A group of “fanatical Turks” plotted to assassinate former Prime Minister David Lloyd George, declassified documents have revealed.
Two men conspired to kill the famous Welsh statesmen at a conference in Germany, according to files kept secret by the Public Records Office for 80 years and published in The Guardian newspaper.
The report warned that the men – “Ali Bey” and “Haidar” – declared “their willingness to act as assassins” at the Conference of Orientals in Munich in 1923.
The group believed Lloyd George “represented unhappiness for the whole of the Orient,” it said.
The report was produced with information from Indian sources, who were said to have favoured “violence and the extermination of all Englishmen on one day.”
But that plan was considered too extreme by Egypt because Britain would have attracted sympathy and would have refused to evacuate troops from the country.
Instead, there was “general approval” that “sentence of death” be passed on Lloyd George at the conference.
The PRO kept Home Office Authorities’ memoranda relating to George’s protection between 1921 and 1931.
The body normally makes confidential documents public after 30 years, unless they are likely to damage national security or international relations
In correspondences, a senior special branch officer warned the Prime Minister’s protection officer: “I think you ought to be most careful to keep an eye open for the Turks or lower-class Greeks who may be wandering about and endeavouring to get too near to Mr Lloyd George.”
MI6 was also informed of an earlier attempt to kill the politician.
Great statesman
David Lloyd George is one of the UK’s most revered politicians
The Liberal was an influential Member of Parliament for 50 years, and became Prime Minister during the First World War in 1916, a position he held until 1922.
After a short illness, he died in 1945 in Criccieth, north Wales, and is remembered as a reformer, an architect of social welfare programmes and an early advocate of Welsh devolution.