On Friday 20 June 2025 I had the privilege of delivering the history lecture to the annual conference of the Baptist Union of Wales at the Central London Welsh Church, just round the corner from Oxford Circus. My title was ‘War, Loss and Peace: The Parallel Careers of Lloyd George and John Hinds’ and thus I was talking about one man who is still famous and another who has been forgotten, even though he was, in his time, an important man.

Both were Liberal Members of Parliament representing Welsh seats at the time of the Great War, and the effect of that War on their careers and lives was the main subject of my lecture. Lloyd George, born 1863, was elected to the House of Commons in 1890 and soon became one of the leading lights of the radical wing of the Liberal Party, gaining a seat at the Cabinet when the Liberals gained power in 1905 and being promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1908. When in London he attended Castle Street Welsh Baptist chapel, where John Hinds was one of the leading deacons. Hinds, born 1862, was a successful businessman in London and in 1910, with the backing of Lloyd George, won the nomination to be the Liberal candidate for West Carmarthenshire, his home patch. He easily won the seat at the election and so when the Great War started in 1914 both Hinds and Lloyd George were MPs, and part of the Liberal Party machine that ran Wales.

It is likely that all readers will know that Lloyd George became Prime Minister in the middle of the War, the only Welshman to get the job, and later he revelled in the title of ‘the man who won the War’. John Hinds was always loyal to Lloyd George, and an aspect of the story that shines through when looking at his career during the war is how Hinds had to compromise on his principles in order to justify the Government’s activities. It is remarkable, for instance, to read of his unswerving and committed support for the very illiberal legislation on conscription pushed through by the administration.

One obvious difference between Lloyd George and John Hinds was that while both sons of ‘the Welsh Wizard’ served as officers far away from the front line, the only son of John and Lizzie Hinds died on the Western Front in 1916, aged 18. For the rest of his life John Hinds was extremely active in initiatives to commemorate the dead of the Great War, and to promote activities to build peace. It is likely that he unveiled more war memorials than any other Welshman: I have records of him doing the honours at seventeen ceremonies.

In April 1922, Mr and Mrs Hinds paid for a memorial in Castle Street Welsh Baptist Chapel to commemorate the fourteen men of the chapel who were killed in the Great War, including their son. However, it wasn’t John Hinds who unveiled the tablet but his friend, the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. The reports of the ceremony emphasise how emotionally charged the occasion was, as the Premier gave a speech glorifying the ‘sacrifice’ of the fourteen and then silently stared at the memorial after unveiling it.

Castle Street Welsh Baptist Chapel is now the Central London Welsh Church. It still houses the war memorial paid for by Hinds and thus the audience could see the bronze tablet and the names upon it as I gave the lecture. Beneath the WW1 memorial is the chapel’s WW2 memorial, demonstrating that the Great War was not, after all, the ‘war to end all wars’.

All war memorials tell a story, of how the war in question and its aftermath affected specific communities. For me, the memorials commissioned and created by specific groups, be they church or chapel congregations, colleagues at a workplace or school communities, are the most interesting, as these were created by people who knew the individuals named. Literally thousands of memorials were created, of their own volition, by these communities across Wales, and together their story tells us of the enormous scars left by the twentieth century’s wars upon Welsh society and culture.