World War I, 5 Volumes by Spencer Tucker

Author:Spencer Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781851099658
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2014-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Morel, Edmund Dene

Birth Date: July 15, 1873

Death Date: November 12, 1924

British anti-imperialist, peace activist, and liberal politician. Born in Paris on July 15, 1873, Edmund Dene Morel settled in England after the death of his father in 1877. His mother was a member of the Society of Friends (Quakers), which influenced the development of Morel’s political ideas. Forced to leave school at age 15 because of family financial difficulties, Morel went to work in Liverpool for the Elder Dempster steamship company.

Morel’s diligence and bilingualism led to his appointment as a liaison officer with officials of the Congo Free State, with which Elder Dempster held a trading monopoly. Morel noted the shipment of quantities of arms and munitions but relatively few trade goods to the Congo, certainly in insufficient amounts to account for the rubber and ivory secured in return. Morel soon learned that European merchants were forcing Africans to perform unpaid labor. In 1900 he published a series of articles revealing these trade practices, and this cost him his position.

In 1904 Morel founded the Congo Reform Association and took a leading part in the movement against misrule in that Belgian colony. He also published pamphlets and went on speaking tours throughout Britain and the United States. In 1909 he took part in the formation of the International League for the Defence of the Natives of the Conventional Basin of the Congo. Morel was also a member of the West African Lands Committee in the Colonial Office during 1912–1914 and vice president of the Anti-Slavery Society.

An active member of the Liberal Party, Morel became an outspoken critic of British policy in the months leading up to World War I. He alleged that the British government had entered into secret agreements with other governments that would tie its hands in the event of hostilities. Soon after Britain entered the conflict in August 1914, Morel joined Charles Trevelyan, Norman Angell, and Ramsay MacDonald in forming the Union of Democratic Control (UDC) to oppose the war. Morel became UDC secretary and was the UDC’s initial driving force.

The UDC’s stated objectives were parliamentary control over foreign policy, an end to secret diplomacy, international understanding after the war, self-determination of peoples, and a just peace settlement. In this instance his intentions presaged U.S. president Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, enunciated in January 1918. During the next four years, the UDC became the most important antiwar organization in Britain.

Morel was the dominant figure in the UDC. He also wrote most of its pamphlets published during the war. The Daily Express led the campaign against the UDC, and in April 1915 it printed wanted posters of Morel, MacDonald, and Angell, suggesting that the UDC was working for the German government. The police refused to protect UDC speakers, and there were several assaults and physical attacks on Morel. In August 1917, Morel’s house was searched and evidence was discovered that he had sent a UDC pamphlet to a friend in Switzerland, technically a violation of the Defence of the Realm Act.

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