Cylchgronau Cymru

favour of 'a fair trial, though he would watch it with a prejudice in favour of free trade'.63 The Liberals of Montgomeryshire professed to being 'fully satisfied' with the explanation given, and expressed their appreciation of 'the very difficult situation' in which their Member had found himself.64 Reflecting on these events eleven years late, Davies wrote to his son that he felt that the Samuelite Liberals had left the National Government in 1932 'on what I thought then was a very narrow and out-of-date question, namely Free Trade'. He wrote that he had believed that the imposition of protective measures by foreign nations meant that, We had to take some counter-measure in order to bring these other countries to a sense of reality'.65 The local reaction to these developments was coloured to a large extent by the attitude of David Davies of Llandinam, who, upon standing down as Montgomeryshire's parliamentary representative, had been chosen President of the local Liberal Association in March 1928, and who remained a highly influential and potentially menacing figure within his native county.66 David Davies believed that the formation of the National Government was essential 'to rehabilitate the financial and economic position' and that it commanded the support of 'all patriotic people who put the interests of their country before the interests of their Party'. Yet he maintained that, because the government would be forced to 'introduce unpopular measures to meet the present difficulties', it might eventually bring about the election of a Labour govern- ment. He, therefore, advocated that 'the new Coalition' should go to the polls as a coalition in order that 'the Socialists may find themselves in the cart for a long period'.67 He remained virulently and aggressively opposed to Lloyd George, writing to the press in March 1931, 'Unless the [Liberal] Party desire to remain permanently at the bottom, they must. dethrone the leader whose policy and tactics have landed them in their present deplorable position',68 and rejoiced in the illness which laid Lloyd George low when the National Government decided to go to the polls in the autumn of the same year: 'What have you done with L.G.? Having carted everybody in the course of his career, does it now mean that he has at last been carted himself?,69 He congratulated those former Labour Ministers who had followed MacDonald into the National Government; as he wrote to J. H. Thomas, You will be fortified by the knowledge that you have done your duty to the country and that everyone with a grain of patriotism will applaud the course you have taken'.70 To Thomas, Davies again reiterated his conviction that the government should go to the polls as a coalition to receive a mandate from the electors, for, "Otherwise there is nothing between us and the abyss a Kerensky regime which is bound to end in chaos and worse'.71 There can be little doubt that the ready support rendered by David Davies to the formation of the National Government and to the holding of a general election in October 1931 made Clement Davies's position as a Simonite Liberal a less alarming and more aceptable prospect to the members of the Montgomeryshire Liberal Asso- ciation than it might otherwise have been. As the 1930s advanced, it became clear that Clement Davies's interests were not focussed 611bid. 64Montgomeryshire Liberal Association, Newtown, Mont. Lib. Assoc. minute book, 1920-60, A.G.M. Council minutes, 27 February 1932. 65N.L.W., Clement Davies papers Cl/16: Clement Davies to Stanley Clement-Davies, 3 November 1943. 66J. Graham Jones, loc. cit., p.95-6. 67N.L.W., Llandinam papers (uncatalogued), David Davies to Sir Donald Maclean, 4 September 1931 (copy).. ^Ibid., David Davies to the Editor of The Times, 28 March 1931 (copy). mIbid., David Davies to Sir Donald Maclean, 4 September 1931 (copy). 'Ibid., David Davies to J. H. Thomas, 22 September 1931 (copy). "Ibid.