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MAJOR GWILYM LLOYD-GEORGE AND THE PEMBROKESHIRE ELECTION OF 1950 By J. Graham Jones I shall never forget how the Tories blundered unprepared into war and fattened the battlefields with the bodies of my generation. Power must never again be given to Tories or the peace will have been lost At no time in history was it more important to see foreign policy in safe and sane hands, and outside the control of elderly belligerent politicians. Gwilym Lloyd-George (1894-1967), second son of David and Margaret Lloyd George, represented Pembrokeshire in parliament from 1922 to 1924 and was again re-elected in May 1929.2 Educated at Eastbourne College and Jesus College, Cambridge, he had seen active service in France throughout World War One, and had accompanied his illustrious father at the zenith of his international prestige to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. A brief period in the employ of a hydro-electric company based in north Wales preceded his selection as the National Liberal candidate for Pembrokeshire in the autumn of 1921. Parliamentary success followed in the general elections of November 1922 and December 1923, but in October 1924 Gwilym was to be defeated by Major C.W.M. Price, the Conservative candidate. During the Baldwin Government of 1924-29, Gwilym Lloyd-George spared no pains to nurse the Pembroke- shire constituency and, supported by his father, played some part in Liberal politics nationally. He had personally helped to draft the Liberal policy document We Can Conquer Unemployment on which the party fought the 1929 general election, and indeed succeeded in decisively toppling Major Price at the poll. Thus began a long tenure of a notably marginal constituency where Gwilym enjoyed enclaves of secure support particu- larly in the northern half of the county. During his early political career he did not veer far from his father's political standpoint, but, when the so-called national government led by Ramsay MacDonald was formed in August 1931, Gwilym, apparently on his own initiative, accepted the position of parliamentary secretary to the Board of Trade, his first taste of ministerial responsibility. The exper-