Eleanor Rathbone

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Blue plaque on Eleanor Rathbones house on Tufton Street, Westminster

Eleanor Florence Rathbone (* 12. May 1872 in London , † 2. January 1946 ibid) was a British non-party politician and women's rights activist .

Life

Eleanor Rathbone came from the Rathbone family in Liverpool, who became prosperous as merchants and shipowners . Her father, William Rathbone VI, was a liberal democratic politician who had made a name for himself as a social reformer. She was related to the Hollywood star Basil Rathbone . Eleanor Rathbone grew up in London . At Somerville College , Oxford , she studied Literae humaniores (classical antiquity).

After graduating from university, Eleanor moved to Liverpool. There she carried out a study with her father on the working conditions in the Liverpool docks and got involved in the university . From 1909 to 1935 Eleanor Rathbone was a member of Liverpool City Council. Eleanor Rathbone was the first woman to be elected to the city council at the time.

From 1929 until her death, Eleanor Rathbone was an independent parliamentarian for the English universities. In this role, she played a key role in the Family Allowances Act (1945), which introduced a form of child benefit in the United Kingdom for the first time .

Eleanor Rathbone as a speaker (around 1910)

The politician also campaigned for women's suffrage, locally and for other countries, such as India. She founded the British Committee for Indian Women's Franchise on May 5, 1933 , which represented eleven women's organizations. It served as a platform for the politician who saw access to education and political life for Indian women as the way to progressive enlightenment . Rathbone urged Indian women to give up their demand for universal suffrage and advocated restricted women's suffrage that required literacy and did not even apply to all wives. She was also in favor of reserving certain parliamentary seats for women. These restrictions were heard in the reform of the franchise: In 1935, the Government of India Act , which came into force in 1937, further extended the right to vote for both sexes.

Eleanor Rathbone also became known as an early warning against the Nazi regime . She believed that the containment of National Socialism could only be achieved through unified moral opposition. The appeasement policy of the then British government, they therefore refused. As the plans for the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany gradually became known, she insisted on political action to counter the extermination and she campaigned for Jewish refugees to enter the country at last. In 1943, her engagement met with little participation. In response to this, she then founded the "National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror" on her own initiative. The British humanist and publicist Victor Gollancz was its vice-president .

plant

  • Eleanor Rathbone, War can be averted: the achievability of collective security . Victor Gollancz, London 1938

literature

  • Johanna Alberti: Eleanor Rathbone (1996)
  • Susan Pedersen: Eleanor Rathbone and the Politics of Conscience (2004)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 348.
  2. ^ Gail Pearson: Tradition, law and the female suffrage movement in India. In: Louise Edwards, Mina Roces (Ed.): Women's Suffrage in Asia. Routledge Shorton New York, 2004, pp. 195-219, p. 196.
  3. ^ Eleanor Rathbone: Did Britain do enough to help the Jews?
  4. ↑ Edwards, Ruth Dudley (1987) Victor Gollancz: A Biography, pp. 371 & 374-375, Victor Gollancz Ltd
personal data
SURNAME Rathbone, Eleanor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rathbone, Eleanor Florence (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, Member of the House of Commons, suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 2, 1946
Place of death London