From Liberal To Labour With Women’s Suffrage: The Story of Catherine Marshall
by Jo Vellacott
(Spokesman Books, £17.99)

AT THE turn of the 19th and 20th centuries the newly formed Labour Party led by Keir Hardie and Ramsay McDonald was in an uneasy coalition with Herbert Asquith’s Liberal Party, although there were strong moves to seperate from it and fight elections on a more left-wing agenda.

Internationally, the rise of working-class struggle and women’s and colonial emancipation demands were taking place alongside competition between old and new imperialisms for a share of the resources and spoils of the world demanded by capitalist industrialisation.

Educated women in Britain had been assaulting male strongholds in academia and society, proving their ability to provide valuable contributions to social welfare and education and demanding suffrage rights.

The trade union movement had been injected with new life by the strikes and demands of women workers for a living wage and trade union recognition and this situation produced a number of powerful women whose background and ability made them able to take a leading part in dealing with a Lib-Lab government struggling to maintain control on behalf of the capitalist status quo.

Jo Vellacott, the internationally respected archivist of one of these protagonists, Catherine Marshall, has linked all these vital developments into an outstanding biography which brings to life the political struggles of the times.

Based on Marshall’s extensive archive, Vellacott describes a daughter of Liberal and enlightened parents whose education fostered a belief in the equality of women with men and the need for a woman’s voice in politics.

Growing up in her beloved Lake District, she was an active Liberal supporter who set up many local women’s suffrage groups in her area.

At the same time, her brilliant tactical skills led her to become parliamentary secretary of the National Union for Women’s Suffrage alongside such notables as Millicent Fawcett, Margaret Llewelyn Davies, Crystal McMillan and Edith Palliser.

There was a famous split in the women’s suffrage movement between the Militants, which included the Pankhursts and the non-violent lobbyists such as Marshall, a schism much used to deny women’s rights by the Liberals, who disassociated themselves from riots and window-smashing and blamed this on all feminists.

Initially, even the emerging Labour and trade-union movement was wary of the cause but women like Marshall drew them into a united struggle which was eventually embraced by the Labour Party. This relationship and her instinctive sympathy with the struggling workers turned Marshall into a socialist with a leaning towards Fabianism and a peaceful resolution of conflicts.

In 1913, Marshall was fighting to get Asquith to include support for women’s suffrage in the coming general election of 1914. This never happened because, unbeknown to her and millions of others, an outbreak of hostilities was about to take place in Europe. Following the start of the war in August 1914, millions were slaughtered, the Russian revolution succeeded and the world was changed.

While in 1918 women householders over 30 and all men over 21 gained the right to vote, the British labour movement was divided and Marshall and her fellow pacifists and socialists were left to continue their struggle in a new situation.

This impressive book deserves wide recognition for its depiction of the role played by one woman in a still unfinished fight for women’s equality.

Review by Jean Turner