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Pacifist Radicalism in the Post-War British Labour Party: The Case of E. D. Morel, 1919–24

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Sheldon Spear
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Edmund Dene Morel was born in Paris in 1873, the son of a French civil servant father and an English mother. Modestly educated in England, he emerged at age thirty from the obscurity of a clerkship in a Liverpool commercial firm to launch a journalistic crusade against the murderous exploitation of blacks on the rubber plantations of the Congo Free State. Largely as a result of this effort he became critical of what he considered the deviousness of the British Foreign Office, and by 1911 he was questioning the extent of the commitment to France in the Entente Cordiale. He was pro-German only in the sense that he opposed the prevalent anti-German hysteria and believed that an Anglo-German confrontation would be catastrophic for both countries. Morel was one of a number of free-trade, anti-imperialist, foreign- and imperial-affairs specialists associated with the pre-war Liberal Party; J. A. Hobson, H. N. Brailsford and E. G. Browne were others. But it was the war which made him the butt of nationalist fury and the victim of government prosecution for his advocacy of a negotiated peace and for his infuriating insistence that Germany's share of the blame for the war's origin was much less than that of Tsarist Russia or even of Britain's Liberal government.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , August 1978 , pp. 193 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1978

References

1 On Morel and the Congo reform movement, see Louis, William Roger, “The Triumph of the Congo Reform Movement, 1905–1908”, in: Boston University Papers on Africa (Boston, 1966)Google Scholar, and the introduction to E. D. Morel's History of the Congo Reform Movement, ed. by Louis, William Roger and Stengers, Jean (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

2 The “Six Cardinal Points” of the UDC program, adopted by the UDC General Council on October 17, 1919, were: 1) democratic control of foreign policy, 2) reduction of armaments and the abolition of conscription, 3) the promotion of free trade and the Open Door, 4) national self-determination, 5) democratization of the League of Nations, 6) revision of the peace treaties. See UDC Papers, Hull University (hereafter UDCP), DDC 1/2, October 17, 1919.

3 Taylor, A. J. P., The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939 (Bloomington, Ind., 1958), p. 135.Google Scholar

4 UDC, Secretary's Report, 10 1919, p. 8Google Scholar; Foreign Affairs (hereafter FA), July 1919.

5 UDCP, DDC 1/5, May 11, 1920; FA, June 1920, p. 7.

6 FA, May 1921, pp. 166, 178.

7 Ibid., Special Supplement, February 1920, p. 16.

8 See, e.g., FA, November 1920, p. 69.

9 Speech typescript, 1923, Morel Papers, London School of Economics (hereafter MP), F 2; Morel to Trevelyan, January 8, 1924, UDCP, DDC 4/30.

10 Morel to the UDC Executive Committee, March 13, 1924, MP, F 6.

11 Interview with Lord Fenner Brockway, House of Lords, March 17, 1973.

12 Morel to Middleton, March 21, 1921, James S. Middleton Papers, Labour Party Library.

13 Secretary's Report, 10 1919, p. 3.Google Scholar

14 FA, March 1921, p. 141.

15 Ibid., Special Supplement, April 1920, pp. 1–6. The British Minister in Prague rejected Korec's stories as gross exaggerations, Sir George Clark to Sir William Tyrrell, December 8, 1920, Foreign Office Files, Public Records Office, P 1608/1608/150.

16 See, e.g., Montgelas to Morel, February 1, March 22 and 29, April 6, 1920; March 16 and May 17, 1921, MP, F 8; FA, Special Supplement, February 1920, p. 12; July 1921, p. 6. Montgelas also served as one of Morel's chief informants on French occupation policies in the Rhineland. In particular, Morel worked himself up to a fenzy in denouncing the use of African colonial troops and the sexual outrages they allegedly perpetrated on the female population. On the colored-troops issue see Reinders, Robert C., “Racialism on the Left: E. D. Morel and the ‘Black Horror on the Rhine’”, in: International Review of Social History, XIII (1968).Google Scholar

17 Morel, , Diplomacy Revealed (London 1921), p. xGoogle Scholar; The Poison that Destroys (London, 1922), p. 25.Google Scholar To his friend Douglas Goldring, Morel predicted that a Second World War would break out in 1939. See Goldring, Douglas, The Nineteen Twenties. A General Survey and Some Personal Memories (London, 1945), p. 169.Google Scholar

18 The Secret History of a Great Betrayal (London, 1923), p. 16Google Scholar; The Poison that Destroys, op. cit., pp. 11–13. A recent study, Politicians At War. July 1914 to May 1915 (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, by Cameron Hazlehurst, tends to substantiate Morel's judgments. According to Hazlehurst, the waverers in the Liberal Cabinet, such as Lloyd George, Simon, Pease and Harcourt, were kidding themselves when they said that Belgium was the key issue rather than a pretext for the logic of supporting France. Some of these same waverers had previously disputed Britain's obligation to Belgium.

19 Ponsonby to Morel, July 6, 1919, MP, F 8.

20 Morel was outraged when Lord Haldane, a former Liberal Imperialist, expressed support for the Labour Party and was named Lord Chancellor in the 1924 Labour government. See, e.g., FA, March 1920, p. 4; Scanlon, John, Decline and Fall of the Labour Party (London, 1932), pp. 58–59.Google Scholar

21 Fay, Sidney B., “Mr. Asquith on the War”, in: The New Republic, 01 2,1924, pp. 154–55Google Scholar; Taylor, , English History 1914–1945 (Oxford, 1965), p. 361.Google Scholar

22 Brockway, A. Fenner, Socialism over Sixty Years. The Life of Jowett of Bradford (1864–1944) (London, 1946), p. 181.Google Scholar

23 “Europe's Peril. The Danger of Ignorance”, in: Saint Mungo, 02 1924, p. 3.Google Scholar The other founders of the UDC were Morel, Trevelyan, Ponsonby and Norman Angell.

24 FA, August 1924, p. 31.

25 Trevelyan to Morel, February 29, 1920, Trevelyan Papers, University of Newcastle, CPT 101.

26 MacDonald to Morel, September 3, 1919, MP, F 6; FA, September 1922, p. 70.

27 Gooch, G. P., Under Six Reigns (London, 1958), pp. 270–71.Google Scholar Conservative Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain made the announcement in November 1924, after Labour's electoral defeat and after Morel's death.

28 See, e.g., Morel to Trevelyan, n.d., 1919, Trevelyan Papers, CPT 70; UDCP, DDC 1/5, December 7, 1920, January 13, April 12 and May 24, 1921; Morel to the UDC Executive Committee, March 13, 1924, MP, F 6. For the Reports of the Special Commissioners, see FA, October 1919 – March 1921.

29 Stella Morel to Lees-Smith, November 4, 1921, UDCP, DDC 4/29; Morel to Trevelyan, October 6, 1921, ibid., 4/30.

30 Cole, Margaret, Growing Up into Revolution (London, 1949), p. 117.Google Scholar

31 See, e.g., FA, April 1923, p. 219.

32 Labour Party, Report of the Twenty-First Annual Conference, p. 207Google Scholar; Report of the Twenty-Third Annual Conference, p. 223; P. McOrmish Dott to Morel, July 10, 1921, MP, F 8.

33 Advisory Committee on International Questions, Minutes and Agenda, Labour Party Library, July 20, September 25 and November 30, 1922; February 22, March 8 and 15, May 3 and 31, July 12, 1923; January 16 and May 28, 1924.

34 The Record, December 1923, p. 7. Morel's articles also appeared in the Daily Herald, Labour Leader, Forward, The Labour Magazine, The Socialist Review, and even in the obscure Saint Mungo.

35 Morel to Middleton, March 21, 1921. Actually Morel misrepresented Clynes's views on reparations. Although Clynes insisted on Germany's total liability – this is what angered Morel –, he opposed the use of force in securing a settlement and was prepared to see a reduction of the actual sums that Germany would pay. See House of Commons Debates, Fifth Series (hereafter HCD), Vol. 139, cc. 743–44; Vol. 141, cc. 1304–05.

36 Morel to Montgelas, May 24, 1921, MP, F 8.

37 Frank Boalcutter to Ponsonby, January 28, 1922, Ponsonby Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford; Hobson, J. A., Confessions of an Economic Heretic (New York, 1938), p. 126.Google Scholar The leaders of the Stockton ILP cancelled Ponsonby's speaking engagement there when they thought they read that he had greeted royalty, the Queen of Norway. Actually the greeter was his brother Frederick, an aide to George V, but the mistake was indicative of his problem. See Labour Leader, December 4, 1919, p. 2. The “bourgeois to their fingertips” characterization is Fenner Brockway's.

38 Speech to the Glasgow Study Circle, January 21, 1923, MP, F 2.

39 Swanwick, H. M., Builders of Peace, Being Ten Years' History of the Union of Democratic Control (London, 1924), pp. 139, 152.Google Scholar

40 UDCP, DDC 1/1, 2 and 5.

41 FA, December 1920, p. 86.

42 Ibid., November, p. 84.

43 See, e.g., “Labour's National Ideal”, January 24, 1921; “British Labour and the Problem of Empire”, January 26; “The Co-operative Movement and World Problems”, January 27, MP, FA.

44 Dundee Advertiser, October 30, 1922, p. 4; November 10, p. 5.

45 Ibid., November 15, p. 5.

46 Ibid., November 10, p. 6; November 11, p. 8. Before the war Birkenhead had been outspoken on behalf of the Ulster Unionists and their determination not to accept Home Rule.

47 Ibid., November 16, p. 3; November 17, p. 5.

48 Morel stood six feet tall, and had broad shoulders, a well-groomed mustache, silver hair and large dark eyes.

49 HCD, Vol. 160, cc. 521, 536. The unfriendly MP was James Sexton, general secretary of the National Dock Workers and one-time president of the TUC. Sexton had been violently hostile to the UDC during the war.

50 Ibid., cc. 528–29.

51 Ibid., Vol. 163, cc. 2673–76. Morel wrote in the March 1923 FA that the important question was not security for France, but security for Europe “against the recrudescence of a Napoleonic militarism with resources in men and raw materials which Napoleon never dreamed of in his wildest moments”. The danger of “French militarism” was not such an outlandish idea in the early 1920's. France had the largest military establishment in Europe, including the largest airforce, and Britain and France had come close to a confrontation over the Chanak episode in September 1922. There was a growing distrust of France along the entire British political spectrum, with the exception of the Conservative “Die-Hards” whose Germanophobia remained fully intact.

52 Report of the Twenty-Third Annual Conference, pp. 221, 223.

53 Dowse, Robert E., Left in the Centre: The Independent Labour Party, 1893–1940 (London, 1966), pp. 96–97.Google Scholar Ironically it was the UDC'er Hobson who supplied Wheatley with an explanation for chronic unemployment in Britain – the theory of underconsumption.

54 Advisory Committee, Minutes, February 22, 1923.

55 Montgelas to Ponsonby, April 18, 1923, Ponsonby Papers. Montgelas felt reassured: “The speeches of Snowden, Buxton and Morel amply prove that all is being done what is practically possible under prevailing circumstances”.

56 See especially Robert H. Clive, Consul General in Munich, to the Foreign Secretary, October 26, 1923, Foreign Office Files, C 18645/347/18; also Morel to Ponsonby, September 6, 1923, January 25, 1924, UDCP, DDC 4/10.

57 FA, November 1923, p. 83.

58 Memorandum, Saturday, October 20, 1923, MP, F 7.

59 “The Disruption of Germany. A Catastrophe for International Labour”, in: The Labour Magazine, November 1923, pp. 300–01.Google Scholar The Social Democrats dropped their support of Stresemann when he sent troops to oust the Socialist-Communist governments in Saxony and Thuringia. Morel, however, did not change his tune.

60 Morel to Trevelyan, October 21, 1923, Trevelyan Papers, CPT 105. Examples of such articles can be found in the Daily Herald, 12 17, 1923, p. 1Google Scholar; December 27, p. 4; February 1, 1924, p. 3; February 5, p. 3. Apparently, then, Morel's remonstration had little effect.

61 FA, August 1922, p. 26.

62 “The Disruption of Germany”, loc. cit., p. 301.

63 FA, October 1923, pp. 70–71. As an internationalist, of course, Morel endorsed the principles of the League. In fact, his brand of internationalism went much further by encompassing such things as international control of scarce natural resources and aid for underdeveloped, non-European countries.

64 See, e.g., McKenna, Marion, Borah (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961), pp. 165, 186–88, 218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Morel to Borah, n.d.; Borah to Morel, January 17, 1923, William E. Borah Papers, Library of Congress. Morel also was gratified by the scholarship of American historians, particularly Sidney B. Fay, on the war-origins question, affirming his contention that Germany's was not the sole guilt. See, e.g., his letter “Reparations and War Guilt”, in: Nation and Athenaeum, 08 4, 1924, p. 589.Google Scholar

66 FA, December 1921, pp. 83–84. For Hobson's opinions see ibid., May 1920, pp. 7–8.

67 See especially “An Appeal for Anglo-American Co-operation”, in: The Freeman, 02 6, 13 and 20, 1924, pp. 513–14, 537–38, 560–62.Google Scholar

68 FA, Special Supplement, December 1921, p. 7. Views almost identical to Morel's about the need for American participation in international affairs and Anglo-American co-operation were being voiced by a number of prominent Britons, most notably, by Lloyd George. See, e.g., the accounts in the New York Times of his October 5 — November 3, 1923, speaking tour of the United States and Canada.

69 Memoir of E. D. Moiel, Ponsonby Papers. According to Hamilton Fyfe, Morel's 1922 election victory in Dundee brought not a word of congratulation from MacDonald. See Fyfe, Hamilton, My Seven Selves (London, 1935), pp. 255–56.Google Scholar

70 See, e.g., MacDonald to Ponsonby, August 20, 1922, Ponsonby Papers. Morel's name was not mentioned, but MacDonald's condemnation of the continuous expression of anti-French sentiment in the Labour camp had to mean him more than anyone else.

71 “All right on home affairs, but no strong lead on international affairs, I regret to say”, was Morel's comment on a MacDonald campaign statement of November 1, 1923. See Morel to Trevelyan, November 1, 1923, UDCP, DDC 4/30.

72 Hobson, Confessions of an Economic Heratic, op. cit., p. 106.

73 Hobson, , “Comment on Morel's Death”, in: The Nation (New York), 12 3, 1924, p. 600Google Scholar; Swanwick, H. M., I Have Been Young (London, 1935), p. 374Google Scholar; Goldring, The Nineteen Twenties, op. cit., p. 161. See also Fyfe, My Seven Selves, op. cit., p. 256.

74 The Freeman, 02 6, 1924, p. 508.Google Scholar

75 Cutting from the Daily Sketch, November 17, 1924, MP, F 1.

76 So he told Douglas Goldring (The Nineteen Twenties, p. 161).

77 Marwick, Arthur, Clifford Allen. The Open Conspirator (Edinburgh and London, 1964), p. 86.Google Scholar Marwick's source for this information was Miss Minnie Pallister, a member of the pro-Morel group. Unquestionably Morel was hated by the French Right. For example, he was viciously attacked in the semi-official Mercure de France by Jean Maxe, in a piece entitled “Le défaitisme de la paix en Angleterre. J.-M. Keynes et E.-D. Morel”, November 1, 1923.

78 MacDonald to Morel, n.d., but probably early February 1924, MP, F 2.

79 Webb, Sidney, “The First Labour Government”, in: The Political Quarterly, XXXII (1961), p. 17.Google Scholar

80 The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, II (London, 1968), p. 39.Google Scholar

81 Morel, to MacDonald, , excerpted in a letter from Morel to Lord Parmoor, 02 2, 1924, MP, F 2.Google Scholar

82 Morel to Lord Parmoor, ibid.; Ponsonby to Morel, Febrary 1, 1924, MP, F 2.

83 The Times, January 31, 1924; Morning Post, January 31; Evening News, January 31. A number of French and Belgian newspapers commented unfavorably on Morel's nomination. The British Minister in Brussels reported that the MacDonald government was being attacked by the right-wing press for its role in honoring the man who had slandered Belgium over the Congo and minimized her wartime victimization by the Germans. Charles Wingfield to the Foreign Secretary, February 7, 1924, Foreign Office Files, W 107/820/4.

84 Quoted in Swanwick, Builders of Peace, op. cit., p. 170. See also Morel to Lord Parmoor, February 1, 1924.

85 HCD, Vol. 171, cc. 2003–05.

86 Morel to Ponsonby, April 4, 1924, MP, F 2.

87 Ponsonby to Morel, April 5 and 19, 1924, MP, F 2.

88 Morel to Trevelyan, April 30, 1924, Trevelyan Papers, CPT 108.

89 HCD, Vol. 174, cc. 1059–60.

90 Advisory Committee, Minutes, July 23, 1924; FA, June 1924, p. 249; September, p. 52.

91 FA, July, p. 22; J. M. Fells to John Wheatley, MP, June 5, 1924, Foreign Office Files, W 4828/4828/50; Ilford Branch ILP to the Foreign Secretary, June 13, 1924, ibid., W 5000/4828/50. The Foreign Office minute commented that the letters seemed to be part of a “plot”, or “concerted plan”.

92 Report of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference, pp. 56, 120, 143.

93 The Times, 02 25, 1924, p. 7Google Scholar; HCD, Vol. 170, c. 610.

94 FA, April 1924, pp. 193–94.

95 Ponsonby to Morel, February 1, 1924.

96 Memoir of J. Ramsay MacDonald, Ponsonby Papers.

97 “U.D.C.”, The Diplomacy of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, p. 7.Google Scholar This article, which first appeared in The Labour Monthly of January 1925, was later reprinted as a pamphlet. No one has ever admitted authorship, although in the opinion of Beatrice Webb Trevelyan was the probable author. See Webb, Beatrice, Diaries (London, 1952–1956), II, p. 57.Google Scholar

98 FA, May 1924, p. 217.

99 Ibid., June, p. 243.

100 Cutting from the Daily Telegraph, May 24, 1924, MP, F 7.

101 Ponsonby to Morel, May 24, 1924, MP, F 8.

102 The Diplomacy of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, op. cit., p. 11. It is not clear whether or not “U.D.C.” actually witnessed this encounter, although he gives the impression that he did.

103 MacDonald to Morel, April 12, 1924, MP, F 8.

104 This was the title of his letter to the New Leader, July 25, 1924.

105 Morel to the ILP Parliamentary Group, July 31, 1924, MP, F 2.

106 Brockway, A. Fenner, Inside the Left. Thirty Years of Platform, Press, Prison, and Parliament (London, 1942), p. 152.Google Scholar

107 New Leader, 07 25, 1924, p. 5.Google Scholar MacDonald sent two long indignant letters to the journal protesting the publication of Morel's statement.

108 HCD, Vol. 176, c. 135.

109 Lyman, Richard W., The First Labour Government 1924 (London, 1957), p. 165.Google Scholar

110 Report of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Conference, pp. 108, 141, 143–44.

111 FA, September 1924, p. 54.

112 Ibid.

113 Dundee Advertiser, 09 9, 1924, pp. 3, 5.Google Scholar Morel had been warned of MacDonald's disposition by Ponsonby: “When you talk to JRM talk of anything you can think of that is not remotely connected with politics.” Ponsonby to Morel, September 6, 1924, MP, F8.

114 For a full account of this intervention, the accuracy of which has never been challenged, see “How the Anglo-Russian Conference was Saved by the Labour Back Benches. Secret History of the Events of August 5, 6, 7, 1924”, MP, F 2. An abridged version of this memorandum appeared in Forward (August 23, 1924) and in Foreign Affairs (September 1924).

115 For a full and interesting account of the Red Letter, see Chester, Lewis, Stephen Fay and Hugo Young, The Zinoviev Letter (Philadelphia and New York, 1968).Google Scholar

116 Dundee Advertiser, 10 29, 1924, p. 5.Google Scholar Some days later J. L. Garvin in The Observer called Morel to task for criticizing the civil service, which could not legally respond, without evidence and purely for the sake of his own election campaign. In a reply published posthumously in Forward (November 15, 1924), Morel held that the release of the Red Letter was designed to torpedo Labour's election chances and had done so, adding that no act more disgraceful had occurred in any generation. He denied attacking the civil service, only the abuse of power behind the shield of civil-service immunity.

117 Draft letter to the New Leader, November 12, 1924, MP, F 7; Lansbury to Morel, November 10, F 9.

118 Goldring, The Nineteen Twenties, p. 161.

119 “Remarks by James G. McDonald at the Morel Memorial Meeting in Community Church, New York, January 25, 1925”, MP, F 1.

120 Swanwick, I Have Been Young, op. cit., p. 422.

121 Goldring, ibid.

122 Mowat, Charles Loch, Britain Between the Wars 1918–1940 (London, 1955), p. 145.Google Scholar

123 See, e.g., his Foreword in Swanwick's Builders of Peace.

124 Taylor, The Trouble Makers, op. cit.

125 His mother's Quaker background may have had much to do with this.

126 “What Should the UDC Do Next?” (1924), p. 1, MP, F 6.Google Scholar The relationship between the UDC and specifically pacifist organizations was not close. Although Trevelyan was a co-founder and chairman of the National Peace Council, a coalition of groups which included the UDC, UDC representatives usually failed to attend its meetings.

127 Dowse, Robert E., “The Independent Labour Party and Foreign Politics 1918–1923”, in: International Review of Social History, VII (1962), p. 46.Google Scholar

128 The Duke of Bedford, Diplomacy and War Guilt. A tribute to the Vision and Peace Aims of the late E. D. Morel MP (Glasgow, 1941), pp. 3–15.Google Scholar

129 Gilbert, Martin, The Roots of Appeasement (London, 1966), p. 179.Google Scholar

130 Ibid., p. 159.

131 Ibid., pp. 54–55.

132 See, e.g., Hobson, Confessions of an Economic Heretic, p. 114. In Hobson's view, few foreign observers had any notion of this.

133 Woolf, Leonard, Downhill All the Way. An Autobiography of the Years 1919–1939 (London, 1967), p. 245.Google Scholar

134 Interview with Professor John Saville, Hull University, March 8, 1973.

135 C. R. Sweetingham to the author, September 20, 1972. Sweetingham was the last secretary of the UDC.