In
1920 Lady Margaret Rhondda, founded the political
magazine Time and Tide. Edited initially by Helen Archdale,
Lady Rhondda took over in 1926. At first the magazine supported left-wing
causes but over the years the magazine, like its owner, moved to the
right.
Lady
Rhondda did not allow politics to get in the way of good writing and
contributors to the magazine included D.
H. Lawrence, Vera Brittain, Winifred
Holtby, Virginia Woolf, Crystal
Eastman, Charlotte Haldane, Storm
Jameson, Nancy Astor, Margaret
Bondfield, Margery Corbett-Ashby, Charlotte
Despard, Emmeline Pankhurst, Eleanor
Rathbone, Olive Schreiner, Margaret
Winteringham, Rebecca West, Elizabeth
Robins, Rose Macaulay, Mary
Hamilton, Naomi
Mitchison,
Helena Swanwick, Ellen
Wilkinson, Ethel Smyth, Emma
Goldman, George Bernard Shaw, Ernst
Toller, Robert Graves and George
Orwell.
Time
and Tide never sold well and it is estimated that the magazine
lost Lady Rhondda over £500,000 during the thirty-eight years
she owned it. The magazine ceased publication in 1977.
(1)
Margaret
Rhondda,
Time
and Tide
(14th May, 1920)
That the group behind this paper is composed entirely of women
has already been frequently commented on. It would be
possible to lay too much stress upon the fact. The binding link between
these people is not primarily their common sex. On the other hand,
this fact is not, without its significance. Amongst those to whom
the need we have spoken of is apparent today are a very large number
of women. Women have newly come into the larger world, and are indeed
themselves to some extent answerable for that loosening of party and
sectarian ties which is so marked a feature of the present day. It
is therefore natural that just now many of them should tend to be
especially conscious of the need for an independent press, owing allegiance
to no sect or party. The war was responsible for breaking down the
barriers which kept each individual or group of individuals in a watertight
compartment. The past five years have taught the importance of that
wider view which sees the part in relation to the whole.
There
is another need in our press of which the average person of today
is conscious, but which must specially weigh with women - the lack
of a paper which shall treat men and women as equally part of the
great human family, working side by side ultimately for the same great
objects by ways equally valuable, equally interesting; a paper which
is in fact concerned neither specially with men nor specially with
women, but with human beings. It must be admitted that the press of
today, although with self-conscious, painstaking care it now inserts
"and women" every time it chances to use the word "men"
scarcely succeeds in attaining to such an ideal.
(2)
Rebecca
West,
reviewed Jailed for Freedom by Doris Stevens in Time
and Tide
on 24th March, 1922.
They (members
of the Congressional Union for Women Suffrage) found that the police
while constantly
arresting them for minute technical offences, would not interfere
when they were assaulted by hooligans, and later on led Government-organised
crowds of uniformed soldiers and sailors against them. They went to
prison and, in an interesting penal institution called the Occoguan
workhouse, were fed on worm-crawling food and exposed in insanitary
conditions and when they denounced this state of affairs, not only
on their own account but (as has always been the gentlemanly suffragist
way), on behalf of the ordinary offenders, the administration called
to mind a penitentiary in a swamp, which had been declared unfit for
human habitation nine years before, and put them there. All this they
endured and thereby, without any doubt at all, acquired the vote.
With extraordinary naivety the United States Government failed to
cover up its tracks and left it patent that it gave women the franchise
not because of any consideration of justice, but because they were
a nuisance. There was no such magnificent exhibition of the art of
climbing down in the grand manner (with classical quotation from Mr.
Asquith) as our Parliamentary debate on the passing of the Act. A
crude, new country America; but no doubt it will learn.
(3)
Editorial, Time
and Tide
(23rd May, 1922)
On December 23rd, 1919, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act
passed into law, and for the past two years or more it has been gradually
dawning upon women of all classes, ages and professions, that the
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act does not remove sex disqualification.
Let us examine this Act
a little more closely. When it was passed it was presented by the
Government as a Charter of
Freedom. Henceforth women were to enjoy equal opportunities, equal
chances, equal rights with men. It was a reversal of the customs of
the ages. It was, as Mr. Talbot pointed out last Friday, a revolutionary
piece of legislation. Incidentally it was the carrying out of a pledge
made by the Coalition to the women just before the previous General
Election and signed by Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law: 'It will
be the duty of the new government to remove all existing inequalities
in the law as between men and women.'
Specifically, of course,
the Act did not do a very great deal. It was quite short, consisting
of four clauses only. The first clause dealt with the admission of
women to the Civil Service, to which, for practical purposes, if not
in theory, they had been admitted before; and to juries, which was
a new departure. It also entitled women to become magistrates and
to be admitted and enrolled as barristers or solicitors. The first
sub-clause to clause I contracted out of the obligations of the Act
to admit women on equal terms into the Civil Service by providing
that all regulations dealing with this admission should be left to
Orders in Council.
The second sub-clause to
clause I gave power to a judge to order that a jury should be composed
of men only or women only as the case might be, and that on application
being made a woman might be exempted from serving in a case 'by nature
of the evidence to be given or of the issues to be tried.'
The second clause dealt
with the qualifications necessary to entitle women to be admitted
and enrolled as solicitors on the same terms as men.
The third clause stated
that nothing in the statutes or charter of any university should be
deemed to preclude the authorities of such university from admitting
women to its membership. It was as a result of this that in 1920 Oxford
admitted women to full
membership. The clause was, however, merely permissive, and
Cambridge has elected not to act upon it. Women were already
admitted to membership of every other university in the United
Kingdom before this date.
The fourth clause was
simply the short title and repeal clause usual in Acts of Parliament.
To sum up, what the Bill
actually did was:- To admit women to jury service although not on
the same terms as men. To allow women
to become magistrates. To allow women to become barristers
or solicitors. To grant power to Oxford and Cambridge to
admit women to membership if they chose.
(4)
Editorial, Time
and Tide
(17th October, 1922)
It is true that we have been most singularly fortunate in our
first two women members.
They have set a standard to which few could hope to attain. Nevertheless,
even though we can scarcely hope that many future women M.P.'s will
achieve so conspicuous a success as have the first two it is undoubtedly
most desirable to add to their number. In the last Parliament Lady
Astor and Mrs. Wintringham were doing the work often ordinary people.
No human being can be expected to keep going indefinitely at such
a pressure. We publish today the first of a series of three articles
dealing in some detail with the chances of the prospective women candidates
who have been adopted up to the present. It seems clear from a close
scrutiny of the list of seats placed at their disposals that none
of the Parties have been prepared to pay much more than lip service
to the proposition that
it is desirable to have women in Parliament. The Independent
Liberals head the list so far as numbers are concerned, but even
the Independent Liberals do not so far appear to have given their
women candidates any safe seats. Perhaps, however, there was
some excuse for the 'Wee Frees,' seeing that they had not many
safe seats to give.
Few people who have closely
followed the course of events in the last Parliament will be found
to deny that there is need in the next for a greater representation
of women. And this not
only on the general grounds that it is desirable to have national
political problems fully envisaged from every possible angle,
but also and at the present time particularly because there
are still today a certain number of subjects the importance
of which tends to be underrated by many of the men in Parliament
but is adequately appreciated by women. The value of
Lady Astor and Mrs. Wintringham has lain not only in their contributions
upon general political questions but also in the steady
hard work they have put in over such matters as the Criminal
Law Amendment Bill (whose passage was largely due to
their efforts), the Equal Guardianship of Infants Bill, the Women
Police question (that any Women Police at all have been retained
in the London area is due almost entirely to them), and other
matters of the kind. It has lain also in the fact that they could
be trusted to understand the point of view of the professional
and working woman.
(5)
Editorial, Time
and Tide
(19th January, 1922)
Mr. Fisher continues to advise teachers in The Teachers' World.
Last week he discoursed upon 'Equal Pay.' He was disturbed lest any
one should suppose that he thought it the duty of the teacher to be
occupied with political or financial questions. 'The best teachers,'
he explained, 'have better things to think about than salaries or
trades union policy. They do not care about the politics of the profession.
They are in fact the salt of the earth.' Unfortunately, the best grocers
and butchers still continue to take an active interest in prices.
Mr. Fisher however has - a soul above such mundane considerations.
He is entirely opposed to equal pay; he admits that 'the demand has
an obvious foundation in reason. The women teachers are as well qualified
as the men, and they work as long hours,' but he declares that 'while
it is on public grounds desirable that the male teacher in our elementary
school should marry early, it is desirable that the female teacher
should for some years remain unmarried' (a statement which by itself
is worth some consideration), and he appears to have some hazy notion
that paying a woman less will somehow prevent her marrying; although
why it should do so in a profession which in any case almost always
dismisses her when she does marry is not very easy to see. In any
case, Mr. Fisher is perfectly clear as to his practical views on equal
pay. To bring the women's pay up to the men's would cost, so he tells
us seven millions, and at present he does not think we have the money
to spend. But if we had (and he does not press for fresh money) he
would not dream of spending it on removing this admitted injustice
- no, he would 'spend it on the children.' He has not the imagination
to realise that to allow the majority of the teachers to suffer from
a rankling sense of injustice is exceedingly bad for the children.
(6)
Rebecca
West,
Time
and Tide
(9th February, 1923)
The real reason why women teachers are paid less highly than
men who are performing the same work is the desire felt by the mass
of men that women in general should be subjected to every possible
disadvantage. Men like women in particular; for their wives, their
sweethearts, their mothers, and their sisters they can feel as generous
and self-sacrificing love as the world knows. But all save the few
who have cut down the primitive jungle in their souls want women in
general to be handicapped as heavily as possible in every conceivable
way. They want this not out of malignity, but out of a craving to
be reassured concerning themselves and the part they are playing in
the difficult universe. They fear they are not doing well enough.
(That fear, enchantingly humble, should keep us forever from bitterness
against them. For they do marvellously well.) It would help them to
have faith in themselves if they could see others doing much worse.
So, hiding their purpose from themselves by a screen of argument they
set about contriving that women shall furnish them with this welcome
sight. If we are honest and not tainted with the modern timidity about
mentioning that there is such a thing as sex-antagonism we must admit
that they do this in various unpleasing ways. They exclude her from
as many occupations as possible on the ground that she is incapable
of following them,
thus providing the double benefit of filling the male practitioners
of those occupations with a proud sense that they are doing something
which half the world cannot, and of embarrassing the woman worker
by restricting the market for her labour. They debase the specific
work of women as wives and mothers by urging that they should undertake
it because they
are too weak and foolish to succeed in any other. And wherever possible
they arrange that women shall face life in that unequipped condition
which comes of having too little money. A person insufficiently fed
and clothed is apt to be most satisfyingly inferior to a person who
is sufficiently fed and clothed. It is this savage form of sex-antagonism
which makes people desire that women teachers should be paid less
highly than men who are performing the same work. Since there are
so many women engaged in the profession of teaching, and the payment
of men teachers is none too high, this affords a pleasing prospect
of female discomfort and inferiority on a large scale.
(7)
Crystal Eastman,
Time
and Tide
(20th July, 1923)
History has known dedicated souls from the beginning, men and
women whose every waking moment is devoted to an impersonal end, leaders
of a "cause" who are ready at any moment quite simply to
die for it. But is it rare to find in one human being this passion
for service and sacrifice combined first with the shrewd calculating
mind of a born political leader, and second with the ruthless driving
force, sure judgment and phenomenal grasp of detail that characterize
a great entrepreneur.
It is
no exaggeration to say that these qualities are united in Alice Paul,
the woman who inspired, organized and led to victory the militant
suffrage movement in America and is now head of the Woman's Parry,
a strong group of conscious feminists who have set out to end the
"subjection of women" in all its forms.
Alice
Paul comes of Quaker stock and there is in her bearing that powerful
serenity so characteristic of the successful Quaker. Like many another
famous general she is well under five foot six, a slender, dark woman
with a pale, often haggard face, and great earnest childlike eyes
that seem to seize you and hold you to her purpose despite your own
desires and intentions. During that seven year suffrage campaign she
worked so continuously, ate so little and slept
so little that she always seemed to be wasting away before our eyes.
Once in the early years, when the Union was housed in a basement impossible
to ventilate she seemed so near to collapse that she was taken, under
protest, to a nearby hospital to rest. But she had a telephone put
in by her bed, and went right on with the campaign, forgetting, as
usual, to eat and sleep. After a few weeks of this she got up and
packed her bag and came back to the foul air and artificial light
of that crowded basement headquarters. And nothing more was said about
a breakdown. The truth is, of course, that she looks frail, as anyone
would who was subjected to constant overwork and under- nourishment,
but actually she possesses a bodily constitution of extraordinary
strength, and a power of physical endurance that quite matches her
indomitable spirit.
(8)
Editorial, Time
and Tide
(16th November, 1922)
Up to the time of going to press only sixteen women parliamentary
candidates have
been officially endorsed by their respective parties. It seems certain
that more women candidates will be adopted almost immediately, but
in most cases these will only be asked to fight forlorn hopes. We
much doubt the desirability of women candidates accepting the party
leavings. In fact, what the parties are doing is to fling to any women
who are prepared to accept them - and in most cases to pay the greater
part of their own expenses - constituencies which the average male
candidate refuses to touch knowing them to be 'duds.' When the women
get defeated, as in these hopeless seats they can only expect to be,
the parties who have thus used them are the first to turn round and
say: 'There is no use putting up women candidates, they only get defeated.'
We are of opinion that women of any standing should refuse to be made
use of in this way, their defeat only does harm to the ultimate cause
they desire to serve. It should be remembered that there is no generosity
in offering a woman the chance of fighting a hopeless seat on condition
that she pays her own expenses. The party which does so is merely
trying to get something
for nothing by playing on the comparative innocence of women in the
political game.
(9)
Elizabeth
Robins, Time
and Tide
(16th November, 1922)
The Six Points:
1. Satisfactory legislation
on child assault.
2. Satisfactory legislation
for the widowed mother.
3. Satisfactory legislation
for the unmarried mother and her child.
4. Equal guardianship.
5. Equality of pay for
men and women teachers.
6. Equality of pay and
opportunity for men and women in the Civil
Service.
The Six Point Group is
young but it has already a history of considerable importance.
The first page was written
on February 17,1921, when a little group of women framed a programme
of social betterment which should appeal in two ways to people of
practical mind. (1) It offered a non-party rallying ground for much
previous dispersed (and therefore less effectual) effort. (2) It was
a political instrument to hasten the ends desired, by the only sure
means, i.e., the Government measure.
In order to fulfil the
preliminary qualifications it was necessary to confine the programme
to questions which by their easily understood urgency should invite
general response, and by their fundamental
character should enlist the support of organised bodies.
This last essential was
achieved by the foresight of the framers.
They had chosen out of all the reforms necessary to put men and
women on an equal footing, politically and economically, those
measures on which public opinion is most ripe for legislation.
This was proved (1) by
instantaneous success in adding individual
names to the group membership. (2)
By the steadily growing number of societies desiring to co-operate
with the group.
In a list of twenty-four,
occurs: The British Federation of University
Women, the Federation of Women Civil Servants, and the National Union
of Women Teachers, along with Co-operative
Guilds, Women Citizens' Associations, and others.
On August 26,1921, the
Six Point Group was affiliated to the Consultative
Committee which meets under the chairmanship of
Lady Astor.
(10)
Editorial, Time
and Tide
(25th January, 1924)
For many years past Labour has definitely declared its belief
in complete equality
between the sexes: it is therefore not surprising that many nonparty
women are welcoming with enthusiasm the advent of the first Labour
Government, in the expectation that all their legal disabilities will
now be finally abolished. There can be little doubt that if Labour
does pass the legislation necessary to place both sexes on an equal
footing before the law, in their public as well as their private capacities,
and succeeds in showing no sex prejudice in administrative work, it
will gain such confidence with the nonparty women's organisations
that the other parties will find difficulty and perhaps impossibility
in displacing it from their favour for a number of years to come.
At this juncture, therefore, it may be worth the new Government's
while to inquire as to what exactly the nonparty women's organisations
are demanding.
There is no difficulty
in discovering what these organisations regard as the immediate instalment
of their programme and are demanding to have done this session. This
has been made abundantly clear within the past few weeks by all the
leading societies. In December the Consultative Committee of Women's
Organisations passed resolutions, which had been moved by the National
Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, asking whichever
of the parties might be returned to power for three things: (1) The
granting of the franchise to women on the same terms as men; (2) Equal
rights and responsibilities over their children for mothers and fathers;
(3) Pensions for civilian widows with dependent children. These resolutions
were endorsed by nineteen constituent societies, including such important
bodies as the National Council of Women, the Federation of Women Civil
Servants and the Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries.
This week, on the advent
to power of the new Ministry, the Six Point Group passed a resolution
calling upon the Labour Government this session 'to rectify the Sex
Disqualification (Removal) Act, to pass a measure giving pensions
to widows with dependent children, and to pass a measure giving equal
rights of guardianship to married parents'; whilst at their Annual
Conference, just concluded, the National Union of Women Teachers declared
that what was needed was a Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act which
'meant what it said and said what it meant.' Lastly, the Women's Freedom
League is holding a Public Meeting on February 6th (the sixth anniversary
of the passing into law of the Representation of the People Bill,
which gave the vote to the majority of women over thirty), with the
object of pressing for the immediate extension of the vote to women
'at the same age and on the same terms as men have it.'
In view of these declarations,
no Ministry can mistake the demands of the women's organisations.
The immediate programme upon which they are set is perfectly clear:-
(1) Pensions for fatherless
children.
(2) Equal guardianship.
(3) Equal franchise.
(4) The rectification
of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act.
Nor are the omens unpropitious.
In the course of the statesmanlike speech in which he moved the vote
of want of confidence last Friday, Mr. Clynes - now leader of the
House of Commons - found time to regret that the King's Speech did
not include 'proposals for passing into law a measure to provide pensions
for widowed mothers'; whilst the Manifesto issued by the Labour Party
at the last election stated: 'Labour stands for equality between men
and women: equal political and legal rights, equal rights and privileges
in parenthood, equal pay for equal work.' In order to attain these
things the removal of sex disqualification, the granting of the franchise
on equal terms to men and women and an equal guardianship measure,
are obviously the first steps.
(11)
Winifred Holtby,
Time
and Tide
(6th August, 1926)
Hitherto, society has drawn one prime division between two sections
of people, the line
of sex-differentiation, with men above and women below. The Old Feminists
believe that the conception of this line, and the attempt to preserve
it by political and economic laws and social traditions not only checks
the development of the woman's personality, but prevents her from
making that contribution to the common good which is the privilege
and the obligation of every human being.
While the inequality exists,
while injustice is done and opportunities denied to the great majority
of women, I shall have to be a feminist, and an Old Feminist, with
the motto Equality First. And I shan't be happy till I get it.
(12)
Helena
Swanwick, Time
and Tide (4th November 1927)
The earlier struggles of
women for emancipation necessarily take the form of beating at the
closed doors of life. Till these are opened and we can see for ourselves
what there is of knowledge and opportunity we cannot know how much
we can put to good use. Many of these doors are still closed, but
far more have been opened even in my lifetime than, as a girl, I should
have ventured to hope. Our immediate and difficult task is to test
all and reject what is not for us; to modify much and adapt it to
our needs and natures. It is a commonplace to say that women are born
into a world still largely man-made, it is their business to modify
it till it becomes a human world as fit for full-sized women to live
in as for full-sized men. It is my conviction that most men have not
a notion how immensely better the world could be made for them, by
the full co-operation of women. But that's another story.
The welfare and the wealth
of a society depend upon the full functioning of all the beneficent
and productive activities of all its members. The health and happiness,
the mental growth and development of all these members depend upon
their full functioning. Therefore all theories of the State, or of
government, or of family organization which require the limitation
or restriction of such functioning are sterilizing theories; all conditions
of society which make such limitation or restriction inevitable, are
diseased conditions and intelligent people will not sit down content
with the disease and its resultant restrictions, but will set about
removing the disease and the restrictions with it. Sometimes the removal
of the restrictions actually precedes and encourages the removal of
the disease.
(13)
Helena
Swanwick, Time
and Tide (11th November
1927)
It takes a very patient
and understanding sort of woman not to go off the deep end when she
hears men talk of 'the unfair competition of women.' Because women
carry a pretty heavy handicap; because the conditions of their lives
in the past have made their organisation very difficult and they have
therefore been more docile in the hands of employers; because their
work is apt to be more intermittent (owing to domestic claims) and
more unskilled (owing to lack of training); because they have schooled
themselves, through necessity, to wait on themselves and spend less
on themselves than their male fellow-workers do these fellow-workers
complain of their 'unfair competition' and have made persistent efforts,
which are by no means ended to exclude women from any work which is
attractive enough for men to desire it. This is the real sex war and,
like all war it is immensely wasteful of life, it creates an immense
amount of ill-feeling and it does not arrive at the desired results.
Women must work because
they need the work and the independence resulting from it and because
the community
needs it. Women should have the same reasonable freedom in the choice
of their work as men have. And it is no answer to this plea to say
(as one often hears said) that men have very little choice; for their
condition is not bettered by worsening that of women and they would
do well to join forces with women in improving the education and organization
of all human beings of both sexes so that they might all be better
adapted to the work they undertake. One most vital reform is to keep
children out of the labour market.
(14)
Helena
Swanwick, Time
and Tide (18th November
1927)
The old theory is that
a man 'keeps' his wife, and this is just, so long as he prevents her
from keeping herself. But when a woman becomes able to keep herself,
and when the conditions of marriage allow of her exercising this ability,
there will be no moral basis for the claim that a man should 'keep'
his wife. It is a claim deeply demoralising to both parties. He may
employ her, and pay her; she may employ him, and pay him; they may
go into partnership together. But a self-respecting girl does not
like the notion of being 'kept.' Marriage in itself is not work, and
should not be paid for. It is no longer universally held to be a wife's
duty (any more than a daughter's duty) 'to be there,' always on tap
as it were. This, in itself, is a great improvement in the married
state, bringing that element of variety and independence which prevents
satiety and the devastating habit of taking everything for granted.
Doubtless it will often be convenient, so long as individual-run homes
exist, for the wife to do, or to supervise, the domestic work. If
she does this efficiently she should be paid the value of it; in the
case of inefficiency the work and the pay should be transferred to
another. The conditions of these individual homes are becoming increasingly
distasteful to women, many of whom seem to have no aptitude at all
for domestic work, and dislike the confinement and solitude. For these
women some form of cooperative housekeeping is the obvious solution;
incidentally also this is a far more economical way of carrying on
domestic business. A considerable part of this cooperative housekeeping
will naturally be done by men as cooks, furnace-men, cleaners, etc.,
for men's gregariousness at once leads them to take up women's work
(for example, a spinster's) when they can do it in company, and be
paid for it.
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