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Women's Labour League
The Women's Labour League (WLL) was a pressure organisation, founded in London in 1906, to promote the political representation of women in parliament and local bodies. The idea was first suggested by Mary Macpherson, a linguist and journalist who had connections with the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and was taken up by several notable socialist women, including Margaret MacDonald, Ada Salter, Marion Phillips and Margaret Bondfield. The League's inaugural conference was held in Leicester, with representatives of branches in London, Leicester, Preston and Hull. It was affiliated to the Labour Party. Margaret MacDonald acted as the League's president, while both Margaret Bondfield and Marion Phillips served at times as its organising secretary. Much of the League's campaigning effort was devoted to the issue of women's suffrage. In 1913 the League decided that its membership of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was incompatible with socialism, as the WS ...
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Mary Macpherson
Mary Amelia Macpherson was a British people, British socialist activist. Born as Mary Amelia Foster, she studied at the Bedford Ladies College, London. In 1896, she married Fenton Macpherson, who later became Foreign Editor of the Daily Mail. She lived for a time in Paris, where she became a socialist and trade unionist, but later returned to London. There, she joined the Independent Labour Party and took a prominent role in campaigning in the 1897 Barnsley by-election. She was also part of the Clarion (magazine), Clarion movement, and organised the Clarion Van tour of the West of England in 1897. Macpherson retained links with the French socialist movement, as the English correspondent of ''Le Mouvement Socialiste''. She also became the London representative of the ''Labour Leader'', and contributed to the ''Railway Review'' under the pseudonym "Margery Daw". In 1898, Macpherson joined the Fabian Society, and she served on its executive for a year in 1900/01. That year, she ...
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Charlotte Despard
Charlotte Despard (née French; 15 June 1844 – 10 November 1939) was an Anglo-Irish people, Anglo-Irish suffragist, socialist, pacifist, Sinn Féin activist, and novelist. She was a founding member of the Women's Freedom League, the Women's Peace Crusade, and the Irish Women's Franchise League, and an activist in a wide range of political organizations over the course of her life, including among others the Women's Social and Political Union, Humanitarian League, Labour Party (UK), Labour Party, Cumann na mBan, and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Despard was imprisoned four times for her suffragette activism, and she continued campaigning for women's rights, poverty relief and world peace into her 90s. Early life Charlotte French was born on 15 June 1844 in Edinburgh and lived as a child in Edinburgh and Campbeltown in Scotland and from around 1850 in England at Ripple, Kent, her father was Irish Captain John Tracy William French of the Royal Navy (who died in 1855) and ...
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Democratic Socialism
Democratic socialism is a left-wing economic ideology, economic and political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a market socialist, decentralised planned, or democratic Centrally planned economies, centrally planned socialist economy. Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, Egalitarianism, equality, and solidarity and that these Ideal (ethics), ideals can only be achieved through the realisation of a socialist society. Although most democratic socialists seek a gradual transition to socialism, democratic socialism can support revolutionary or reformist politics to establish socialism. ''Democratic socialism'' was popularised by socialists who opposed the backsliding towards a one-party state in the Soviet Union and other countries during the 20th century. The his ...
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Social Democracy
Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, social democracy has taken the form of predominantly capitalist economies, a robust welfare state, policies promoting social justice, market regulation, and a more Redistribution of income and wealth, equitable distribution of income. Social democracy maintains a commitment to Representative democracy, representative and participatory democracy. Common aims include curbing Social inequality, inequality, eliminating the oppression of Social privilege, underprivileged groups, eradicating poverty, and upholding universally accessible public services such as child care, Universal education, education, elderly care, Universal health care, health care, and workers' compensation. Economically, it support ...
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Christian Socialism
Christian socialism is a Religious philosophy, religious and political philosophy that blends Christianity and socialism, endorsing socialist economics on the basis of the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Many Christian socialists believe capitalism to be idolatrous and rooted in the sin of greed. Christian socialists identify the cause of social inequality to be the greed that they associate with capitalism. Christian socialism became a major movement in the United Kingdom beginning in the 19th century. The Christian Socialist Movement, known as Christians on the Left since 2013, is one formal group, as well as a faction of the Labour Party (UK), Labour Party. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', socialism is a "social and economic doctrine that calls for public rather than private ownership or control of property and natural resources. According to the socialist view, individuals do not live or work isolated, but live in cooperation with one another. Furthermore, e ...
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Annie Huggett
Annie Clara Huggett (1892–1995) was an English political activist in Barking, London. She was a suffragette, working to bring about women's suffrage in the United Kingdom and met with prominent suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. Huggett was a long-term member of the Labour Party and received a lifetime achievement award from party leader John Smith in the early 1990s. She is remembered in the name of a women's centre in Dagenham and was cited in announcements of the renaming of the Gospel Oak to Barking line of the London Overground to the Suffragette Line in 2024. Biography Annie Clara French was born in Halstead, Essex, in 1892. Her family brought her to Barking in the east of London when they moved into one of the borough's first council houses on King Edward's Road in 1903. As a teenager Huggett became a supporter of the suffragettes, who were fighting a militant campaign for women's suffrage. From the age of 18 she organized suffragette campaign meetings at the Thr ...
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Agnes Dollan
Agnes Johnston Dollan MBE ( Moir; 16 August 1887 – 16 July 1966), also known as Agnes, Lady Dollan, was a Scottish suffragette and political activist. She was a leading campaigner during the Glasgow Rent Strikes, and a founding organiser of the Women's Peace Crusade. In 1919, she was the first woman selected by the Labour party to stand for election to Glasgow Town Council, and later became Lady Provost of Glasgow. Early life Dollan was born on Springburn Road in Springburn, Glasgow on 16 August 1887 to Anne Wilkinson and Henry Moir, a blacksmith in the locomotive works. She was one of eleven children. Dollan attended school locally until the age of eleven before being forced to leave due to family poverty. Dollan also attended the Socialist Sunday Schools, where she "graduated as a Socialist". On leaving school, Dollan went first to work in a factory before becoming a Post Office telephone operator. During this latter job, Dollan joined the Women's Labour League ...
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Maud Ward
Maud M. A. Ward was a British socialist activist. The daughter of an Anglican vicar, she studied at the National Training School of Cookery and became a cook. She became interested in socialism and joined the Social Democratic Federation in Tunbridge Wells, teaching a class on Marxist economics. Ward supported women's suffrage, joining the Adult Suffrage Society, and serving as its secretary from 1908 to 1909. She was also on the Women's Labour League committee and was a close friend of its leader, Margaret Bondfield, who shared a house with her and Ethel Clarke at one time. In 1911, Ward gave up activism to become the Chief Woman Inspector for the National Insurance Act 1911 The National Insurance Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 55) created National Insurance, originally a system of health insurance for industrial workers in Great Britain based on contributions from employers, the government, and the workers themselves. .... References {{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Maud Social Democra ...
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Mary Middleton
Mary Middleton (1870 – 24 April 1911) was a Scottish political activist. Born in Carnwath in Lanarkshire as Mary Muir, her father was a mining overman, and the family moved around various mining villages in the area. She performed strongly at school and hoped to become a teacher, but this did not pay enough for her to contribute to her family's upkeep, so she instead became a domestic servant in Workington.Cathy Hartley, ''A Historical Dictionary of British Women'', p.316 While in Workington, Mary met James Middleton, who was working at his father's paper, the ''Workington Star''. The two soon married, and moved to London, where James found work with the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). By 1905, there had been several suggestions that the group should find a way in which non-working women could assist it and benefit from its political education. In 1906, when the LRC became the Labour Party, Middleton was a leading founder of the Women's Labour League. She serve ...
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Clarice McNab
Clarice Marion Shaw (née McNab; 22 October 1883 – 27 October 1946) was a Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Early life Shaw grew up in a multi-generational household in Leith. She left school at fourteen and for nine years worked as a typist before becoming a Labour councillor on Leith School Board and later to its Town Council.''Women who aspire to sit in Parliament-''Illustrated London News - 11 May 1929 in 1918 she married Ben Shaw, the Scottish organiser for the Labour Party and moved to Ayrshire. Political career In 1916 she was the only woman Labour councillor in Scotland and at that time she expressed the view that if there were more women councillors then issues like child welfare and infant mortality would receive more attention. She stood as a parliamentary candidate for Rutherglen in the 1919 General Election-alongside other women, Helen Crawfurd and Agnes Dollan Agnes Johnston Dollan MBE ( Moir; 16 August 1887&n ...
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Mary Macarthur
Mary Reid Anderson (née Macarthur; 13 August 1880 – 1 January 1921) was a Scottish suffragist (although at odds with the national groups who were willing to let a minority of women gain the franchise) and was a leading Trade Union, trades unionist. She was the general secretary of the Women's Trade Union League (United Kingdom), Women's Trade Union League and was involved in the formation of the National Federation of Women Workers and National Anti-Sweating League. In 1910, Macarthur led the women chain makers of Cradley Heath to victory in their fight for a minimum wage and led a strike to force employers to implement the rise. Around 1901, Macarthur became a trade unionist after hearing a speech made by John Turner about how badly some workers were being treated by their employers. She became secretary of the Ayr branch of the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks, Shop Assistants' Union, and her interest in this union led to her work fo ...
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Eveline Lowe
Eveline Mary Lowe (29 November 1869 – 30 May 1956) was a British politician. Born in Rotherhithe as Eveline Farren, she attended Milton Mount College and then Homerton College, where she qualified as a teacher. She then began teaching at the college, becoming its vice-principal in 1894 and relocating with the institution to Cambridge. In 1903, she married George Carter Lowe, and left teaching. The two moved to Bermondsey, where George joined the medical practice run by Alfred Salter. Along with Alfred and Ada Salter, Lowe founded a Bermondsey branch of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and she was soon elected to the local Board of Guardians.Lowe [née Farren], Eveline Mary
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