Edward Martell (politician)

Edward Drewett Martell (2 March 1909 – 3 April 1989) was a British politician and libertarian activist.

Martell was the eldest son of E E Martell and Ethel Horwood. He was educated at St. George's School, Harpenden. In 1932 he married Ethel Maud Beverley. They had one son.

Martell worked in the coal trade from 1926–28 and then entered journalism. He was News Editor of the World’s Press News; General Manager, The Saturday Review; Managing Editor, Burke's Peerage and Burke Publishing Co.and sports staff editor of The Star. He served in the Second World War in the Royal Armoured Corps attaining the rank of Captain. On demobilisation he established his own bookselling and publishing company.

Martell played a prominent role in the Liberal election campaigns of 1950 and 1951. One historian of the Liberal Party praised Martell's contribution to Liberal politics, his ceaseless flow of ideas, his great enthusiasm and his work with another official of the party, Philip Fothergill, in securing broadly based finance for the party, while at the same time damning him as a man with the makings of a dictator and possessing wild judgment. Roy Douglas and Mark Egan have said that whilst Martell was never elected to parliament and was a member of the Liberal Party for less than a decade, "there is much to be said for the view that he played a major part in keeping the party in existence, when it could easily have disappeared as a serious political force".

Martell was the secretary of the Liberal Candidates' Association in the mid-1940s, and in 1946 was elected to the London County Council together with the former member of parliament Sir Percy Harris in the two-member seat of Bethnal Green South-West, the first Liberal LCC victories for many years. In November of that year he stood unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate in the Parliamentary by-election for the safe Labour seat of Rotherhithe, although he beat the Conservative candidate into third place. He also contested Hendon North for the Liberals at the 1950 general election.

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