicians of the 20th century, Churchill remains one of the country's most widely recognized figures. He has been played by an almost incalculable number of actors on screen, but three of the most notable and acclaimed screen portrayals were by Robert Hardy in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (which covers Churchill's life from 1929 to 1939), Albert Finney in The Gathering Storm (2002) (also set in the 1930s before he became Prime Minister) and Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour (2017) (set in May 1940).
As well as a politician, Churchill was also an author and a prolific artist, who painted over 500 canvases, exhibited at the Royal Academy and at Paris, and sold paintings.1940-1945, 1951-1955- Clement Attlee was one of Britain's most significant political figures. He was the leader of Britain's Labour Party from 1935-1955 and Deputy Prime Minister of the UK during the wartime coalition against Nazi Germany (1940-45). He won a landslide victory in the 1945 general election, defeating Churchill, and while Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1945-1951) he established the National Health Service and India gained Independence from the British empire.1945-1951
- Neville Chamberlain was born on 18 March 1869 in Edgbaston, Birmingham, England, UK. He was married to Anne de Vere Cole. He died on 9 November 1940 in Heckfield, Hampshire, England, UK.1937-1940
- Stanley Baldwin was born on 3 August 1867 in Bewdley, Worcestershire, England, UK. He died on 14 December 1947 in Astley Hall, Worcestershire, England, UK.1923-1924, 1924-1929, 1935-1937
- Ramsay MacDonald was born on 12 October 1866 in Lossiemouth, Morayshire, Scotland, UK. He was married to Margaret Ethel Gladstone. He died on 5 November 1937 in Atlantic Ocean.1924, 1929-1935
- Bonar Law was born on 16 September 1858 in Rexton, New Brunswick, Canada. He was married to Annie Pitcairn Robley. He died on 30 October 1923 in London, England, UK.1922-1923
- David Lloyd George was born on 17 January 1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, England, UK. He was a writer, known for The First World War (2003), Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 26 (1915) and Pathé News, No. 24 (1915). He was married to Frances Stevenson and Mrs. Lloyd George. He died on 26 March 1945 in Ty Newydd, Llanystumdwy, Gwynedd, Wales, UK.1916-1922
- H.H. Asquith, considered the founder of the British welfare state, was the prime minister of the United Kingdom who led the British Empire into the monumental debacle that was World War I.
The son of a cloth merchant, Henry Herbert Asquith was born in Morley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England and attended Balliol College, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. After graduation he became a barrister and was called to the bar in 1876. He married Helen Kelsall Melland, the daughter of a Manchester physician, in 1877. By the early 1880s he had become financially well-off from his law practice, enough so to consider politics (members of Parliament were not paid a real salary until the 1970s). He was first elected to Parliament in 1886, standing as the Liberal candidate for East Fife, Scotland.
His first wife gave him four sons and one daughter before dying from typhoid in 1891. He remarried in 1894, taking Margot Tennant, the daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet, as his second wife. She bore several children, but only a son and daughter survived into adulthood. Asquith was called Herbert by his family, but his second wife called him Henry, and those who called him by his Christian name made the switch. However, in public he was addressed only as H.H. Asquith.
In 1892 he became Home Secretary during William Gladstone's last government (as Home Secretary Asquith signed the arrest order for Oscar Wilde, who was eventually incarcerated for lewd behavior). Three years after the Liberals went out of power in 1895, he was offered the party leadership but turned it down. After the Liberals' landslide victory in the 1906 general election, he became Chancellor of the Exchequer under Campbell Bannerman, a post in which he proved a stalwart proponent of free trade. Bannerman resigned the premiership due to illness in April 1908 and Asquith succeeded him, becoming the first member of the professional middle class to serve as Prime Minister.
His first government launched a guns-and-butter legislative programme, building up the British Navy in an arms race with Germany while introducing social welfare programmes. Asquith can be considered the father of the British welfare state, as his government introduced government pensions in 1908. The programme was fiercely resisted by the Tories, which provoked a constitutional crisis in 1909 when the Conservative majority in the House of Lords rejected the government's "People's Budget." Traditionally finance was the province of the House of Commons, and the resulting constitutional crisis forced a general election in January 1910. Though the Liberals were returned to government with a majority, their numbers in the Commons were much reduced, and the crisis continued.
King Edward VII consented to filling the House of Lords with freshly-minted Liberal peers, who would override the Lords' veto, if Asquith agreed to hold another general election, after which he would act if the impasse continued. However, Edward VII died in May 1910, before the second general election. Asquith had to use his considerable powers of persuasion to get Edward's successor, King George V, to agree to the plan. The new king was hesitant, as packing the Lords would undermine the power of the hereditary aristocracy. Before the December 1910 general election (the last held for eight years), Asquith's persuasion paid off, and George V agreed to pack the House of Lords. The Liberals won their second election of 1910, though the balance of power in the government rested with peers from Ireland, who demanded a Home Rule bill as the price of support for Asquith's third government.
The Parliament Act of 1911 circumscribed the legislative power of the House of Lords, as the upper chamber of Parliament was limited to delaying, but not defeating outright, any bill passed by the House of Commons. Asquith paid off the Irish block with the Third Irish Home Rule Bill, which achieved Royal Assent in late 1914, though implementation of the law was suspended for the duration of World War I, which the UK had become involved in due to a spider web of treaties. The Irish question remained a tinderbox, and while civil war in Ireland over the fate of Ulster was averted in 1914 by the outbreak of the war in Europe, simmering tensions would lead to the Easter Rebellion of 1916, which would prove to be one of the factors that contributed to Asquith's loss of power. The other was the war.
In May 1915 the Cabinet split over a scandal involving the dearth of munitions available at the front. Asquith ultimately was held responsible for the shortcomings in British war production. The "Shell Crisis" underscored the need for the British economy to be put on a wartime footing. Responding to the discord, Asquith formed a new government, creating a national coalition that included members of the Opposition (though an election should have been held in 1915, elections were suspended for the duration of the war). David Lloyd George, the most dynamic of the Liberal ministers from the old cabinet, was made minister of munitions.
The new coalition government did nothing to bolster Asquith's premiership. Both Liberals and Tories criticized his performance over the conduct of the war and assigned him some of the blame for the failed offensives at the Somme (in which Asquith's eldest son Raymond died) and Gallipoli (which led to the resignation of Winston Churchill, then a Liberal MP, as First Sea Lord). He was also blamed for his handling of the armed Easter Rebellion of Irish Catholics in Dublin in April 1916 and the resulting civil war. The Machiavellian Lloyd George undermined Asquith by splitting the Liberal Party into pro- and anti-Asquith factions. The result was that Asquith resigned as prime minister on December 5, 1916, and was succeeded by Lloyd George.
After resigning, Asquith continued in his post as Liberal Party leader, even after losing his seat in the 1918 elections. He returned to the House of Commons in a 1920 by-election and played a key role in helping the Labour Party form a minority in 1924, which gave Ramsay MacDonald his first--though short-lived--premiership.
The minority Labour government fell in 1924, and in the subsequent election won by the Tories, Asquith lost his seat in the Commons. He was raised to the hereditary peerage as Viscount Asquith, of Morley in the West Riding of the County of York, and Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925. Asquith moved over to the House of Lords and finally resigned the Liberal Party leadership in 1926. He died in 1928.
Violet Bonham Carter (maiden name Violet Asquith), Asquith's only daughter by his first wife, was a successful writer who was made a Life Peeress in her own right (she is the grandmother of Oscar-nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter). His son Cyril became a Law Lord, and two other sons married well, one being the poet Herbert Asquith. His two children by Margot were Elizabeth (later Princess Antoine Bibesco), a writer, and Anthony Asquith, a well-regarded film director.1908-1916 - Henry Campbell-Bannerman was born on 7 September 1836 in Kelvinside House, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He was married to Sarah Charlotte Bruce. He died on 22 April 1908 in 10 Downing Street, Westminster, London, England, UK.1905-1908
- Arthur J. Balfour was born on 25 July 1848 in Wittinghame, Scotland, UK. He died on 19 March 1930 in Woking, Surrey, England, UK.1902-1905