‘Lloyd George Must Fall!’ – Pro-Palestine protest planned for capital
Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters will stage a march through Cardiff this weekend, demanding the removal of the statue of David Lloyd George on the 107th anniversary of his government issuing the Balfour Declaration.
The controversial Balfour Declaration which resulted in a significant upheaval in the lives of Palestinians, was issued on November 2, 1917 during World War I.
It saw a British Government led by Lloyd George (who was Prime Minister from 1916-22) announce its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.
Nakba
Palestinians regard the document as part of a chain of events leading to the loss of their homeland in 1948, to make way for the modern state of Israel.
Palestinians remain one of the largest and most consistent refugee populations in the world still denied by Israel their right of return to the homes and lands they were expelled or fled from 76 years ago.
More than 80% of the over two-million Palestinians living in Gaza today are refugee families who once lived for generations on land in what is now Israel.
The March for Palestine will assemble on Saturday 2 November at 1 pm on Churchill Way ending by the Lloyd George statue in Gorsedd Gardens in front of the National Museum Cardiff where protesters will symbolically rip up copies of the 67-word Balfour Declaration.
“Chains of complicity”
Adam Johannes from Cardiff Stop the War Coalition said: “The Balfour Declaration was the first shot in a century of British meddling in the lives of Palestinians, and the carnage’s only intensified.
“Today Britain continues to be involved by supplying arms and political support to Israel, enabling bombings ending in tens of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths.
“It’s time for the people to break our government’s chains of complicity.”
The veteran anti-war organiser added: “Lloyd George’s imperialist legacy must not go unchallenged. Under his leadership Britain bombed Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and Iran.
“His political choices fuelled two great catastrophes in the Middle East, the dispossession of the Palestinians and the Kurds cheating both people’s of their right to statehood.
“His government sealed the fate of millions with the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty to parcel out the Middle East between great powers. In pursuit of profit and power he sent hundreds of thousands of young men to be slaughtered in the trenches of World War I.
“Does such a bloody legacy deserve to be honoured with a statue?”
Precedent
Citing the precedent of Cardiff councillors voting in 2020 to remove a statue of a 19th Century slave owner, Thomas Picton, from a gallery of Welsh heroes in City Hall, in a statement protesters have called upon Cardiff Council to remove Lloyd George,
The statement reads: “We call on Cardiff Council to urgently remove the Lloyd George statue, as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people who suffered so much as a consequence of his actions, and replace it with a more suitable hero from history.
“How about a conscientious objector jailed for refusing to fight in the First World War or an Arab freedom fighter?”
“The protesters argue their call is not erasing history, but rather opening up a public debate over whose stories are missing when the historical narrative is written only by the rich and powerful. This is not the first time that Britain’s first and only Welsh Prime Minister has attracted controversy.
“In 2007, Harold Pinter, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, left-wing journalist John Pilger and former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Denis Halliday were among anti-war voices opposing a statue of Lloyd George in London’s Parliament Square alleging his legacy was one of being a warmonger, imperialist and racist.”
Meanwhile earlier this month, The Telegraph newspaper claimed that ‘David Lloyd George’s childhood cottage is to be “decolonised” with the help of funding from the Welsh Government.
The protest march assembles on Saturday 2 November at 1 pm by the Canal Quarter, Churchill Way, Cardiff City Centre, and is expected to set off around 1.30 pm ending in a rally with speeches by the statue of Lloyd George by the National Museum Cardiff and Gorsedd Gardens.
The protest march is supported by a coalition of groups including Black Lives Matter Cardiff and Vale, Cardiff Stop the War Coalition, Stand Up for Palestine, Cymru Queers for Palestine, Caerdydd Students for Palestine and others.
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This is a bandwagon which is slowly rolling to a stop. Cardiff is the capital of Wales and Lloyd George was a significant Welshman. If by consensus his statue is removed it should not be replaced by some of- the – moment notional statue or protest worker. Either a work of art or nothing should be the options while the bandwagon of self satisfied protesters rolls off somewhere else.
Aw shucks, I expected a memorial to the “unknown protester” or “anonymous offended activist”.
Seriously, Lloyd George and his French counterparts were heavily into carving up big chunks of the world hence the straight line borders you find in the Middle East and most of West Africa. They couldn’t follow rivers cos they didn’t have a clue where they flowed from, and tribal boundaries didn’t count because the natives were regarded as sub human and prone to wandering about the place!
No! No way …. that’s enough of this nonsense.
Rip it up & replace it with one of Michael Sheen!!!!!
Complete with a cone on his head!
I hope the council tell them to take a long walk of a short pier. Empty vessels make the most noise.
Lloyd George is a proud Welshman, born in Manchester!
He was a proud Welshman in the first years of his career, but his loyalty to his country dropped a few percentage points after he became part of the British Establishment.
You have something in common then.
Aren’t you a ‘Welsh Patriot’ born in England..
Lloyd George, did so much wrong in his life, I wouldn’t know where to start, Ireland I think would never forgive him.
After bringing the Tans and the Auxiliaries into Ireland some of these then later went to Palestine to terrorise that community. Remember his ‘we have murder by the throat’ response to the struggle for independence in Ireland. It’s time we realised that he was an imperialist first and foremost and left us with a legacy of a disunited Ireland and the chaos in Palestine. An empire that historically ruled by deceit and divsion.
Give it a rest. Stop trying to change the past and deal with the present. The Jews have always lived there as have the Arabs. One side has accepted deal after deal the other has never accepted any deal even when they were to have 80% of the land. At some time they need to live together.
Totally agree
Please provide a reference as to when the Arabs refused a deal in which they were to have sovereignty of 80% of the land. Yes Palestinians, Jews, Christians and Arabs lived in peace prior to Balfour, but now Israelis refused to give up their sovereignty and live in peace with Arabs. The other point to make is that for the last 20 years or so, the whole world has agreed to the UN resolution on “The Peaceful Resolution of the Palestine Question” apart from Israel, US and the Martial islands – please list the deals that have been broken.
Its absurd to take down statues because they don’t adhere to 21st century values. Should we take down statues of Churchill because of his imperialist views? Should the Americans do the same in regards to George Washington because he owned slaves? Removing statues is to whitewash, censor or even potentially forget history, which means that history is in danger of repeating itself.
Keep Lloyd George’s statue where it is. Don’t give in to the minority. For good or ill, Lloyd George is part of Welsh History. WELSH. History. Cardiff is where he is, and Cardiff is where every Welsh Man or Woman has the right to see him.