Dora West

Miss Dora West, O.B.E., was a British Liberal party politician and one of the founders of the League of Nations Union.

Background

She was a member of a well-known agricultural family of the Fen district.

Political career

She was the founding Secretary of the League of Nations Union serving from 1918 to 1919. The League of Nations Union (LNU) was an organization formed in October 1918 in the United Kingdom to promote international justice, collective security and a permanent peace between nations based upon the ideals of the League of Nations. The League of Nations was established by the Great Powers as part of the Paris Peace Treaties, the international settlement that followed the First World War. For her work with the LNU she was awarded the Order of the British Empire medal. From 1920 to 1921 she acted as Private Secretary to Charles McCurdy, the Food Controller. The Minister of Food Control was a British government ministerial posts separated from that of the Minister of Agriculture. In 1921 she followed McCurdy when he was appointed National Liberal Chief Whip and continued to work for him until the post was wound up in 1922. She lectured in the West Indies, Central America and West Africa. At the parliamentary General Election of 1929 she contested, as a Liberal party candidate Rotherhithe in South East London. The getty picture archive holds pictures of her campaigning (see external links). Rotherhithe was not a promising seat for the Liberals but she still managed to poll a fifth of the vote;

After the elections, she continued on her travels, in 1930 visiting Australia and New Zealand. She appears to have spent some time living in New Zealand but had returned to London by the beginning of 1934.