13 Facts About Emile Vandervelde

Emile Vandervelde was a Belgian socialist politician.

Emile Auguste Vandervelde was born into a middle-class family in Ixelles, a suburb of Brussels, Belgium on 25 January 1866.

Emile Vandervelde worked as an academic at the Free University.

Emile Vandervelde was active in Belgian Freemasonry and was a member of the Lodge Les Amis philanthropes du Grand Orient de Belgique, in Brussels.

Emile Vandervelde held the seat until 1890, when he transferred to Brussels which he held from 1900 to 1938.

Emile Vandervelde was a staunch opponent of Leopold II and the absolute power he enjoyed in the Congo during the 1890s and wrote numerous articles against capitalist colonialism.

Emile Vandervelde wrote a telegram to the socialist party of Russia that called on the socialists to support the war effort.

Emile Vandervelde was a delegate for Belgium at the Treaty of Versailles and subsequently involved in the League of Nations.

Emile Vandervelde was an opponent of King Leopold II's attempts to expand his constitutional powers through the creation of the Congo Free State in the period leading up to the Free State's annexation by Belgium in 1908.

Emile Vandervelde held the portfolio of Minister of Justice between 1918 and 1921 in which role he supported prison reform, measures against alcoholism, trade union rights and women's rights.

In 1922, Emile Vandervelde joined a group of socialist lawyers including Arthur Wauters, member of the Belgian Labour Party, Kurt Rosenfeld and Theodor Liebknecht, members of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Emile Vandervelde subsequently held a position on the Council of Ministers and Minister of Public Health in the government of Paul Van Zeeland.

In 1933, Emile Vandervelde became the POB's first president but increasingly found his internationalism and reformism challenged by a new generation of Belgian socialists.