Henry Morris-Jones

[1] Morris-Jones qualified as a doctor (LRFPS) in 1906 from Glasgow, gaining a further licence for surgery (LRCP&S) from Edinburgh, and was for twenty years a general practitioner in Colwyn Bay in North Wales.

During the First World War, Morris-Jones served in the 2nd Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment as a medical officer in France, during which time he was awarded the Military Cross.

[1] At the 1929 general election, Morris-Jones was nominated by the Llangollen Liberal Association to be the candidate for Denbigh[3] and on 4 April he was selected by the local party to stand in succession to the sitting Member of Parliament (MP) Ellis William Davies who was resigning on grounds of ill-health.

[4] Morris-Jones had a straight fight against the 32-year-old Conservative, Captain Alan Crosland Graham of Clwyd Hall, Ruthin, the political private secretary to Lord Balfour.

However it did not make the breakthrough it had hoped for against the background of its ambitious and innovative policy programme of social, industrial and economic reform under the leadership of a reinvigorated Lloyd George.

He was an honorary Treasurer of the Parliamentary Medical Group from time of election in 1929 and was later appointed as a member of the Committee of Trustees set up under the MPs Pensions Act.

While there he took part in discussions about the development of the Empire, measures to stimulate immigration to Australia and the promoting of Australian trade with the USA.

Morris-Jones, who had been appalled at the economic record of the second Labour Government, joined this group[9] and thereafter sat in the House of Commons as a Liberal National.

In May 1937 when Neville Chamberlain succeeded Stanley Baldwin as prime minister, Morris-Jones was offered the position of Chief Whip to the Liberal National group after the formation of the new government but preferred 'for personal reasons' to return to the backbenches.

[13] In July 1942 he was signatory to a motion which while praising the armed forces indicated a lack of confidence in the government's conduct of the war.

They were to open an extension to the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth and make a ceremonial visit to Caernarfon Castle.

Morris-Jones was also a member of the Gorsedd, an association of poets, writers, musicians, artists and individuals who have made a significant and distinguished contribution to Welsh language, literature, and culture, under the Bardic name Rhoslanydd.

[1] At the 1945 general election Morris-Jones faced official Liberal and Labour opposition in Denbigh but was supported as the government candidate by the Conservatives.

In fact the party continued to decline at the 1950 general election, making a net loss of three seats leaving then with only nine.

That Morris-Jones was a man of traditional views in relation to medical matters can be deduced from his association with the campaign to prevent the sale of contraceptives from slot machines, as a 'temptation to youth'.

In a letter to The Times newspaper he predicted that the setting up of a full-time National Medical Service for the whole population would cut across the traditional relationship between the doctor and patient and would need a great popular mandate.

[27] Writing again to the Times on 15 March 1948, Morris-Jones identified with the concerns of many doctors about the powers to be conferred on the Minister of Health and with the doctors' strong desire to retain their professional freedoms and their livelihoods as well as their fears that the new arrangements would bring about a deterioration in standards of medical and clinical service and professionalism.

Even though there were many doctors who disliked the Act, Morris-Jones felt they had achieved a significant amount though negotiation and should therefore accept the government's offer to join the NHS in July 1948.

[29] A year after the introduction of the NHS, Morris-Jones was again writing to the Times to highlight what he saw as the decline in status of the General Practitioner, which he described as' the first line of defence of our health service'.

He believed that there was evidence to show that after a year of the NHS there had been a deterioration in the art of medicine as practiced by GPs, an expansion of their workload, an increase in bureaucracy, difficulties in seeing cases through and getting patients into hospitals.