Claud Morris

Claud Morris (January 20, 1920 – May 21, 2000) was a British newspaper owner who sought to make peace between Arabs and Israelis.

Born near Penzance, Cornwall, he became a junior reporter aged 16. He joined the Canadian Army at the outbreak of World War II, but was invalided out in 1941. Back in Britain, he started as a sub-editor on the Daily Express, later becoming a political columnist for the Daily Mirror, and unsuccessfully standing as a Labour party candidate for Bristol West in 1950 and 1951.

In 1952, he bought a small South Wales newspaper, more than doubling its circulation in three years. After an abortive alliance with Roy Thomson to buy The Times in 1966, he continued building up his own publishing empire until 1970, when his printing works were firebombed after printing several issues of Free Palestinian, a newspaper funded by Yasser Arafat.

The attack caused Morris to become an advocate of the Arab cause, joining forces with Christopher Mayhew, MP to produce a new magazine Middle East International. After Mayhew vetoed an article Morris wrote for publication, Morris published it in one of his own newspapers. This led to the resignation of key staff and a boycott by advertisers, causing the collapse of the paper.

Morris founded another newspaper, Voice of the Arab World and spent much of the next few decades travelling the Middle East. By the late 1980s, Morris had become convinced of the need to find a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and in 1989 helped establish the Next Century Foundation.

He wrote a two-volume autobiography -I Bought a Newspaper (1963) and The Last Inch: a Middle East Odyssey (1997). He died in the cottage he was born in after a series of strokes, leaving a wife, Patricia, a son, William and two daughters.