Roderick Kedward

Who was Roderick Kedward?

Rev. Roderick Morris Kedward was a Wesleyan minister and a Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom.

Roderick Kedward was born at Westwell in Kent, one of fourteen children of a local farmer, originally from Hereford but resident in Kent since the 1870s. He became a minister in 1903 having trained at Richmond College. In 1906, he married Daisy Fedrick and they had three sons and three daughters.

In 1908, Kedward was made minister of three Wesleyan congregations in Hull and earned the nickname the fighting parson for physically protecting a woman from her wife-beating husband.

During the First World War, Kedward served in Egypt and France. He was invalided out of the army in October 1916 with 'trench fever' but served as president of ex-servicemen's associations after the war.

Kedward unsuccessfully contested the Kingston upon Hull Central constituency at the 1918 general election, losing by a long way to a Conservative who had been favoured with the Lloyd George coalition 'coupon'. By then he had established a considerable local connection with Hull having been a minister of religion in the city for seven years and having founded the Kings Hall Brotherhood. He stood in Bermondsey West at the 1922 general election but was soundly beaten by the Labour candidate, a former Progressive member of the London County Council, Dr. Alfred Salter. At the next election in 1923, there was a straight fight between Kedward and Salter and Kedward was elected as the constituency's Member of Parliament by uniting the anti-Labour vote. He been associated with Bermondsey for some years having been Chairman of the Finance Committee of the Borough Council and a member of the Board of Guardians. However Labour surged back the following year, a year in which the Liberal vote slumped badly all over the country and he was defeated at the 1924 general election.