Jennie Adamson

Janet Laurel "Jennie" Adamson , née Johnston (born May 9, 1882 in Kirkcudbright , Scotland , † April 25, 1962 in Bromley , London ) was a British trade unionist and Labor Party politician and from 1938 to 1946 a member of the House of Commons .

life and career

Jennie Johnston was born to Thomas and Elizabeth Johnston, one of six children. The father, who worked as a porter for the railroad , died early, so that the mother had to support the family as a tailor. Despite the difficult circumstances, Johnston was able to attend secondary school, later she worked as a tailor, factory worker and teacher.

In 1902 she married the model maker and union activist William Murdoch Adamson , with whom she had four children. Adamson followed her husband in 1908 in the Labor Party and in 1912 in his union, the Workers' Union .

Due to the increasing activity of her husband in the union, the family had to move several times. Adamson first came from Scotland to Manchester , where she had contact with the local suffragette movement . She was also increasingly involved in trade union work. In 1915 the family moved to Belfast and in 1921 to Lincoln , where Adamson served as the Poor Law Guardian on a voluntary basis on applications for the Poor Law . Here she was particularly involved in child care . She gained some attention with their campaign Boots for Bairns (shoes for children) as she with numerous unemployed people and their barefoot children to the local workhouse marching, not least because the demonstration of a booted elephant was accompanied to a local circus disposal presented .

In 1923 William Adamson was elected as a Labor candidate in the House of Commons and the family moved to London . Here Jennie Adamson became politically active to an even greater extent. She supported the general strike of 1926 and was elected to the Labor Party's national executive committee in 1927. She was a member of this until 1947, in 1935 and 1936 as chairwoman. She chaired international women's conferences in Vienna and Paris and led delegations of British women to several international socialist meetings. From 1928 to 1931 she was a member of the London County Council .

In the House of Commons

In the elections to the British House of Commons in 1935 , Adamson ran in the constituency of Dartford , but was narrowly inferior to the Conservative Party candidate , Frank Edward Clarke . When by-elections became necessary after his death in 1938, however, she ran again and was able to prevail this time. The Adamsons were the only married couple in the House of Commons at the time.

Adamson sponsored several campaigns that empowered women. For example, she helped to ensure that women were compensated for war injuries in the same amount as men. Under Winston Churchill's government , she served from 1941 in the Ministry of Pensions to Minister Walter Womersley as a private parliamentary secretary, and under his successor Wilfred Paling she was also active as Parliamentary Secretary .

In the first post-war elections in 1945 , she was able to win the Boxley constituency . However, she withdrew from the House of Commons the following year. She had previously suffered two blows of fate. In 1944, her younger son died as a soldier in the Royal Air Force in World War II , and her husband finally died in October 1945.

After retiring from the House of Commons, Adamson became vice chair of the National Assistance Board , which cared for the elderly and disabled. In 1953 she finally went into retirement. She died of pneumonia in April 1962.

Web links

• Jennie Adamson at Hansard (English)
• Jennie Adamson in the database of the Center for Advancement of Women in Politics (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Biography of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (engl.) Accessed on August 30, 2015
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Elizabeth Ewan , Sue Innes , Siân Reynolds : The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women: From the Earliest Times to 2004. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2006, p. 5. ( online )