Joseph Davies (British politician)

[6] Over many years, Davies successfully built up his business interests based around the traditional industries of South Wales, coal and railways.

[10][11] Davies also carried out charitable work, and Lloyd George was impressed by his success as chairman of the committee set up to distribute the money sent by Welshmen in the United States for the relief of suffering in Wales.

The group around the prime minister at this time included Frances Stevenson, Waldorf Astor, Philip Kerr, Cecil Harmsworth, and Edward Grigg.

[13] However, in December 1916 a by-election was caused in the Liberal seat at Derby when Sir Thomas Roe resigned in anticipation of being sent to the House of Lords.

[15] When Davies defended Crewe at the 1922 general election, standing as a Lloyd George National Liberal, he again faced no Conservative opponent.

There were a number of Independent Liberals, including one in Chester, but this did not stop the Tories from making a clean sweep of every Cheshire seat they contested in the election.

One historian has commented that politics in Crewe had been changed by a number of factors, including deaths among pre-war Liberal stalwarts, the decline of nonconformity, the decreasing importance of temperance agitation, and the rise of trade unionism.

[24] According to one source, a collection of Davies’s papers has been deposited at the National Library of Wales, along with those of some other Liberal politicians who were early contemporaries of Lloyd George at Westminster.

[25] In addition, some notes by Davies on his visits to Newcastle, Sunderland, Glasgow, and South Wales in relation to the Labour question are part of the Lloyd George papers in the Parliamentary Archives.