It was during the struggles of 1896-9 that the reconciliation came. Then in the great parliamentary strife over the Agricultural Rates Bill and the Voluntary Schools Bill, Mr. Lloyd George first showed his mettle as a leader of parliamentary guerillas. Nay, more. At the moment when British Liberalism was bereft of leadership he gave it a lead. That was the great point.
Mr. Lloyd George’s great fight against the Agricultural Rates Bill in 1896 marked, indeed, his first great advance towards an assured parliamentary position. It was the first of the measures put forward by our Agrarians for the special relief of agriculture from the misfortunes which had befallen them in the seventies and the eighties. A small affair as compared with later proposals; but Mr. Lloyd George conceived against it an implacable hatred. It was not the relief that he hated; but he argued that under our land system the money would all go finally into the pockets of the landlords. He believed this sincerely; and he fought a great fight against the whole proposal.
The struggle went on through the early months of the Session of 1896. The Unionists at first took it lightly; then they grew angry. Here, it seemed, was a man who must really be reckoned with. This little Welsh attorney, this chapel-trained Nonconformist, actually seemed to know a thing or two about the sacred land system of these islands. He could not be ignored. His pertinacity and resourcefulness seemed to be inexhaustible. The fight went on from day to day, and there seemed no end.
On May 21st the Government moved and the Chairman accepted the “block” closure on the vital clause of the Bill—Clause four.
When the Chairman called the House to go into the division lobbies it was seen that a little group of members were sitting still on their seats, refusing to move. They were Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Herbert Lewis, backed by a little group of sympathetic Irishmen—Mr. John Dillon, Dr. Tanner, and Mr. Donald Sullivan—and by one Radical—Sir John Brunner.
“I must request honourable members to proceed to the division lobbies,” said the Chairman.
“I decline to go out under the circumstances,” said Mr. Lloyd George, speaking with his hat on, as in duty bound.
It was a new event. The Chairman was puzzled what to do. So he called the House back, summoned the Speaker—then Mr. Gully—from his repose, and reported to him what had happened.
“Do I understand,” said the Speaker sternly to Mr. Lloyd George, “that you refuse to clear the House?”
Mr. Lloyd George was quite unshaken by all this awful panoply of parliamentary terrorism.