E. D. Morel
Encyclopedia
Edmund Dene Morel, originally Georges Eduard Pierre Achille Morel de Ville (10 July 1873 – 12 November 1924) was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 journalist
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

, author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

. In collaboration with Roger Casement
Roger Casement
Roger David Casement —Sir Roger Casement CMG between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his British honours—was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary, and nationalist....

, the Congo Reform Association
Congo Reform Association
The Congo Reform Association exposed gross and rampant abuses of labor and by public servants in King Leopold II of Belgium's Congo Free State, leading to the annexation of Congo by Belgium in 1908. In March, 1904, Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness , Edmund Dene Morel, and Roger Casement founded the Congo...

 and others, Morel, in newspapers such as his West African Mail, led a campaign against slavery in the Congo Free State
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...

. He played a significant role in the British pacifist
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

 movement during the First World War, participating in the foundation and becoming secretary of the Union of Democratic Control
Union of Democratic Control
The Union of Democratic Control was a British pressure group formed in 1914 to press for a more responsive foreign policy. While not a pacifist organization, it was opposed to military influence in government.-World War I:...

, at which point he broke with the Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

. After the war he joined the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

.

Background

Morel was born in the Avenue d'Eylau, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. His father, Edmond Morel de Ville, was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 civil servant
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....

; his mother, Emmeline de Horne, was from an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 Quaker family. Edmond having died when the boy was four, Morel was brought up by his mother. Emmeline subsequently fell out with her late husband's family and, as a consequence, changed her name to Deville. To remove her son from the family's influence, she worked as a teacher so she could afford to send him as a boarder at Madras House school in Eastbourne
Eastbourne
Eastbourne is a large town and borough in East Sussex, on the south coast of England between Brighton and Hastings. The town is situated at the eastern end of the chalk South Downs alongside the high cliff at Beachy Head...

 and, later, at Bedford Modern School
Bedford Modern School
Bedford Modern School is a British co-educational independent school in the Harpur area of Bedford, in the county of Bedfordshire, in England.Bedford Modern comprises a junior school and a senior school...

.

When Emmeline Deville fell ill in 1888, the money for school fees was not available and Edmund was forced to return to Paris to work as a bank clerk. He was able to move his mother back to Britain in 1891. Five years later he successfully applied for naturalisation as a British subject and anglicised
Anglicisation
Anglicisation, or anglicization , is the process of converting verbal or written elements of any other language into a form that is more comprehensible to an English speaker, or, more generally, of altering something such that it becomes English in form or character.The term most often refers to...

 his name. He married Mary Richardson that same year; they had five children.

Discoveries at Elder Dempster

In 1891, Morel obtained a clerkship with Elder Dempster, a Liverpool shipping firm. To increase his income and support his family, from 1893 Morel began writing articles against French protectionism
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...

, which was damaging Elder Dempster's business. He came to be critical of the Foreign Office
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...

 for not supporting the rights of Africans under colonial rule. His vision of Africa was influenced by the books of Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley
Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English writer and explorer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and African people.-Early life:Kingsley was born in Islington, London on 13 October 1862...

, an English traveller and writer, which showed sympathy for African peoples and a respect for different cultures that was very rare amongst Europeans
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...

 at the time.

Elder Dempster had a shipping contract with the Congo Free State
Congo Free State
The Congo Free State was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II, King of the Belgians. Its origins lay in Leopold's attracting scientific, and humanitarian backing for a non-governmental organization, the Association internationale africaine...

 for the connection between Antwerp and Boma
Boma
The port town of Boma in Bas-Congo province was the capital city of the Congo Free State and Belgian Congo from 1 May 1886 to 1926, when it was moved to Léopoldville . It exports tropical timber, bananas, cacao, and palm products...

. Groups such as the Aborigines' Protection Society
Aborigines' Protection Society
The Aborigines' Protection Society was an international human rights organisation, founded in 1837, to protect the health and well-being and the sovereign, legal and religious rights of the indigenous peoples subjected by colonial powers. The Society published tracts, pamphlets, Annual Reports and...

 had already begun a campaign against alleged atrocities in Congo. Due to his knowledge of French, Morel was often sent to Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

, where he was able to view the internal accounts of the Congo Free State held by Elder Dempster. The knowledge that the ships leaving Belgium for the Congo carried only guns, chains, ordnance and explosives, but no commercial goods, while ships arriving from the colony came back full of valuable products such as raw rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...

 and ivory
Ivory
Ivory is a term for dentine, which constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals, when used as a material for art or manufacturing. Ivory has been important since ancient times for making a range of items, from ivory carvings to false teeth, fans, dominoes, joint tubes, piano keys and...

, led him to the opinion that Belgian King Leopold II's policy was exploitative. According to the Belgian Prof. Daniël Vangroenweghe, Leopold gained 1,250 million present day euros from the exploitation of the Congolese people, mainly from rubber. Other Belgian sources calculated that the profits from the Congolese exploitation prior to 1905 were some 500 million present-day euros.

The gains from the exploitation of rubber through the state and other companies like the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company (ABIR) were huge. The original value of the ABIR shares was 500 francs (1892 gold francs). In 1903 the shares had risen to 15,000 gold francs. The company felt obliged to let the Bourgeoisie share profits with the upper class. The dividend in 1892 was 1 franc. In 1903 the dividend was 1,200 francs, more than the double of the original price of a share. These enormous gains came from horrible exploitation, and the equator region became a green hell. The scope of the destruction, together with disease and famine from forced labor, killed half of the population of the colony.

Journalism and Congo Reform Association

In 1900, Morel put new life into the campaign against Congo misrule (begun a decade before by the American George Washington Williams
George Washington Williams
George Washington Williams was an American Civil War veteran, minister, politician and historian. Shortly before his death he travelled to King Leopold II's Congo Free State and his open letter to Leopold about the suffering of the region's inhabitants at the hands of Leopold's agents, helped to...

) with a series of articles in the weekly magazine Speaker. He realised that King Léopold II
Leopold II of Belgium
Leopold II was the second king of the Belgians. Born in Brussels the second son of Leopold I and Louise-Marie of Orléans, he succeeded his father to the throne on 17 December 1865 and remained king until his death.Leopold is chiefly remembered as the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free...

 of Belgium, the absolute controller of the Congo Free State, had created a forced labour system of huge dimensions, in effect slave labour. Despite having risen to be Elder Dempster's head of trade with the Congo, Morel resigned in 1902 to further his campaign. He became a full-time journalist, first finding a job in the editing of a recently founded periodical, West Africa, then founding in 1903 his own magazine, the West African Mail, with the collaboration of John Holt
John Holt (businessman)
John Holt was an English merchant, who founded a shipping line operating between Liverpool and West Africa, and a number of businesses in Nigeria, which are now incorporated in John Holt plc....

, a businessman and a friend of Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley
Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English writer and explorer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and African people.-Early life:Kingsley was born in Islington, London on 13 October 1862...

 who feared the application of the Congo Free State system upon the rest of the West Africa. The Mail was an "illustrated weekly journal founded to meet the rapidly growing interest in west and central African questions" . In this period Morel published several pamphlets and his first book, Affairs of West Africa.
In 1903 the British House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...

 passed a resolution on the Congo. Subsequently the British consul in the Congo, Roger Casement
Roger Casement
Roger David Casement —Sir Roger Casement CMG between 1911 and shortly before his execution for treason, when he was stripped of his British honours—was an Irish patriot, poet, revolutionary, and nationalist....

, was sent up country for an investigation. His 1904 report
Casement Report
The Casement Report was a 1904 document by British diplomat Roger Casement detailing abuses in the Congo Free State which was under the private ownership of King Leopold II of Belgium. This report was instrumental in Leopold finally reliquishing his private holdings in Africa...

, which confirmed Morel's accusations, had a considerable impact on public opinion. Morel met Casement just before the publication of the report and realised that he had found the ally he had sought. Casement convinced Morel to establish an organisation for dealing specifically with the Congo question, the Congo Reform Association
Congo Reform Association
The Congo Reform Association exposed gross and rampant abuses of labor and by public servants in King Leopold II of Belgium's Congo Free State, leading to the annexation of Congo by Belgium in 1908. In March, 1904, Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness , Edmund Dene Morel, and Roger Casement founded the Congo...

. Affiliates of the Congo Reform Association were established as far away as the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

The Congo Reform Association had the support of famous writers such as Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...

 (whose Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness
Heart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles...

was inspired by a voyage to the Congo Free State), Anatole France
Anatole France
Anatole France , born François-Anatole Thibault, , was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters...

, Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

 and Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

. Conan Doyle wrote The Crime of the Congo in 1908, while Twain gave the most famous contribution with the satirical short story "King Leopold's Soliloquy
King Leopold's Soliloquy
"King Leopold's Soliloquy" is a 1905 pamphlet by Mark Twain. Its subject is King Leopold's rule over the Congo Free State. A work of political satire harshly condemnatory of his actions, it ostensibly recounts Leopold speaking in his own defense....

". Morel's best allies were perhaps missionaries
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

 who furnished him with eyewitness accounts and photographs of the atrocities, such as the Americans William Morrison and William Henry Sheppard
William Henry Sheppard
Reverend William Henry Sheppard was one of the earliest African Americans to become a missionary for the Presbyterian Church. He spent 20 years in Africa, primarily in and around the Congo Free State, and is best known for his efforts to publicize the atrocities committed against the Kuba and...

 and the British John Harris
John Harris
-Politics and government:*John Harris , English MP for Grampound in 1555*John Harris English MP for Bere Alston in 1640*John Harris , English MP for Liskeard...

 and Alice Harris. The chocolate millionaire William Cadbury
Cadbury family
The Cadbury family is a prominent British family of industrialists descending from Richard Tapper Cadbury.* Richard Tapper Cadbury , who financed John** John Cadbury , family patriarch and founder of the chocolate company...

, a Quaker, was one of his main financial backers. The American civil-rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 activist Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...

 participated in the campaign. The French journalist Pierre Mille wrote a book with Morel, while the Belgian socialist leader Emile Vandervelde
Emile Vandervelde
thumb|upright|Emile VanderveldeEmile Vandervelde was a Belgian statesman, born at Ixelles. He studied law at the Free University of Brussels and became doctor of laws in 1885 and doctor of social science in 1888.-Activities:Vandervelde became a member of the Parti Ouvrier...

 sent him copies of Belgian parliamentary debates. Morel had secret connections with some agents of the Congo Free State. Even the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 and American religious groups backed him.
In 1905 the movement won a victory when a Commission of Enquiry, instituted (under external pressure) by King Léopold himself, substantially confirmed the accusations made about the colonial administration. In 1908 the Congo was annexed to Belgium and put under its sovereignty. Despite this, Morel refused to declare an end to the campaign until 1913 because he wanted to see actual changes in the situation of the country. The Congo Reform Association ended operations in 1913.

Foreign policy

During the Agadir Crisis
Agadir Crisis
The Agadir Crisis, also called the Second Moroccan Crisis, or the Panthersprung, was the international tension sparked by the deployment of the German gunboat Panther, to the Moroccan port of Agadir on July 1, 1911.-Background:...

 of 1911, Morel was entirely in sympathy with Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and opposed to what he regarded as bellicosity by the United Kingdom and France, as well as secret diplomacy between the states involved. He wrote Morocco in Diplomacy
Morocco in Diplomacy (book)
Morocco in Diplomacy was a book written by Edmund Dene Morel and first published by Smith, Elder & Co..in London, 1912. It received limited circulation, although Morel believed it was read amongst influential circles....

(1912) to express his views on the issue. At this time he was also selected by the Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...

 as a prospective House of Commons candidate for Birkenhead
Birkenhead (UK Parliament constituency)
Birkenhead is a parliamentary constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.-History:...

.

Pacifism and formation of Union of Democratic Control

As the tension grew in the run-up to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Morel was again sympathetic to Germany, disinclined to stand by Belgium under German pressure, and opposed to the United Kingdom and France getting involved in war. He campaigned for neutrality but on the outbreak of war accepted that the fight was lost, and with Charles Trevelyan
Sir Charles Trevelyan, 3rd Baronet
Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, 3rd Baronet PC , the Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland, was a British Liberal, and later Labour, politician and landowner...

, Norman Angell
Norman Angell
Sir Ralph Norman Angell was an English lecturer, journalist, author, and Member of Parliament for the Labour Party.Angell was one of the principal founders of the Union of Democratic Control...

 and Ramsay MacDonald
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS was a British politician who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government for two terms....

, formed the Union of Democratic Control
Union of Democratic Control
The Union of Democratic Control was a British pressure group formed in 1914 to press for a more responsive foreign policy. While not a pacifist organization, it was opposed to military influence in government.-World War I:...

 to press for a more responsive foreign policy (he also resigned his candidature at this time). He was Secretary of the UDC until his death. The main demands of the UDC were: (1) that in future to prevent secret diplomacy there should be parliamentary control over foreign policy; (2) there should be negotiations after the war with other democratic European countries in an attempt to form an organisation to help prevent future conflicts; (3) that at the end of the war the terms of peace should neither humiliate the defeated nation nor artificially rearrange frontiers, as this might provide a cause for future wars.

The Union of Democratic Control became the most important of all the anti-war organisations in Britain, with membership reaching 650,000 by 1917. His political courage was praised by people such as Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...

 and the writer Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland
Romain Rolland was a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian and mystic who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915.-Biography:...

, but his leading role in the pacifist movement exposed him to violent attacks led by the pro-war press. He was pictured as an agent of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 in the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...

, a newspaper that also listed details of future UDC meetings and encouraged its readers to attend and break them up. The accusation gained some credibility when Roger Casement, who was known as a friend and supporter of Morel, was hanged for treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...

 (he had contacted the Germans seeking support for Irish
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 nationalism). Morel was the occasional victim of physical assaults.

Imprisonment

On August 22, 1917, Morel's house was searched and evidence was discovered that he had sent a UDC pamphlet to Romain Rolland in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, a neutral country. This was a technical violation of the Defence of the Realm Act. Morel was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, which he served in Pentonville Prison
Pentonville (HM Prison)
HM Prison Pentonville is a Category B/C men's prison, operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Pentonville Prison is not actually within Pentonville itself, but is located further north, on the Caledonian Road in the Barnsbury area of the London Borough of Islington, in inner-North London,...

. Although, along with other pacifists he was placed in the 'second division' with some privileges over the majority of prisoners, conditions were still very hard and Morel's health was seriously damaged. Bertrand Russell described his condition at his release:
His hair is completely white (there was hardly a tinge of white before) when he first came out, he collapsed completely, physically and mentally, largely as the result of insufficient food. He says one only gets three quarters of an hour reading in the whole day - the rest of the time is spent on prison work, etc.


Morel was severely critical of the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

, warning that it would lead to another war. He did not give up his career as a journalist, becoming director of the magazine Foreign Affairs which became the most authoritative voice of English left about foreign politics.

Independent Labour Party membership

In April 1918, he joined the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...

, and began to feed his views into the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...

 to which it was affiliated and which adopted his critical view of the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

. Morel explained his decision to join the Independent Labour Party to a friend:
I have long been gravitating towards the Socialist position — of course there is Socialism and Socialism, and mine is of the reasonable and moderate kind. When I look over my public efforts through the years, it seems to me that I have been a Socialist all my life. So far as any Party can express what appears to me to be the country's needs, the ILP approximates nearer to my outlook that any other, although I still look forward to and hope for the day when all really progressive forces can unite under the title of the Democratic Party. But Liberalism as represented by both wings — the Lloyd George wing, and the Asquith wing, is right outside my outlook now.

Parliament

Following the retirement of incumbent Labour M.P., Alexander Wilkie
Alexander Wilkie
Alexander Wilkie was a Labour Party politician in Scotland, best known for his service as a Member of Parliament for Dundee. Along with the Dundonian George Nicoll Barnes Wilkie was one of the first two Labour Members elected in Scotland.-Biography:Alexander Wilkie was born in Fife in 1850 and...

, Morel fought the two-member Dundee
Dundee (UK Parliament constituency)
Dundee was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1950, when it was split into Dundee East and Dundee West....

 constituency as the Labour candidate in the 1922 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1922
The United Kingdom general election of 1922 was held on 15 November 1922. It was the first election held after most of the Irish counties left the United Kingdom to form the Irish Free State, and was won by Andrew Bonar Law's Conservatives, who gained an overall majority over Labour, led by John...

. Although he polled fewer votes than Edwin Scrymgeour
Edwin Scrymgeour
Edwin Scrymgeour , was a Member of Parliament for Dundee, Scotland. He is the only person ever elected to the House of Commons on a prohibitionist ticket as the candidate of the Scottish Prohibition Party....

 of the Scottish Prohibition Party
Scottish Prohibition Party
The Scottish Prohibition Party was a minor Scottish political party which advocated alcohol prohibition.The party was founded in 1901. In its early years, Bob Stewart acted as the party's full-time organiser...

, he was still elected, defeating the other sitting MP – Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...

 – in the process. Morel regarded Churchill as a warmonger and took pride in having defeated him: "I look upon Churchill as such a personal force for evil that I would take up the fight against him with a whole heart."

With his foreign affairs specialty, he was expected to be appointed as Foreign Secretary in the government of Ramsay MacDonald
Ramsay MacDonald
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS was a British politician who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government for two terms....

 in 1924, but MacDonald decided to serve as his own Foreign Secretary. MacDonald led an attempt to buy Morel off by gathering together a large number of senior Labour politicians to nominate him for the Nobel Prize for Peace, but it did not prevent Morel from remaining a forceful critic of MacDonald's foreign policy. In August 1924 he is believed to have persuaded MacDonald to recognise the communist government in the Soviet Union and nominations on the Anglo-Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 trade treaty.

Shortly after his re-election in the 1924 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1924
- Seats summary :- References :* F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987* - External links :* * *...

, Morel suffered a fatal heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 at the farm near Bovey Tracey
Bovey Tracey
Bovey Tracey is a small town in Devon, England, on the edge of Dartmoor, its proximity to which gives rise to the "slogan" used on the town's boundary signs, "The Gateway to the Moor". The locals just call the town "Bovey" ....

, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

 where he lived.

Miscellany

Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

 became acquainted with Morel through the work of the Congo Reform Association.
In his novel The Lost World
The Lost World (Arthur Conan Doyle)
The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals still survive. It was originally published serially in the popular Strand Magazine during the months of April 1912-November 1912...

(1912), he used Morel as an inspiration for the character of Ed Malone. Morel is the great-grandfather of author Jasper Morel Fforde
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...

.

Books published

  • The British Case in French Congo
  • King Leopold's Rule in Africa (1904)
  • Red Rubber – The story of the rubber slave trade that flourished in Congo in the year of grace 1906 (1906)
  • Great Britain and the Congo
  • Nigeria
  • Morocco and Diplomacy (1912) (reissued as Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy in 1915)
  • Truth and the War
  • Africa and the Peace of Europe
  • The Black Man's Burden (1920)
  • Thoughts on the War
  • The Peace, and Prison
  • Pre-War Diplomacy
  • Diplomacy Revealed

External links

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