Megan Lloyd George

Lady Megan Arfon Lloyd George, CH (22 April 1902 – 14 May 1966) was a British politician, the first female Member of Parliament (MP) for a Welsh constituency, and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party. She later became a Labour MP.

The youngest child of David Lloyd George and his wife, Margaret, she was born in Criccieth, Caernarfonshire, in what is now Gwynedd. After her father was raised to the Peerage as Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor, she was known as Lady Megan Lloyd George. Like her brother, Gwilym Lloyd George, she followed her father into politics. She became the first female MP in Wales when she won Anglesey for the Liberals in 1929. She refused to support Ramsay MacDonald's National Government in 1931 and successfully held Anglesey as an Independent Liberal until 1935. She held the seat again as a Liberal from 1935 to 1951.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she campaigned for a Welsh Assembly and the creation of a Secretary of State for Wales. Prominent among the radicals in the Liberal Party, she opposed what she saw as the party's drift away from her father's brand of liberalism. In 1949 she was named Deputy Leader of the party in a bid to create unity, but after losing her seat she stood down in 1952 and in 1955 defected to Labour. In 1957 she stood against the Liberals as the Labour Party candidate in a by-election in Carmarthen and won the seat from them, which she held until her death from breast cancer in Pwllheli in 1966, aged 64. She was named a Companion of Honour posthumously in the dissolution honours published five days after her death.^{[citation needed]}

Further reading

• Jones, J. Graham, entry in Dictionary of Liberal Biography Brack et al. (eds.) Politico's Publishing, 1998
• Jones, J. Graham, 'A breach in the family: the defection from the Liberal Party of Megan and Gwilym Lloyd George'
• Jones, Mervyn. A Radical Life: The Biography of Megan Lloyd George, 1902-66. London: Hutchinson, 1991. ISBN 0-09-174829-1
• Price, Emyr Megan Lloyd George; Gwynedd Archives Service, 1983

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Megan Lloyd George
• Archival material relating to Megan Lloyd George listed at the UK National Register of Archives