Susan Lawrence

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Susan Lawrence
Charles Williamson Crook
Succeeded byJohn Mayhew
In office
6 December 1923 – 28 October 1924
Preceded byCharles Williamson Crook
Succeeded byCharles Williamson Crook
Personal details
Born
Arabella Susan Lawrence

(1871-08-12)12 August 1871
Died24 October 1947(1947-10-24) (aged 76)
Nationality
Newnham College, Cambridge

Arabella Susan Lawrence (12 August 1871 – 24 October 1947) was a British Labour Party politician, one of the earliest female Labour MPs.

Early life

Lawrence was the youngest daughter of

Vice-Chancellor. Her great grandfather was Abraham Ogden of New Jersey, and she was also descended from the original Nonconformist Philip Henry
.

Education

She was educated in

Newnham College, Cambridge
.

Career

Originally a

Sidney Webb, and especially to his wife Beatrice Webb
. During the First World War, she principally worked to improve the conditions of women factory workers.

As a member of the local council in

Poor Law
rates.

Lawrence first stood, unsuccessfully, for

Charles Williamson Crook
, died only 18 months later and Lawrence was easily re-elected at a by-election in April 1926.

In 1924, Lawrence visited Soviet Russia and spent six months travelling widely. Unlike the Webbs and other Fabians who went to Russia she did not believe everything the Bolsheviks alleged to foreign visitors, but tried to make contact with a wide variety of people, and she retained a critical attitude towards the Soviet system.[3]

Susan Lawrence was appointed

National Government in the summer of 1931, and she lost her seat in the 1931 general election, never again to be a Member of Parliament.[3]

In 1935, Lawrence visited Palestine and was impressed by

kibbutzim and Zionism in general. She subsequently tried, not very successfully, to persuade the Labour Party Conference that a socialist utopia was being created in Palestine which was benefitting Jewish and Arab workers alike. But, as always, her interest was not merely emotional, but practical and based on facts. In May 1936, the government appointed a Royal Commission under Lord Peel to investigate how the mandate was working in view of much communal strife between Jews and Arabs. Just before this finished its work in early 1937, Susan wrote a memorandum for the Labour Party's Advisory Committee on Imperial Affairs, on whose Palestine sub-committee she sat, stressing the problems arising for the Arabs because Jewish development was going so far ahead. The Mandate authorities, she felt, had neglected Arab needs for public works, land reclamation, and agricultural modernisation. Although the Palestine sub-committee had hoped for reconciliation rather than partition, by 1938 she was persuaded by labour leaders in Palestine to submit to the Labour party executive a memorandum saying that in the circumstances as they were, some form of partition was inevitable, and she hoped that the ensuing Jewish state would become affiliated to the Commonwealth.[4]

Maintaining her work in the Labour Party, Lawrence was a member of the National Executive until 1941, and devoted much of her time to working with the blind for the remainder of her life. The detective novelist

Louis de Rouvroy, Duc de Saint-Simon, and Lesley Lewis, art historian and author of The Private Life of a Country House
, were among her nieces.

References

  1. ISBN 9781861974259
    .
  2. ^ Richard Kelly (18 August 2015), Briefing Paper Number 06652: Women Members of Parliament, House of Commons
  3. ^ a b Manchester Guardian, 18 September 1924
  4. ^ The British Labour Party and Zionism, 1917-1947, Fred Denis Lepkin, 1986, and The British Labour Movement and Zionism, 1917-1948, Joseph Gorny, 2013

Bibliography

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Charles Williamson Crook
 Member of Parliament for East Ham North
1923–1924 		Succeeded by
Charles Williamson Crook
Preceded by
Charles Williamson Crook
 Member of Parliament for East Ham North
1926–1931 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by Chair of the Labour Party
1929–1930 		Succeeded by
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