Eleanor
Rathbone was
born in London on 12th
May 1872. Her father, William Rathbone, a prosperous shipowner, came
from a Quaker and Unitarian
background. A supporter of the Liberal Party,
William Rathbone served in the House of Commons
from 1869 to 1895.
Rathbone was educated
at home by a governess and private tutors before entering Somerville
College, Oxford, in 1893. At university
Rathbone became involved in the struggle to obtain women the vote
and eventually became a leading figure in the National
Union of Women's Suffrage Societies
(NUWSS).
After leaving
university with a degree in philosophy, Rathbone became secretary
of the Women's
Industrial Council in
Liverpool and
was very involved in the organization's campaign against low pay and
bad working conditions. In 1909 she became the first woman to be elected
to Liverpool City Council and over the next few years argued for improved
housing in the city.
Rathbone
was elected to the executive committee of the NUWSS
and led the opposition to the decision in 1912 to advise all members
to campaign for the Labour Party in the
general election. The following year she published her first book,
The Condition of Widows under the Poor Law
(1913).
During
the First World War Rathbone established a committee
to look into poverty in Britain. Members included H.
N. Brailsford,
Made Royden, Kathleen Courtney, Emile Burns and Mary Stocks. In 1917
the Family Endowment Committee published Equal
Pay and the Family. A Proposal for the National Endowment of Motherhood.
In the pamphlet Rathbone and her colleagues argued for the introduction
of family allowances.
On the
resignation of Millicent
Fawcett in
1919, Rathbone became president of the NUWSS.
She continued to campaign for social reform and in 1925 published
her important book, The Disinherited Family.
The following year the introduction of family allowances became a
policy of the Independent
Labour Party.
However, the idea was rejected by the three major political parties.
In 1929
Rathbone was elected to the House of Commons
as the Independent Member for the Combined British Universities. Over
the next few years she campaigned against female circumcision in Africa,
child marriage in India and forced marriage in Palestine. This included
the publication of the book, Child Marriage:
The Indian Minotaur (1934).
Rathbone
also took a keen interest in foreign policy and was a strong opponent
of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia
and non-intervention
in the Spanish
Civil War.
In April 1937, Rathbone, Ellen
Wilkinson and
the Duchess of Atholl travelled
to Spain on a fact-finding mission. The
party visited Madrid,
Barcelona
and Valencia
and observed
the havoc being caused by the Luftwaffe.
In May 1937
Rathbone joined with Charlotte
Haldane,
Duchess
of Atholl, Ellen
Wilkinson and J.
B. Priestley to
establish the Dependents Aid Committee, an organization which raised
money for the families of men who were members of the International
Brigades. Later
she helped establish the National Joint Committee for Spanish Relief.
Rathbone
grew increasingly concerned about Adolf Hitler
and his government in Nazi Germany.
She totally opposed the British government's policy of appeasement
and instead called for an alliance with the Soviet
Union. These views were expressed in her book, War
Can Be Averted (1937) and were officially supported by
Winston
Churchill,
Clement
Attlee,
David
Lloyd George,
Hugh
Dalton
and Margery
Corbett-Ashby.
During
the Second World War Rathbone continued to campaign
for family allowances and in 1940 published The
Case for Family Allowances. This became the policy of the
Labour Party and her family allowances system
was introduced in 1945. However, Rathbone was furious when she discovered
that the allowance was to be paid to the father rather than the mother.
This negated the feminist implications of the measure and she threatened
to vote against the Bill. Eleanor
Rathbone died
of a heart-attack on 2nd January 1946.
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(1)
Mary Stocks, a member of the Family Endowment Committee, wrote about
it in her book, Eleanor Rathbone (1949)
Eleanor assembled a small committee consisting
of seven persons with whom she had discussed the matter and whom she
knew to be sympathetic to the idea. Two of them were former colleagues
on the N.U.W.S.S. Executive Committee: Kathleen Courtney and Maude
Royden; one was a newcomer on the Executive: Mary Stocks. A fourth
was H. N. Brailsford, a left-wing author and journalist of international
fame on international subjects, but in addition a very active feminist.
To them were added Mr. and Mrs. Emile Burns, both good feminists,
Socialists and students of economics.
The Committee thus had
its roots in the women's suffrage movement, but its personnel was
definitely left-wing. With the exception of Eleanor, who neither at
that time nor at any other professed adherence to a political party,
her six pioneer colleagues were either members of the Labour Party
or in sympathy with it. And in view of the fact that their object
was to inject a strong dose of social provision into the body politic,
this early bias is perhaps understandable.
It deliberated under the
shadow of war. In fact the war, or conditions precipitated by the
war, had provided it with a starting point for its deliberations.
The question of "equal pay for equal work" had become acute,
and in one corner of
the industrial field women bus conductors had carried through a successful
strike for "equal pay." A record of their struggle and the
social implications of their victory formed the opening chapter of
the statement which the Family Endowment Committee drafted. Following
the familiar chain of argument, it recapitulated the case for direct
provision for the family, illustrating its progress with statistics
assembled under the expert guidance of Emile Burns. From this there
emerged a concrete scheme for the payment by the State to all mothers
qua mothers of the scale of allowances then in force for the
wives of Service men.
(2)
In 1919 Eleanor Rathbone played an important role in developing the
six major demands of the National
Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
1. Equal pay for equal work, involving an open
field for women in industry and the professions.
2. An equal standard of
sex morals as between men and women, involving a reform of the existing
divorce law which condoned adultery by the husband, as well as reform
of the laws dealing with solicitation and prostitution.
3. The introduction of
legislation to provide pensions for civilian widows with dependent
children.
4. The equalization of
the franchise and the return to Parliament of women candidates pledged
to the equality programme.
5. The legal recognition
of mothers as equal guardians with fathers of their children.
6. The opening of the
legal profession and the magistracy to women.
(3)
Eleanor Rathbone, Presidential Address to the Annual Council of the
NUWSS (1926)
Most of our reforms today require difficult
readjustments of a complicated, antiquated structure of case law and
statute law. We were backwoodsmen in pre-war days; now we need to
be skilled artisans. If we go to the Government saying merely, this
or that is wrong, put it right for us, they can bluff us as a lazy
builder bluffs an ignorant housewife who asks him to cure her smoky
chimney, saying, 'Madam, what you want is impossible; if we did it
the house would tumble down.' Our method is to study the faulty structure
for ourselves and make our plans, though they may not be exactly the
plans which the builder carries out, yet he sees we know too
much to be pacified with bluff.
(4)
Eleanor Rathbone, speech at Bedford College (29th November 1935)
There is a school of reformers which despises
compromise. Suppose they set their affections on the moon. Their way
is to go on chanting, 'We want the moon, we want the moon, we want
the moon.' The plan which experience taught us was to begin by declaring,
'We want the moon,' but when certain that was unobtainable, to say
firmly, 'If you can't give us the moon, give us that particular star,
that big one'; if that failed, 'At least let us have that little star,
just near the horizon. You know you can reach that one.' And when
we got it, from the vantage ground of that little star, we proceeded
to grasp at those nearest it. Or,
to change the metaphor, there are reformers whose idea of taking a
citadel is to march round it blowing trumpets, and when that fails,
to batter it with rams, if necessary with their own heads. We sometimes
used the battering ram, but if the wall proved too strong for us we
withdrew a little and investigated every possible method of overcoming
that wall, by climbing over it, or tunnelling under it or perhaps
labouring to dislodge a stone at a time, so that just a few invaders
could creep through. And we acquired by experience a certain flair
which told us when a charge of dynamite would come in useful and when
it was better to rely on the methods of the skilled engineer.
Another lesson we learned
was the importance of being early
in the field. If some legislative change is known to be projected
which one wants to influence, it does not do to wait until the authorities
have definitely made up their minds as to the form of the change;
much less until the Bill is actually drafted and may be difficult
to amend without upsetting the balance of its parts. Get at the people
responsible, the
Minister or, better still, the officials or committees which
advise him, while they are still in the stage of welcoming
evidence and suggestions rather than of resenting criticism.
(5)
After her visit to Spain in April 1937,
Eleanor Rathbone wrote to her constituents about the Spanish
Civil War.
In these days of defeatism, it is something
to have seen a great city full of men and women who throughout a year
of privation, terror and suffering have looked death in the face without
losing their courage, their complete confidence in the victory of
their cause, or even their high spirits. The Civil War had thrown
up a great people - great at least in the qualities of courage and
devotion to unselfish ends. Think of those men and women, with centuries
of oppression behind them, bred in bitter poverty and ignorance, deserted
by most of their natural leaders, delivered over defenceless to their
enemies by the democracies which should have aided them. Think of
them as I saw them last April in Madrid and Valencia, men and women,
young and old, without a trace of fear or dejection in their faces
though bombs were crashing a few yards away and taking their daily
toll of victims, going about their daily business in cheerful serenity,
building up a system of social services that would have been a credit
to any nation at war, submitting to unaccustomed discipline, composing
their party differences, going to the front or sending their men to
the front as though to a. fiesta, unstimulated - most of them - by
hope of Heaven or fear of Hell, yet
willing to leave the golden Spanish sunshine and all the
lovely sights and sounds of spring and go into the blackness
of death or the greater blackness of cruel captivity without
a thought of surrender.
(6)
Eleanor Rathbone, letter to Winston
Churchill (September,
1938)
Everyone I meet, mostly not of your party, wonders
what you are thinking about the Government's attitude and whether
you do not favour a more plain-spoken warning to Hitler. Hearing nothing,
we are left wondering whether you too believe that our military position
is too weak for us to venture on that. Hitherto only the Trades Union
Congress and the Labour Party have spoken out in a way calculated
to make Hitler believe that England may possibly mean business. If
you did feel able to say anything of the same sort and especially
if Mr. Eden did so too, I believe it would rally opinion in the country
as nothing else would. There is a great longing for leadership and
even those who are far apart from you in general politics realize
that you are the one man who has combined full realization
of the dangers of our military position with belief in collective
international action against aggression. And if we fail again, will
there ever be another chance?
(7)
Eleanor Rathbone, election address (1945)
The earliest risks may arise not from pulverized
Germany, but from the relations between ourselves and Russia. As one
who has given many proofs of sincere desire for Anglo-Soviet friendship,
I am deeply perturbed by signs of the Soviet's intention to take full
advantage of the freedom of access and of criticism allowed them by
the Western Powers while rigidly excluding all impartial observers,
not only from the conquered lands they control, but from Poland, which
they professedly desire to see free and independent. Yet we have a
special responsibility towards Poland, on whose behalf we entered
the war. The London Polish Government may be inordinately ambitious
and unrealistic. The offered Curzon Line may be quite good enough.
What matters is, as Mr. Churchill put it, whether the Poles are to
be 'masters in their own house' or their State 'a mere projection
of the Soviet State, forced against their will, by an armed minority,
to adopt
a Communist or totalitarian system.' It looks as though the latter
were Marshal Stalin's intention."
(8)
Mary Stocks, Eleanor Rathbone (1949)
The triumph of family allowances involved her
in a social event which may or may not have given her pleasure, but
which undoubtedly gave pleasure to a wide circle of her friends and
fellow workers. On November 13th (1945) they organized a gathering
in Grosvenor House: tea to begin with, speeches to follow. It was
a distinguished gathering, graced by the presence of the Minister
for National Insurance and Sir William (later Lord) Beveridge. Unfortunately,
the date happened to coincide with a Parliamentary statement by the
Foreign Secretary on Palestine, in which the guest of honour was passionately
interested. There was indeed some doubt as to whether Elizabeth would
be able to extract her from the House of Commons. However the thing
was done, she arrived a little late, and appeared to enjoy meeting
old friends, many of them campaigners of the suffrage as well as of
the family allowance cause. The speeches which followed, however,
appeared to cause her some little embarrassment. In reply to glowing
but in fact unexaggerated tributes, she
endeavoured to shift the praise on to some of those present.
But here her sense of
proportion and of historical accuracy was at fault, for if ever one
person was responsible for a major reform, Eleanor was responsible
for family allowances. Of course, Plimsoll did not achieve his Plimsoll
line in complete isolation. Of course, Belisha did not erect his beacons
single-handed and Lansbury could scarcely have constructed his Lido
without public support. In a literal sense, Eleanor was right in disclaiming
sole responsibility for family allowances. Nevertheless, if there
had been no Eleanor it is difficult not to conclude that there would
have been no Family Allowance Act
in 1945. It was her victory, conceived in her brain, brought to
birth by her persistence, shaped by her vehemence.
She herself had no time
for such thoughts. The Family Allowance
Bill had become an Act. It was not a very good Act.
In due course it would certainly have to be amended.
(9)
Harold
Nicholson,
Eleanor Rathbone, The
Spectator (11th January
1946)
Her contribution to the legislative assembly
was a distinctively feminine contribution. By this I do not mean only
that she was at first mainly interested in the improvement of family
conditions and in the recognition of the responsible place which women
must occupy in the life of the State. I mean that the persistence
and the zeal with which
she identified herself with her own causes gave a new meaning to,
or deprived of all meaning, the facile criticism that 'women approach
politics from a personal point of view. She taught the House of Commons
that such identification, while intense, could be completely selfless.
She added objective ardour to subjective sympathy.
This fusion of ardour
with selflessness had another aspect. She was in fact so absolutely
selfless that she seemed at moments to be devoid of all self-consciousness.
Even her admirers would feel at times that she lacked a sense of occasion
and that her appeals and interruptions were intrusive and ill-timed.
There were those - especially those who sat upon the Front Bench or
were charged with administrative responsibilities - who felt that
she relied too much upon the feminine privilege of making herself
a nuisance. Again and again have I observed Ministers or Under-Secretaries
wince in terror when they observed that familiar figure advancing
towards them along the corridors; they would make sudden gestures
indicating that they had left some vital document behind them, swing
round on their feet, and scurry back to their rooms; or equally suddenly
they would engage some passing colleague in passionate conversation,
placing a confiding but retentive hand upon his startled shoulder,
waiting in trepidation until she had passed by. She was too shrewd
not to observe these subterfuges and evasions. Benign and yet menacing,
she would stalk through the lobby, one arm weighed with the heavy
satchel which contained the papers on family allowances, another arm
dragging an even heavier satchel in which were stored the more recent
papers about refugees and displaced persons; recalcitrant Ministers
would quail before the fire of her magnificent eyes. Yet she was aware
that her ardour was apt to create a mood of sales resistance. Again
and again she would ask some other member to approach a given Minister
on the ground that she herself had tried his patience too far. Yet
although in attack she was as undeviating, as relentless and as pertinacious
as a flying bomb, in the moment of victory she was amazingly conciliatory.
While the battle was on she displayed all the passion of the fanatic;
when the enemy yielded, she advanced towards him bearing the olive
branch of compromise.
It was not only the feminine
qualities of identification, of fanaticism and of persistence which
rendered Eleanor Rathbone so formidable. Her position as an independent
Member made her immune to the discipline and even to the conventions
of party politics. Her hatred of cruelty in any form was matched by
an equally passionate contempt for acts of unfairness which were due
to inattention, laziness, lack of precise knowledge or ordinary easy
going. Her slings were weighted with the pebbles of hard fact and
she would hurl these missiles, sometimes rashly, sometimes intemperately,
but sometimes with devastating effect.
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