Eleanor Rathbone
Eleanor Rathbone | |
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Member of Parliament for Combined English Universities with
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Personal details | |
Born | Eleanor Florence Rathbone 12 May 1872 Independent) |
Parent(s) | William Rathbone VI Emily Lyle |
Eleanor Florence Rathbone (12 May 1872 – 2 January 1946) was an
.Early life
Rathbone was the daughter of the social reformer
Denied an Oxford degree by her gender, she was one of the steamboat ladies who travelled to Ireland between 1904 and 1907 to receive an ad eundem University of Dublin degree (at Trinity College Dublin). After Oxford, Rathbone worked alongside her father to investigate social and industrial conditions in Liverpool, until he died in 1902. They also opposed the Second Boer War. In 1903 Rathbone published their Report on the results of a Special Inquiry into the conditions of Labour at the Liverpool Docks. In 1905 she assisted in establishing the School of Social Science at the University of Liverpool, where she lectured in public administration. Her connection with the university is still recognised by the Eleanor Rathbone building, lecture theatre and Chair of Sociology.
Local politician and campaigner
In 1897, Rathbone became the Honorary Secretary of the Liverpool Women's Suffrage Society Executive Committee in which she focussed on campaigning for women to get the right to vote.[6]
Rathbone was elected as an independent member of Liverpool City Council in 1910 for the seat of
At the outbreak of the
From 1918 onwards, Rathbone was arguing for a system of
In 1919, when Millicent Fawcett retired, Rathbone took over the presidency of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (the renamed National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies), and as such was involved in the creation of the Liverpool Personal Service Society. The organisation that would become the Liverpool Personal Services Society (and later just PSS) was founded in 1919 by Rathbone and social worker Dorothy Keeling. The title 'Liverpool Personal Services Society was not adopted until 1922 but those involved with its creation were Eleanor Rathbone[8]', Keeling, Elizabeth Macadam, and academic Frederic D'Aeth. They saw the need for friendly visiting. The PSS initially faced opposition by other charities who saw them as offering no material help and just another competitor.[9]
She also campaigned for
She contested the 1922 General Election as an Independent candidate at Liverpool East Toxteth against the sitting Unionist MP and was defeated.[11]
In 1924 in the Disinherited Family, she argued that economic dependence of women was based on the practice of supporting variably-sized families with wages that were paid to men, regardless of whether the men had families or not. Later she exposed insurance regulations that reduced married women's access to unemployment benefits and health insurance.
Westminster politician
Rathbone campaigned for Parliament as a feminist, stating "I am standing as a woman, not because I believe there is any antagonism between men's and women's interests but because I believe there is need in the House of Commons for more women who can represent directly the special experience and point of view of women."[1]
In 1929 Rathbone entered parliament as an independent MP for the Combined English Universities. One of her first speeches was about what is now known as female genital mutilation in Kenya, then a British colony.[12][1] During the Depression, she campaigned for cheap milk and better benefits for the children of the unemployed. In 1931 she helped to organise the defeat of a proposal to abolish the university seats in the parliament and won re-election in 1935.
Rathbone realised the nature of
In 1934, she become the leader of the Children's Minimum Committee which was constituted after the BMA Nutrition Report to sensitise the public opinion about the "wide discrepancy" existing between "the cost of a satisfactory diet and the actual sums available to poorly paid or unemployed parents for the nourishment of their children."[13] In 1936 she began to warn about a Nazi threat to
She became an outspoken critic of appeasement in Parliament. She denounced British complacency in Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, the Italian conquest of Abyssinia and about the Spanish Civil War. Once she tried to hire a ship to run the blockade of Spain and remove Republicans at risk from reprisals. Her determination was such that junior ministers and civil servants of the
"I am no admirer of any dictatorship, certainly not that of Stalin, but it is only fair to recognise in the sordid history of the Non-Intervention Agreement the one bright spot was the part played by the USSR"[15]
Stalin’s actions were not motivated by the welfare of the Spanish people. His intention was to provide Spain with sufficient weapons to prevent Hitler from being victorious, but also to ensure Hitler was not completely defeated either. The Soviet General who informed Alexander Orlov of this plan was shocked by the Machiavellian calculation made by the Politburo who wanted to obtain time by allowing the Spanish people to bleed as long as possible.[16]
In 1936, Rathbone was one of several people who supported the British Provisional Committee for the Defence of
On 30 September 1938, Rathbone denounced the just-publicised Munich Agreement. She pressured the parliament to aid the Czechoslovaks and grant entry for dissident Germans, Austrians and Jews. In late 1938 she set up the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees to take up individual cases from Spain, Czechoslovakia and Germany. During World War II she regularly chastised Osbert Peake, undersecretary at the Home Office, and in 1942 pressured the government to publicise the evidence of the Holocaust.
Eleanor Rathbone often supported unpopular causes such as German and Italian internees. At the height of the battle of Britain, 10th July 1940, she complained of the harsh treatment of internees, many of which were Germans who had fled from Germany because they were anti Hitler. In a speech to the House of Commons on 15 October 1945, she was one of few Britons prepared to criticise the expulsion of 2,500,000 people of German origin from Czechoslovakia during the winter months of 1946 because it might create large-scale starvation. [19]
Personal life
At the end of the First World War, Rathbone and the social work campaigner Elizabeth Macadam bought a house in London together.[20] The two friends continued to share the house until Rathbone's sudden death in January 1946.
Rathbone was a first cousin once-removed of the actor
Her great-niece,
Legacy
In 1945, the year before her death, Eleanor Rathbone saw the Family Allowances Act pass into law.
In 1986, a blue plaque was erected for her by Greater London Council at Tufton Court, Tufton Street, Westminster, London SW1P 3QH, City of Westminster, where she had lived.[21]
Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the
The University of Liverpool acknowledges Rathbone by way of its Eleanor Rathbone Building; the site houses the School of Law and Social Justice and the Department of Psychology, as well as the Eleanor Rathbone Theatre used for stage productions and musical performances. Edge Hill University has a hall of residence called Eleanor Rathbone in honour of her work as a social reformer.[25]
See also
- History of feminism
- List of suffragists and suffragettes
- Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom
- Refugees
- Rescue of Jews
References
- ^ OCLC 1084655208.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53822. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b c d Brittain, Vera (1960). The Women at Oxford. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/93709. Retrieved 29 October 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48586. Retrieved 29 October 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 090636745X.
- )
- ^ Liverpool Personal Service Society 1858–1983. <corpname>Liverpool Personal Service Society</corpname>. 1958–1984.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/46438. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- S2CID 2739080– via JSTOR 286986, S2CID 2739080.
- ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
- S2CID 154785842.
- )
- ^ Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 722.
- ^ Rathbone, Eleanor (1938). "War Can be Averted : the Achievability of Collective Security". International Affairs. 17 (2): 264.
- ^ Orlov, Aleksandr. The Secret History of Stalin’s Crimes. p. 238.
- ISBN 082231066X(p. 451)
- ISSN 0955-2359.
- ^ Holroyd-Doveton, J. Maxim Litvinov: A Biography. p. 326.
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53582. Retrieved 30 October 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "RATHBONE, Eleanor (1872-1946)". English Heritage. 20 February 1943. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
- ^ Government Digital Service (24 April 2018). "Historic statue of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett unveiled in Parliament Square". Retrieved 21 February 2024.
- ^ Topping, Alexandra (24 April 2018). "First statue of a woman in Parliament Square unveiled". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 April 2018.
- ^ "Millicent Fawcett statue unveiling: the women and men whose names will be on the plinth". iNews. 24 April 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
- ^ Edge Hill University (16 April 2018). "Living on campus". Archived from the original on 15 March 2015. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
Further reading
- Susan Pedersen, Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (2004)
- Ray Strachey, Our freedom and its results, (1936), chapter by E. Rathbone
- Susan Pedersen, ‘Rathbone, Eleanor Florence (1872–1946)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edn, May 2006, accessed 1 March 2007
- Susan Cohen (historian) Rescue the Perishing. Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees (2010)
- Eleanor Rathbone by Mary D. Stocks (1949)
External links
- Eleanor Rathbone Trust
- "Archival material relating to Eleanor Rathbone". UK National Archives.
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Eleanor Rathbone
- Portrait of Eleanor Rathbone in the UK Parliamentary Collections
Archives
The archive of Eleanor Rathbone is held at the University of Liverpool's Special Collections & Archives. Other papers are held at
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