File 081 - E.D. Morel

Edmund Dene Morel (born Georges Edmond Pierre Achille Morel Deville) was born on July 10, 1873, in Paris, France.

He was a French-born British journalist, author, pacifist, and politician. He was educated in Eastbourne but moved to Liverpool in 1891. Forced to leave school at the age of 15 due to his mother's financial difficulties, Morel worked as a clerk for the shipping firm Elder Dempster and supplemented his income with part-time journalism. Many of the articles he wrote were related to stories from visitors to the shipping office. The knowledge that the ships leaving Belgium for the Congo carried only guns, chains, and explosives, while ships arriving from the colony came back full of rubber and ivory, made him realize that these items were obtained from the population by force. Morel began to campaign against slavery in the Congo Free State, founding the Congo Reform Association in 1904 and the newspaper West African Mail. He was forced to resign from Elder Dempster due to the company's involvement in the rubber trade in the Congo. He published many pamphlets on the subject and travelled to the United States to create a similar movement. Morel was Honorary Secretary of the Congo Reform Association from 1904 to 1912. In 1909, he helped found the International League for the Defence of the Natives of the Conventional Basin of the Congo. He was also a member of the West African Lands Committee (1912-1914) and vice-president of the Anti-Slavery Society. His interest in African affairs extended to his journalism. He published “Le Congo Leopoldien” with the French explorer Pierre Mille. Morel was also active in the political world. He was the Liberal candidate for Birkenhead, 1912-1914, resigning when the First World War broke out. He formed the Union of Democratic Control, a political party that opposed the war. From 1917 to 1918, he was imprisoned for violation of the Defence of the Realm Act. After the war, he joined the Labour Party and was the Labour candidate for Dundee, 1921-1922.

In 1896, he married Mary Florence Yonge Richardson (1874–). He died on November 12, 1924, in North Bovey, Moreton Hampstead, Devon, England.