Helen Crawfurd

Helen Crawfurd
Born	Helen Jack (1877-11-09)9 November 1877 Glasgow, Scotland
Died	18 April 1954(1954-04-18) (aged 76) Dunoon, Scotland
Nationality	Scottish
Occupation(s)	Politician, activist, suffragette
Notable work	Suffragette, activist, politician
Spouses	Alexander Montgomerie Crawfurd George Anderson

Helen Crawfurd (née Jack, later Anderson; 9 November 1877 – 18 April 1954) was a Scottish suffragette, rent strike organiser, Communist activist and politician. Born in Glasgow, she was brought up there and in London.

Born Helen Jack at 175 Cumberland Street in the Gorbals area of Glasgow, her parents were Helen L. (née Kyle) and William Jack.^[1] Her mother worked a steam-loom before she wed.^[2] Helen's family moved to Ipswich while she was young. Crawfurd later went to school in London and Ipswich before moving back to Glasgow as a teenager. Crawfurd's father, a master baker,^[1] was a Catholic, but converted to the Church of Scotland and became a conservative trade unionist.

Initially religious herself and a Sunday School teacher, Crawfurd felt a call to be married at 21 to the 67-year-old widower Alexander Montgomerie Crawfurd (29 August 1828 – 31 May 1914), a Church of Scotland minister and family friend.^[2][3][4][5] However, she became increasingly radical, after witnessing injustices, and what she deemed to be "un-Christian" behaviour from the Church.^[6] For example, not helping widows financially before they had sold all their belongings in their home.^[7] Alexander died, aged 85, at 17 Sutherland Street in Partick, Glasgow.

In 1944, Crawfurd remarried, to widower George Anderson of Anderson Brothers Engineers, Coatbridge. Her second husband was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.^[8] George Anderson died on 2 February 1952 and Crawfurd two years later at Mahson Cottage, Kilbride Avenue, Dunoon, Argyll, aged 76.^[9][10]

Crawfurd first became active in the women's suffrage movement in about 1900, then in 1910 at a meeting in Rutherglen.^[11] Crawfurd was jailed three times for "militant" political activity during her career as an activist.^[12] In 1912, Crawfurd smashed the windows of Jack Pease, Minister for Education, and received a one-month prison sentence. In March 1914, Crawfurd was arrested in Glasgow when Emmeline Pankhurst was speaking. She received another month in prison^[2] and went on an eight-day hunger strike.^[11] She spoke at the Music Hall, Aberdeen on 26 February 1914, in favour of militarism.^[13] But after one further arrest, Crawfurd left the WSPU in protest at its support of the First World War and in 1914 she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP).^[2][6]

During WWI, Crawfurd was involved with the Red Clydeside movement, including the Glasgow rent strikes in 1915 when she led the South Govan Women's Housing Association to resist rent increases and prevent evictions, alongside Mary Barbour, Mary Laird, Mary Jeff, Jessie Stephens and Agnes Dollan. Crawfurd had co-founded the Glasgow branch of the Women's International League^[2] and become secretary of the Women's Peace Crusade.^[14] By then she had met Agnes Harben and others, who held the same international perspectives.^[15] On 23 July 1916, Crawfurd organised the first demonstration of the Women's Peace Crusade, which was attended by 5,000.^[16][17] Crawfurd formed a branch of the United Suffragists in Glasgow.^[18] These women used the realms of domesticity entrenched within society to support their campaign, known as "Wives and Weans Socialism".^[19]

The Women's Peace Crusade (WPC) was the first popular campaign that linked Feminism with Antimilitarism. The realm of maternalism was exploited by Agnes Dollan and Crawfurd and their involvement with the WPC. They encouraged women to be anti-war on the basis that they were the creators of life and, consequently, in neglecting to protect their sons’ lives they were neglecting their maternal roles.^[20] Crawfurd and Dollan were grassroots propagandists. Both women travelled the length and breadth of Scotland to inform the public that fighting in the war was not the exciting adventure their sons, husbands and fathers had been sold; they were, as Dollan describes, being ‘consumed as common fodder.’^[21]  The emotional nature of their speeches convinced women to become members of the WPC and, in turn, learn about the wider Clydeside movement. Open-air and public hall meetings frequented almost every town and village and they drew in large audiences; up to 5000 women demonstrated in Glasgow Green for anti-war and anti-conscription rallies.^[22] Crawfurd stated at a public meeting that ‘Christ came that we might have life more abundantly’ in her appeal for the cessation of the brutal war.^[23]  Gallacher recalls the demonstrations established by the WPC, stating ‘they showed the men how a demonstration should be organised.'^[24] He describe the scenes at Glasgow Green to protest the war. The women used banners, streamers, orators, and marches throughout Glasgow to ensure their plight was heard.^[24] Klasko also recalls her attendance at the WPC demonstrations, she states that she was anti-war and anti-conscription and participated in the discussions at a young age.  She remembers candidly some older demonstrators quieting the crowd to ‘let the wee lassie speak.’^[25] It is recollections such as these that truly highlight the collective effervescence of the movement.

In 1918, Crawfurd was elected as vice-chair of the Scottish division of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and was said to be a convincing speaker when she spoke in the Market Place at the branch meeting in Loftus.^[26] Shortly afterwards, Crawfurd became a founder member of the ILP's left-wing faction, which was campaigning for it to affiliate to the Communist International. Crawford went to Moscow in 1920, with Marjory Newbold, Sylvia Pankhurst, Willie Gallacher and others for the Congress of the Third Communist International and interviewed Lenin.^[27][2] When the affiliation policy was defeated, Crawfurd joined the new Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). She served on its Central Committee and involved herself in various journalistic projects. She also became secretary of Workers' International Relief.^[6]

In 1919, Crawfurd was a delegate to the Congress of the Women's International League in Zürich.^[28]

Crawfurd ran in 1921 as the first Communist Party candidate in the Govan ward of Glasgow.^[29]

In 1927, Crawfurd was an official delegate to the Brussels International Conference against Oppressed Nationalities,^[30] at which the League against Imperialism was established. Crawfurd joined the executive of the British section.^[31]

Crawfurd stood for the CPGB in Bothwell at the 1929 general election, and Aberdeen North in 1931, but did not come close to being elected.^[6]

During the 1930s, Crawfurd was prominent in the Friends of the Soviet Union. She unsuccessfully stood for Dunoon Town Council in 1938.^[32] However, she was elected as Dunoon's first woman town councillor shortly after the war,^[11] but retired from it in 1947 due to poor health.^[6][33] Helen Crawfurd (by then Mrs Anderson) died in 1954 at Mahson Cottage, Kilbride Avenue, Dunoon, Argyll, aged 76.^[2][10]

• Wilkins, K. (2023). Helen Crawfurd (1877–1954): Scottish Suffragette and International Communist. In: de Haan, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Communist Women Activists around the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13127-1_5