page_title: David Lloyd George
section_title: Home Front
hierarchical_section_title: David Lloyd George / Prime Minister (1916–1922) / War leader (1916–1918) / Home Front
caption_attribution_description: English: Order of Merit to Cardinal Hume displayed in Westminster Cathedral, London, England.
context_page_description: David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, OM, PC was a Welsh statesman who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. He was the final Liberal to hold the post of Prime Minister, but his support increasingly came from the Conservatives who finally dropped him.
  Lloyd George was a first language Welsh speaker, born on 17 January 1863 in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to Welsh parents. He was raised in Wales from around 3 months old, first briefly in Pembrokeshire, South West Wales, and then in Llanystumdwy, Carnarvonshire. He is so far the only British Prime Minister to have been Welsh and to have spoken English as a second language. His father, a schoolmaster, died in 1864 and he was raised in Wales by his mother and her shoemaker brother, whose Liberal politics and Baptist faith strongly influenced Lloyd George; the same uncle helped the boy embark on a career as a solicitor after leaving school.
context_section_description: The War Cabinet was a very successful innovation. It met almost daily, with Maurice Hankey as secretary, and made all major political, military, economic and diplomatic decisions. Rationing was finally imposed in early 1918 for meat, sugar and fats (butter and margarine) – but not bread; the new system worked smoothly. From 1914 to 1918 trade-union membership doubled, from a little over four million to a little over eight million. Work stoppages and strikes became frequent in 1917–18 as the unions expressed grievances regarding prices, alcohol control, pay disputes, dilution of labour, fatigue from overtime and from Sunday work, and inadequate housing.
  The Corn Production Act 1917 bestowed upon the Board of Agriculture the power to ensure that all land was properly cultivated, appointed a wages board to operate a new minimum wage in agriculture, and guaranteed minimum prices for wheat and oats.
  Conscription put into uniform nearly every physically fit man, six million out of ten million eligible. Of these about 750,000 lost their lives and 1,700,000 were wounded. Most deaths were of young unmarried men; however, 160,000 wives lost their husbands and 300,000 children lost their fathers.
caption: Order of Merit
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