sentences:  Roy Douglas and Mark Egan have said that whilst Martell was never elected to parliament and was a member of the Liberal Party for less than a decade, "there is much to be said for the view that he played a major part in keeping the party in existence, when it could easily have disappeared as a serious political force".Martell was the secretary of the Liberal Candidates' Association in the mid-1940s, and in 1946 was elected to the London County Council together with the former member of parliament Sir Percy Harris in the two-member seat of Bethnal Green South West, the first Liberal LCC victories for many years.In November of that year he stood unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate in the Parliamentary by-election for the safe Labour seat of Rotherhithe, although he beat the Conservative candidate into third place.