Margaret Sturge Thorp (12 June 1892 – 5 May 1978), also known as "The Peace Angel", was a peace activist and labour activist active in Australia in the 20th century. A
Quaker, her religious beliefs guided her to a life of advocating for a variety of pacifist and feminist causes.
Early life
Thorp was born in
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
in 1892, the second youngest of the five children of Dr. James Herbert Thorp, and his wife Annie.
The family lived in a middle-class area not far from the slums of Liverpool, where the young Thorp would hear the sounds of "noise, shrieks, and drunken brawls" at night.
Dr Thorp worked as a physician at the Richmond Road Medical Mission in the slums, and during her teenage years Margaret would often accompany her father to the mission where she would conduct discussions. While the Thorp family were committed Quakers, this religious philosophy having a profound effect and leading Margaret to a philosophy of pacifism that she would remain dedicated to for her whole life, the family had a rather liberal outlook for a Quaker family at the time. Musical entertainment, usually considered as frivolous by more conservative Quakers, was a constant feature at social gatherings and religious meetings held in the Thorp household.
In 1909, Thorp attended
The Mount School in
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
,
a girls' school run by Quakers, where social service and social justice were considered important aspects of school life. She went on to study at
Woodbroke College in Birmingham in 1911,
studying a mixture of subjects including international affairs and Quaker history. At Woodbroke, Thorp came into contact with several radical figures associated with the
Young Friends Movement, including
Barratt Brown, a member of the
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates ...
active in campaigning against conscription. At a Young Friends conference in Swanwick, Thorp was instrumental in the move to take a more active and assertive role against the practice of military conscription.
Tasmania and North America
Thorp first visited Australia in 1911 with her family, at the age of nineteen. Originally arriving in
Adelaide
Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...
, they journeyed onto
Hobart where Dr Thorp had been invited to temporarily fill in as the headmaster of the Friends' School there, to advise Quakers in Tasmania about the consequences of the Australian government's conscription policy.
While in Australia, Dr Thorp also became interested in the issue of conscription, being involved in the formation of the Anti-Military Service League with members of other religious denominations. The Thorp family was shocked on their arrival in Hobart to find that the school was "over-run" by young military cadets in uniform, who would go as far as to salute the family when they walked past. Dr Thorp took steps to demilitarise the school, causing some controversy amongst the non-Quaker members of the community on whom the school relied.
While in Hobart, Thorp was involved in the creation of a chapter of the
Australian Freedom League (AFL), a body descended from the Thorp Anti-Military Service League that her father had been involved in founding. The AFL was not totally pacifist in nature, concerning itself primarily with opposition to the notion of compulsory military service, and was formed from a broad coalition of community organisations, including pacifist groups but also socialists and trade unionists. She was a delegate to the first AFL national conference (in Adelaide) in 1913, and spoke often about the perceived moral deterioration that camp life and the drill hall caused in young men and boys. When not involved with the AFL, Thorp was a keen rower, and played
field hockey
Field hockey is a team sport structured in standard hockey format, in which each team plays with ten outfield players and a goalkeeper. Teams must drive a round hockey ball by hitting it with a hockey stick towards the rival team's shooting ...
competitively.
The Thorp family returned to England in April 1914, although at the time they intended to return to Hobart and make it their permanent home. Thorp remained active in Quaker circles, touring North America with a delegation of Young Friends starting in June. It was here, at a resort in
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
that she learned that war had been declared in Europe. She returned to England (but not before speaking to an audience of thousands of Quakers at a conference in
Saratoga Springs, New York
Saratoga Springs is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area, which has made Saratoga a popular resort destination for over 2 ...
) on the ''
RMS Olympic
RMS ''Olympic'' was a British ocean liner and the lead ship of the White Star Line's trio of liners. ''Olympic'' had a career spanning 24 years from 1911 to 1935, in contrast to her short-lived sister ships, ''Titanic'' and ''Britannic''. Thi ...
'', and shortly thereafter the family returned as a whole to Australia, settling in the town of
Toowoomba
Toowoomba ( , nicknamed 'The Garden City' and 'T-Bar') is a city in the Toowoomba Region of the Darling Downs, Queensland, Australia. It is west of Queensland's capital city Brisbane by road. The urban population of Toowoomba as of the 2021 ...
, west of
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...
,
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, establishe ...
.
Women's Peace Army
The
Women's Peace Army
Formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1915, the Women’s Peace Army was an Australian anti-war socialist movement that sought to mobilise and unite women, regardless of political or religious beliefs, in their opposition to war. Autonomous branche ...
(WPA) was an organisation that had been set up by noted suffragist
Vida Goldstein
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein (pron. ) (13 April 186915 August 1949) was an Australian suffragist and social reformer. She was one of four female candidates at the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand.
Goldstein wa ...
in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
, with branches established in Brisbane and Sydney.
After her parents had settled into their new home, Thorp had intended to embark on a "peace mission" in Brisbane, however her reputation had preceded her and she was approached by WPA members
Adela Pankhurst
Adela Constantia Mary Walsh ( Pankhurst; 19 June 1885 – 23 May 1961) was a British born suffragette who worked as a political organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union, WSPU in Scotland. In 1914 she moved to Australia where she con ...
and
Cecilia John and asked to establish and promote the WPA in Queensland.
Although initially hesitant to get involved given the WPA's reputation for militancy, Thorp soon became a prominent leader and spokesperson of the organisation in Brisbane. She spoke in front of a number of prominent women's organisations, including the
Young Women's Christian Association
The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries.
The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...
, the
Red Cross
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and ...
, and the
National Council of Women, however she gained most support from her association with
Emma Miller
Emma Miller (26 June 1839 – 22 January 1917) was an English-born Australian pioneer trade union organiser, suffragist, and key figure in organisations which led to the founding of the Australian Labor Party in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. ...
and through her, other organisations on the political left.
At its peak under Thorp's leadership, the WPA had approximately a hundred and thirty financial members, had branches in regional towns such as
Ipswich
Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line ...
and
Rockhampton, and support from a much wider circle of supporters, although only a small proportion of the financial members were involved in the day-to-day running of the organisation.
Thorp was often outspoken in her advocacy on issues such as conscription, and on occasion this led to conflict with advocates for opposing points of view. In one incident in 1917, Thorp was involved in a series of
violent confrontations at the
Brisbane School of Arts, where she led a group of WPA members trying to disrupt a meeting of the
Women's Compulsory Service Petition League. Trying to take to the podium to read an anti-conscription message, Thorp was knocked to the ground by the enraged pro-conscriptionists
and was punched, scratched, and kicked.
Following this incident, a badly shaken Thorp relinquished her leadership role in the WPA, handing over to fellow activist Kathleen Hotson, and returned to Toowoomba to care for her ailing father. By early 1918, she was in
Buderim
Buderim ( ) is an urban centre on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. It sits on a mountain which overlooks the southern Sunshine Coast communities. In the , the urban area of Buderim had a population of 54,483.
The name "Buderim" i ...
at the home of her brother Elliot.
After the war
Following the end of the war and the demise of conscription as a political issue, Thorp returned to England in 1920. She became active in war relief, working in Berlin and the
Volga
The Volga (; russian: Во́лга, a=Ru-Волга.ogg, p=ˈvoɫɡə) is the longest river in Europe. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchm ...
area of Russia under the British Red Cross Society. In 1923, she returned to Australia once more, settling in Sydney, where on 1 October 1925 she married Arthur Watts,
a fellow Quaker whom she had first met during her days in the AFL, and who had also been active in war relief in Europe until he had contracted
typhoid
Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by ''Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several d ...
in Russia. During this time she continued to be active in community work, including with the City Girls' Amateur Sports Association, the Young Women's Christian Association, and the New South Wales Society for Crippled Children. Arthur left Australia for Russia permanently in 1931; Thorp did not share her husband's enthusiasm for all things Russian and disapproved of the direction that the communist government was taking the country, and they were divorced in 1936.
In later life she continued to be active in social causes. She was appointed as a
Justice of the Peace in 1955, and then as an
MBE in 1957. She retired from active work in 1962; however, she continued to be active with groups such as the Quaker Service Council. She was a fierce critic of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam a ...
and arranged for the adoption of Vietnamese
war orphans by Australian families. She died in May 1978.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Thorp, Margaret
1892 births
1978 deaths
Australian Christian pacifists
Australian Quakers
Members of the Order of the British Empire
Quaker feminists