event led to a Cardiff meeting led by Charlotte Despard being abandoned. In Merthyr the speakers were drowned out and herrings and tomatoes thrown at them. Despite being a 'favoured son of Wales' and outwardly pro-women's suffrage, Liberal MP, and from 1908, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George was often a target of suffragette activity. Although Lloyd George always stated his support to the suffrage movement in public speeches, the failure of the Liberal Government to make any progress on implementing change led Christabel Pankhurst to believe him to be a secret anti-suffragist. Pankhurst was quoted in the Times in November 1911 declaring "'Lloyd Georgitis' seemed to be a disease which afflicted men to-day with very few exceptions. But women saw through him. They had always known him as an anti-suffragist, and they must fight him here and now." Pankhurst's assumptions had a basis of truth, as a month before Lloyd George had written to the Liberal Party chief whip bemoaning the fact that the forthcoming Conciliation Bill would hand hundreds of thousands of votes to the Tory party. The year 1912 saw a marked increase in militant action in Wales. Anger at the defeat of the Conciliation Bills saw the WPSU disrupt a speech by Lloyd George at the Pavilion in Caernarfon. The protesters, male and female, were treated harshly with clothes torn and hair ripped out and were beaten by sticks and umbrellas. Later that year Lloyd George was again heckled by suffragettes whilst delivering a speech at the National Eisteddfod. Just two weeks later one of the most notorious events in the history of suffrage in Wales took place, when Lloyd George returned to his home town of Llanystumdwy to open the village hall. No sooner had he started speaking than he was interrupted by the cries of 'Votes for Women!' The hecklers were violently assaulted by the crowd. One was stripped to the waist before being rescued and another was almost thrown off a bridge to be dashed on the rocks of the River Dwyfor below. As trouble was anticipated the national press was present and the Daily Mirror and Illustrated London News devoted a full page of photographs to the incident. The local press not only attacked the suffragettes, but poured scorn on the crowd for tarnishing the image of a peaceful, Nonconformist, chapel-going Wales. The event is seen as the most dramatic