[5] 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".
[6] Martell was the secretary of the Liberal Candidates' Association in the mid-1940s,[7] 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.
This effort was repeated in July 1964 during the one-day strike and overtime ban for postal workers, again with the League's own stamps.
[10] Martell has been described as "an expert self-publicist" who exercised "a volatile influence on public opinion during periods of government unpopularity".
He attacked Benn for his absence from the constituency during the early stages of the campaign[12] and continued to run a high-profile campaign, arranging such publicity stunts as betting the local newspaper editor that he would retain his deposit, claiming to have received telephone threats and publicly calling on the Bristol Conservative Party to endorse him, as well as publishing his own 'Election Special' that accused Benn of hawking his peerage to the highest bidder.
[13] During the campaign Geoffrey Pearl, who had been nominated as an "anti-socialist" candidate, dropped out of the race and called on his supporters to vote for Martell.