Randal Cremer Biography

Sir William Randal Cremer was an English pacifist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1903. He was a member of the Liberal party in the British Parliament. He received the Nobel Prize for advocating arbitration and peaceful settlement of disputes between different nations instead of going to war against each other. Due to his ideas on international arbitration for the prevention of conflicts, he was fondly called the ‘Member of Arbitration’ by his colleagues in Parliament. His early life was very humble and full of struggle. His father had left his mother when he was just an infant. His mother was a devout Methodist and though she faced utter despondency, she somehow managed to bring up her son and two daughters until he was big enough to fend for himself. The difficult conditions of his upbringing could not suppress his indomitable spirit and he rose from the depths of extreme poverty to become a great man in his own right. During his education days, he came to hear about how a peaceful settlement could be arrived at between warring nations by bringing them to the negotiating table. This lecture planted the idea of international arbitration between conflicting nations in his mind which later became his life’s main objective.