A Vehement Crusader
Eleanor Rathbone. By Mary Stocks. (Gollancz. 21s.) " WE were impressed by her vehemence " said a senior offic:al in a Ministry which had found itself constrained to capitulate to Eleanor Rathbone's insistence in some matter of social reform. That was towards the end of her long public life, but it is equally true of any part of that life—whether the concern of the moment (though there were always half a dozen concerns at any moment) was family allowances or Indian womanhood or.miman's suffrage or Palestine or European refugees. She was vehement, she was single-minded, she was animated by deep convictions (not in any normal sense religious), she had great ability, she was a born organiser, she was a most competent speaker. No wonder such a woman got things done.
Most of this, of course, the world knew about Eleanor Rathbone, and it formed its varying judgements of her accordingly. Like every insistent person, she could be a supreme nuisance ; EL at was what she often meant to be, because she thought it necessary. An Under-Secretary described her—affectionately—last year as " the bane of my official life for five years." Her biographer prob- ably never heard of one of Speaker Fitzroy's famous sotto votes regarding her, and could' certainly not have quoted it if she had. But there was real greatness about Miss Rathbone. Notable appre- ciations of her work appeared at the time of her death not quite four years ago—most faithful and discerning of them by Harold Nicolson in this journal—but the most striking tributes were paid incidentally, when, in the debase on the abolition of University Representation in 1948, speaker after speaker buttressed his argu- ment for the retention of university seats by citing Eleanor Rathbone as the ideal University, and the ideal independent, Member. More honour was then done to her than ever in her life.
It is this high-minded, unwearying, compassionate woman that Mrs. Stocks has set herself to reveal, and most admirably she has discharged her task. This is biography as it should be written— vivid, understanding, sympathetic without ceasing to be objective, lightened by unobtrusive touches of humour. A background without which Eleanor Rathbone could never be adequately com- prehended is given the emphasis, and no more than the emphasis, it needs. Though born in London in 1872 the Senior Member for the English Universities was essentially " one of the Liverpool Rathbones." There had been six William Rathbones in succession, the earlier ones Quakers, the later Unitarians, all of them men successful in business and unsparing in public service. Eleanor was the daughter of the sixth. After an early education about which IVits. Stocks says little Eleanor went up to Somerville, read philosophy for Greats and was told by her examiners, when they saw her illegible papers, that unless she had them typed at her own expense (which she did) they could not consider her at all; the result was a second. No question of a career as such seems to have arisen, though she did in fact train as a hospital nurse for a year at the London. But local tasks—visiting for the Liverpool Relief Society, a school managership, secretaryship of the Liverpool Women's Industrial Council, later the Liverpool City Council—made insistent demands. From them everything grew. Work with the Soldiers' and Sailors' Family Association in the First War brought the Family Allowance idea to birth. The horror of Katharine Mayo's Mother India started another concern that never weakened. Zeal for women's suffrage was inevitable. The horizon widened to include the possibility of election to Parliament. The first attempt at East Toxteth in 1922 was unsuccessful, in spite of the support of the present Lord Woolton, but, elected for the Combined English Universities in 1929, she retained her seat with triumphant ease till her death on New Year's Day, 1946. It is through those sixteen years of her Parliamentary career that Miss Rathbone is known to the public at large. Though her activity in the House was ceaseless and her pertinacity in her approaches to Ministers, either across the floor or less formally, unique, her activities were by no means confined to St. Stephen's. Her faith in committees, petitions, deputations, was unbounded, and when she had the shaping of them they rarely failed to achieve some part at least of their purpose. In the House, as well as out of it, she was always a crusader, sometimes almost an agitator. But she was far more than that. Her political sense was remarkable. Not many other people were writing of Mr. Churchill in 1936: " Watch that man carefully ... I believe he may be a future Prime Minister, with something like a real national government at his back." Her belief in Churchill was profound ; members who were present talk yet of the onslaught she made on Mr. Bevan for attacking the Prime Minister at a critical juncture of the war. Altogether a remarkable woman—less spectacular than some other woman Members, less prominent than others, for half a dozen have reached the Treasury Bench. But it may well be doubted whether any other woman who has yet sat has achieved as much as Eleanor Rathbone. To have been virtually the sole originator of the family allowance campaign and seen it carried after thirty years to triumphant success is justifi- cation in itself for that judgement. The story of her life needed telling, and Mrs. Stocks has told it most singularly well. One comment she might have permitted herself—for the benefit of those who think private means a crime. If Eleanor Rathbone had not happened to possess a private income she could not have done half
the service to mankind that she did. . WILSON HARRIS.
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