Dorinda Neligan
Courtesy of Croydon Museum
Talk at Croydon North Labour Party event Croydon Suffrage Movement and the role of women today, Saturday 10 November 2018
“Right is of no sex.” – Frederick Douglass,
African American Emancipation and universal suffrage. 1848
I am going to start across the
Atlantic. The first women’s rights convention in the United States
in 1848 approved women's suffrage proposed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton after an
impassioned argument from Frederick Douglass.
‘In respect to political rights, we hold woman to
be justly entitled to all we claim for man. We go farther, and express our
conviction that all political rights which it is expedient for man to exercise,
it is equally so for women. All that distinguishes man as an intelligent and
accountable being, is equally true of woman; and if that government is only
just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason
in the world for denying to woman the exercise of the elective franchise, or a
hand in making and administering the laws of the land. Our doctrine is, that
“Right is of no sex.”’
I like to think that his view was shaped by his
experience in Britain between 1845 and 1847 where he escaped from enslavement
and had toured Britain With his freedom being paid for by women in Newcastle, he
was able to return back to the States,
accompanied by one of them as his Secretary.
Although no evidence of him coming to Croydon has
emerged as yet, he would have met Croydon abolition activists like the brewers
the Crowleys and Richard Barrett the publisher. A successor campaigner for
African American rights and supporter of women’s suffrage W. E. B. Du Bois,
when in London came to Croydon to visit his friend the Afro-British composer
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
The First World War
This weekend is important because we mark the end
of the First World War, the legislation that enabled women to stand as
Parliamentary candidates and the beginning of the campaign for the General
Election in December 1918 in which many women had the vote for the first time,
and during which there were 13 women candidates including Emmeline Pankhurst, the former leader of
the Women’s Social & Political Union as part of the Liberal, Conservative
and pro-war Labour coalition, and Charlotte Despard, the leader of the Women’s
Freedom League, for Battersea Labour Party against the Coalition. The number of
men with the vote was also increased to those aged 21 and those aged 19 and 20
who have served in the forces. It is also the month of the formation of the
Croydon Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, by women such as
Barbara Duncan Harris, a suffrage activist.
We should remember that working class women in
particular were heavily adversely effected by the War: the loss of fathers,
husbands, brothers, uncles, cousins and boyfriends, struggling to survive on
lowered incomes and rising prices. It is impossible to understand the traumatic
impact the loss of so many men from tight-knit working class neighbourhoods We
also need to remember the traumatic effect of the wounded and dying on the many
women who were nurses behind the war fronts and in Britain. In 1918 and 1919
further loss occurred in the Spanish Flu pandemic. A quarter of the British
population were affected with 228,000 dying.
Working women
Many women had been able to go to work in the
munitions factories, and fill other jobs previously undertaken by men. Croydon’s
WSPU member Grace Cameron-Swan organised a group from Woolwich to visit the
munitions factories in France. However some of the move into the factories was
by changing jobs as in 1913 5.41m women were in work and in 1918 5.56m. What
was significant was the rise in membership of women in trade unions from 8% in
1913 to 21.7% in 1918, which must have assisted the beginnings of the Labour
breakthrough in municipal elections across the country in 1919, and then with
the collapse of the Liberal Party the road to the election of the
first Labour Government in the 1923 General Election, led by Ramsay Macdonald,
whose wife Margaret Ethel was an active in the Women’s Labour League and the
National Union of Women’s Suffrage Organisations, and who was the main speaker
at a public meeting in Croydon.
Glasgow Rent Strike
One of the
victories of women during the War was the November 1915 Rent Restrictions Act, the
Government’s response to the rent strike in Glasgow, a key leading organiser of
which was Mary Barbour, a working class
member of the Women’s Co-operative Guild.
Croydon was not an industrial area; it was predominantly
white-collar working class and middle class. The vibrant labour and socialist
movements struggled to get Councillors elected. The campaign for votes for
women was able on occasion to see those of all political persuasions work
together, whether Liberal, Tory, or Labour and Socialist, despite the major
fault lines in the suffrage movement and their wider political differences.
Differences in Strategy and Tactics
In 1907 there were two main suffrage organisations
in Croydon, the branches of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies
led by Millicent Fawcett, and the Women’s Social & Political Union The
difference between them was that the National Union campaigned through meetings,
lobbying and petitioning.
The WSPU developed more militant tactics. Many of
its members considered Emmeline Pankhurst to be very autocratic. As a result
several branches including Croydon’s set up the Women’s Freedom League led by
Charlotte Despard. While the League used militant tactics it did not approve of
the increasingly violent methods used by the WSPU. As the Croydon WSPU branch
became the League branch, so the WSPU had to set up a new branch.
Croydon was not the area covered by today’s London
Borough. Much of the South was in Rural District Council areas. Initiatives
were taken to set up branches in Purley and Kenley. There were branches of specialist
suffrage organisations like the Actresses Franchise League, and the Men’s League
for Women’s Suffrage. There were also anti-women’s suffrage supporters
including women, and organisations.
Croydon Suffrage Activities
I am not going into great detail about the movement’s
activities as you can read about these in the pamphlet I have just published. It
also contains background about women in Croydon and their wide range of
activities in business and employment, as staff of public services, of work in
charities, in the two main political parties, and participation in the debating societies. In terms of the
population the women were the majority, but without full recognition as
citizens because they were denied the Parliamentary vote and most of the vote
in the elections to the Borough Council and the Poor Law Board of Guardians.
Between 1907 and 1914 the suffrage campaigners in
Croydon held public meetings, parades, had offices and shops, ran petitions,
garden parties, fetes, a Suffrage Week which included plays, disrupted
political meetings, boycotted the Census, refused to pay taxes, and joined the London demonstrations and
supported the Suffrage Pilgrimage. Because of the violent methods of the WSPU
16 CID officers and constables raided and ransacked the WSPU offices looking
unsuccessfully for incriminating evidence. Katie Gliddon was not the only local
activist who went to prison. There were many others including, Marion Holmes,
Grace Cameron-Swan, Mary Pearson, and Mrs Dempsey.
Lesson from History?
The pamphlet is an introduction which I hope will
tantalise others to carry out further research.
I am not sure that history does teach lessons.
What it can do is to inspire us, to remind us that the labour and progressive
movements have a long history of organisation and campaigning forcing Government
and Parliament to act. We can take hope and strength from those strong
individuals whether men or women who provided inspirational leadership and
organising skills, often at great personal sacrifice.
We can dare to be imaginative like Muriel Matters
with her airship flight dropping leaflets over London and Croydon before
landing in a field in Coulsdon, and her and Croydon Marion Holmes’s testing of
whether women could nominate candidates which led to national press coverage
because the supporter who was Mayor turned the matter into a national news opportunity.
Banners
We are used to the importance of banners as a long
tradition in the labour movement, but also an important aspect of the suffrage
campaign. Some women undertook sandwich board processions, and trained in
suffragitsu as a way of trying to prevent being thrown out of public meetings
for disruption. One suffragette in Croydon’s Parish Church refused to leave
after interrupting the proceedings and standing her ground until common sense
prevailed and she was allowed to stay.
And like today there was the use of culture, music
and drama at meetings, fetes and special events like the Croydon National
Union’s Suffrage Week in and the Freedom
League’s Garden Fete.
Male supporters
There was also a common front between the women
activists and men who supported their demands, like Keir Hardie, the leader of
the Independent Labour Party, the Battersea based LCC Alderman Stephen Sanders
who was a prospective parliamentary candidate in Croydon and whose wife was the
WSPU head office book keeper, MPs trying to get legislation enacted, or as
members of men’s suffrage organisations, like the Croydon Men’s League for
Women’s Suffrage and the Croydon Men’s Political Union.
Like the women the supporting men came from across
the class divide marching on demonstrations, and speaking at and attending meetings,
and the railwaymen who signed one of Croydon’s petitions. Some of those men insisted
that the newly formed Croydon Council Education Committee should co-opt women as
members, which the all-male Council approved, enabling suffrage activists Lucy
Morland, Clara Musselwhite and others to help shape education services. Clara had
previously been an elected member of the School Board and the Board of
Guardians, and went on to be the first
woman to be elected to Croydon Council in 1919 standing for the non-Party
Ratepayer’s Association.
Dorinda Neligan
Courtesy of Croydon Museum
One of the interesting aspects of the
commemoration of votes for women in Croydon this year was the joint project
between the Museum and the Croydon High School for Girls, The School was set up
to provide secondary education for girls when the State did not.
Its first headmistress was Dorinda Neligan, a
member of the Women’s National Liberal Association, and of the WSPU and then
Freedom League, who was herself arrested as a member of a deputation trying to see the Prime Minister. She had her goods confiscated and auctioned
because of her refusal to pay tax while she was deprived the vote. The Museum
School project included the making of this banner in her memory.
MPs and extra-Parliamentary action
On Thursday night here at Ruskin House Tooting
Labour Party member Simon Hannah, author of the book A Party with Socialists in it, argued that as well as getting
Labour MPs elected, change had to be achieved by campaigning and organisation
outside of Parliament putting pressure on it.
That dual nature of campaigning and getting people
elected as MPs has been a normal part of British politics since the 18thC, through
the petitions, public meetings and lobbying, and the flood of pamphlet after
pamphlet against the slave trade and then slavery. In the 1820s it was the
organised women campaigners who turned the strategic demand from gradual to
immediate emancipation. Following the election of supporting MPs as a result of
the reorganisation of the House of Commons by the Reform Act 1832, and the reform
Government being led by anti-slavery activists, this abolition demand was
responded to with the Act abolishing Britain’s involvement in slavery over a
short time period.
Anti-Slavery and Suffrage
When the successful abolitionists met at the
Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 the men refused to allow the women to be full
participating delegates. The American women attendees went back to the States
and set up the women’s suffrage movement. That interlink between the two
countries continued. Living in Britain for twenty years Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s
daughter was involved with the Fabian Society and the Women's Franchise
League. Back in the States, she formed
the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women uniting professional and
industrial working women, and started suffrage parades. One of these involved
women on roller skates outside the White House.
The approaches developed and refined by the
anti-slavery movement in Britain were used by the radical Parliamentary reform
movement campaigning for votes for men resulting in the Reform Act of 1832.
Women had supported them, setting up their own organisations.
Peterloo and Chartism
In Mike Leigh’s film about the Peterloo Massacre
which took place 200 years ago next year there are scenes involving meetings of
a women’s reform organisation, and women taking part in the demonstration. The
Massacre saw many large demonstrations across the country condemning the loss
of life and the use of military force, like the one in Newcastle.
The Chartist movement used similar mass
campaigning methods. Although the reform and Chartist demand was for votes for
men, there were Female Chartist organisations. The suffrage movement continued
in that campaigning tradition. They also backed Parliamentary candidates who
support women’s suffrage, nut also were delighted when a supporter John Raphael
was defeated as a Liberal in Croydon because of the refusal of the Party Leader
and Prime Minister Asquith to legislate.
The strategy and the tactics however are not
predetermined to have immediate effect, it takes decades. Perhaps that is the
main lesson of history: do not expect instant success, it’s a long haul filled
with doubt, a sense of failure, and many set-backs. But in the end the desired
result can be achieved as happened 100 years ago and then completed for women
90 years ago. The Croydon Crossfield, Crowley, Mennell and Morland families must
have understood this with their involvement over decades in anti-slavery, anti-
war, and women’s suffrage, as must have Georgina King Lewis, who enabled the
first Ruskin House building to be opened for the local labour movement.
Pamphlet:
Suffrage Campaigns & Campaigners in Croydon
Sean Creighton, with Iona Devito and Louise Szpera
£3.50 plus p&p
