‘In The
Steps Of Exceptional Women’, The Story Of The Fawcett Society 1866-2016. By
Jane W. Grant. Francis Boutle Publishers. 2016. £14.99
My Summer
reading has included ‘In The Steps Of Exceptional Women’ by Dr Jane
Grant. Her book celebrates the remarkable story of The Fawcett Society
from its inception in 1866.‘ The Society is the UK charity campaigning for
gender equality and women’s rights, now celebrating its 150th
anniversary. Millicent Fawcett after whom the Fawcett Society is named, has
long been one of my women’s rights campaigner role model heroines. I
selected her as my choice for BBC Radio
4 Great Lives hosted by Matthew Parris (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gj7nf.)
The names
of the Victorian and Edwardian Greats who have left their foot-prints on the
path towards women’s equality are there in the book – the Garrett sisters
(Millicent, and Elizabeth), Emily Davies, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Jessie
Boucheret and other ‘Ladies of the Langham Place Group. The Langham Place Group
was an acorn of the feminist movement in the UK.
The
author’s research for ‘In The Steps Of Exceptional Women’, The Story Of The
Fawcett Society 1866-2016 grew out of
her doctorate at the University of Kent on Governance, Continuity and Change in
the Organised Women’s Movement. (the strapline to her thesis was ‘We walk in
the footsteps of some exceptional women.’)
To those
of us who have spent our adult lives campaigning for equality for the majority
gender Jane W. Grant is just about as remarkable (and exceptional) as the
Society itself, and her book must be considered the yard-stick on the Society’s
history. Jane has been a member of the
Fawcett Society for over 30 years, with three years on the Executive Board. I
have known Jane since the late 1980s when during her time in policy development
at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations Jane became mid-wife to the National Alliance
of Women’s Organisations (NAWO)(launched in 1989.) She was Director of NAWO for
five years.
Jane has
always had an international perspective. In the 1990s when I was CEO of NGO
Project Parity helping women to be included in democratic politics during the transition in Central and Eastern
Europe, She came on trips as a member of
my Project Parity Team. We also share an
interest in women and peace issues. Jane is a supporter of the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom.
There are
several periods of history where I would order my Time Machine to return to. To
listen in on the conversations the campaigners held in 1914 would be very high
on my SatNav list.
I turned
at once to Chapter 3 covering one of the most intriguing periods of the
suffrage campaigners lives – how should they respond to (or take advantage of)
the advent of the Great War? Suffragettes Emmeline and Christabel
Pankhurst took the decision to back the war against ‘the German Peril’. They
and their followers –threw themselves into the fray, helping to recruit women
into the munitions industry, even in 1915 rechristening The Suffragette
newspaper the Britannia. In a family rift, their sister Sylvia was a
staunch Peace Campaigner. Jane Grant
notes, the response of Millicent Fawcett and the non-militant suffragists was,
initially, ‘more nuanced’. Mrs. Fawcett’s International Women’s Suffrage
Alliance (IWSA) delivered an international manifesto to the foreign Embassies
in London commencing, ‘ We, the women of the world, view with apprehension and
dismay the present situation in Europe which threatens to involve one
continent, if not the whole world, in the disasters and horrors of war…’
As the
terrible conflict drew to an end, the campaign for women’s right to vote hotted
up again, though never to its former militancy. In March 1917 Millicent Fawcett
and leaders of 24 women’s suffrage societies and 10 other organisations went to
see the new Prime Minister Lloyd George. The debate in the House on 10
January 1918 resulted in a majority for the women’s suffrage clause in the
Representation of the People Bill. On February 6 1919 it received the Royal
Assent. Women property owners over the age of 30 could now vote. Another ten
years passed before women could vote on equal terms with men, i.e. at aged 21.
In her
book Jane Grant pays tribute to the invaluable help in tough financial times the
Fawcett Society received from the Barrow Cadbury Trust. Funding is a major
hurdle for women’s equality campaigns. The human rights world has great cause
to be grateful to the Quaker founders of the chocolate industry. I appreciate
how the 300 Group survived and developed through the funding and free offices
provided at 9 Poland Street by the Rowntree Trust.
Jane
brings the story to the present day, through the struggles of women Members of
Parliament like Jo Richardson, the ‘Listen To My Vote’ campaign developed ahead
of the 1997 election by Fawcett’s Mary-Anne Stephenson, the joint campaigns run
by the Society with the Royal College of Nursing and the Low Pay Unit, to
Fawcett’s major report ‘Sex Equality: State Of The Nation 2016’ (‘Equality.
It’s About Time’).
The job
isn’t finished. The struggle goes on. The tide moves ever-forward, but there is
still a way to go. I titled the movement
I started back from the Mill House in the tiny Oxfordshire hamlet of Burford
‘The 300 Group’ because the aim was to achieve 300 women MPs, just about 50% of
‘the Mother of Parliaments’. Even now, in 2016, some 46 years later, that
number has not fully been attained, though it’s very nearly 200 and I’m happy
to see new groups such as the 50/50 Group carrying on where the 300 GROUP left
off (they ran out of funds) . Parliament makes or breaks the laws which guide
and control the nation’s life. Decisions are made which take us to war or
decrease or increase the still-wretched gap between what women and men earn for
work of equal value, even the right to have control over our own bodies. 300 or
more women in Parliament would help do the job. Millicent Fawcett would most
certainly agree: the struggle goes on.
‘In The
Steps…’ contains a wonderful set of historic photographs and illustrations,
including a woodcut-like cityscape of Parliament titled ‘View From The Top
Window’ of the Women’s Service House on Marsham Street.
A must for
researchers, students, teachers, journalists, politicians, and all keen to know
more about the long, hard, valiant and ultimately successful struggle for that
most basic and precious of human rights, the right of a woman to help decide
who we choose to run our communities and nation and critical aspects of our
lives.
‘In The
Steps Of Exceptional Women’, The Story Of The Fawcett Society 1866-2016. By
Jane W. Grant. Francis Boutle Publishers. 2016. £14.99
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