17 Facts About Clement Davies

Edward Clement Davies was a Welsh politician and leader of the Liberal Party from 1945 to 1956.

Edward Clement Davies was born on 19 February 1884 in Llanfyllin, Montgomeryshire, Wales.

Clement Davies was educated at the local primary school and at Llanfyllin County School, to which he won a scholarship in 1897.

Clement Davies read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated with first-class honours.

Clement Davies practiced as a barrister in North Wales and in northern England before moving to London in 1910, where he established a successful legal practice.

Clement Davies was elected to the House of Commons in the 1929 General Election as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire.

Clement Davies came under increasing pressure from his local Liberal executive and his predecessor as MP Lord Davies who was President of Montgomeryshire Liberal Association, to move into opposition.

Clement Davies had not sought the position of leader and was not enthusiastic about it.

Since that never happened, Clement Davies, was in fact to remain party leader for the next 11 years, taking the Liberals through three general elections.

Clement Davies was President of the London Welsh Trust, which runs the London Welsh Centre, Gray's Inn Road, from 1946 until 1947.

Clement Davies finally resigned as leader at the party conference in September 1956 and was succeeded by the much younger and more vigorous Jo Grimond, following what was effectively a coup by the membership against the executive; both Davies and Grimond appeared to be unaware of the coup until it was over.

Clement Davies therefore led the Liberal Party, which, in the late 19th and early 20th century had been a major force in British politics and a frequent party of government, through its lowest period, when it was reduced to a minor party: the result of the electorate's polarisation between the Labour and the Conservatives.

Clement Davies was personally well-liked, both in the party and beyond it.

Clement Davies was an alcoholic for decades, which left him in a weakened state of health, particularly by the time he took on the burden of party leadership.

Historians now point out that with the Cold War tensions of the late 1940s and early 1950s in particular, leading the Liberal Party then would have been a challenge for anybody, and just by keeping the party together and in existence at all, Clement Davies made a significant contribution.

Clement Davies was succeeded as Liberal MP for Montgomeryshire by Emlyn Hooson.

Clement Davies lost three of his four children within the space of a few years after the outbreak of the Second World War.