John Hobbis Harris

Sir John Hobbis Harris (29 July 1874 – 30 April 1940) was an English missionary, campaigner against slavery and Liberal Party politician.

Harris was born in Wantage, Oxfordshire. His father, also John Hobbis Harris, was a plumber and later a builder. On 6 May 1898 he married Alice Seeley from Frome in Somerset. They had two sons and two daughters.

Harris worked in the City of London for a firm of gentlemen’s outfitters. He was a devout Christian and did evangelical social work before training to become a Baptist missionary in Central Africa. He and his wife departed for the Congo Free State soon after their marriage but they were soon horrified by the brutal treatment, murder and enslavement of the native people at the hands of the Belgian agents exploiting the territory for rubber and ivory.

To protest at what they saw in Africa, Harris and his wife became active campaigners. They brought these atrocities to the attention of the British government and politicians, gave evidence at hearings, published books, papers and photographs, gave lectures and addressed hundreds of public meetings. Ahead of his time, Harris became a campaigner against the colonial system of the day and promoted the idea of self-determination for native peoples. One of the political campaigners he found would listen was E D Morel who was a co-founder of the Congo Reform Association of which Harris was a member. Harris valued international co-operation and was for a while a member of the Executive Committee of the League of Nations Union.

From 1910 Harris was parliamentary secretary to the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society. This association led him to take up active politics. He was President of Dulwich Liberal Association and first contested a Parliamentary seat at Camberwell North West as an Independent Asquithian Liberal at the 1922 general election. In a three-cornered contest with Dr T J Macnamara the Lloyd George National Liberal and Dr H B W Morgan for Labour Harris came third with 19.5% of the vote.

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