Eleanor Rathbone

Rathbone was the daughter of the social reformer William Rathbone VI and his second wife, Emily Acheson Lyle. She spent her early years in Liverpool. Her family encouraged her to concentrate on social issues; the family motto was "What ought to be done, can be done." Rathbone was educated mainly at home, tutored in Latin and Greek by feminist Janet Case, later attending Kensington High School (now Kensington Prep School), London. She went on to attend Somerville College, Oxford, against the protests of her mother, and received Classics coaching from Lucy Mary Silcox. She studied with tutors outside of Somerville, which at that time did not yet have a Classics tutor, taking Roman History with Henry Francis Pelham, Moral Philosophy with Edward Caird, and Greek History with Reginald Macan. Some of these classes were taken together with Barbara Bradby, a lifelong friend. and other early members were Margery Fry and Hilda Oakeley. Denied an Oxford degree due to her gender, she was one of the steamboat ladies who travelled to Ireland between 1904 and 1907 to receive an ad eundem University of Dublin degree (at Trinity College Dublin). After Oxford, Rathbone worked alongside her father to investigate social and industrial conditions in Liverpool, until he died in 1902. They also opposed the Second Boer War. In 1903 Rathbone published their Report on the results of a Special Inquiry into the conditions of Labour at the Liverpool Docks, a report that revealed the impact of erratic docker's wages on the living standards of their wives and children. In 1905 she assisted in establishing the School of Social Science at the University of Liverpool, where she lectured in public administration. Her connection with the university is still recognised by the Eleanor Rathbone building, lecture theatre and Chair of Sociology. == Suffrage campaigner ==

Rathbone joined the Liverpool Women's Suffrage Society shortly after university and soon became a member of the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She wrote a series of articles for suffragist magazine The Common Cause. Rathbone and other Liverpool suffrage campaigners, such as Alice Morrissey, ensured women's political and franchise groups acted co-operatively in Liverpool despite the sometimes violent sectarianism and political divisions of the community at that time. In 1913 with Nessie Stewart-Brown she co-founded the Liverpool Women Citizen's Association to promote women's involvement in political affairs and educate women in citizenship to prepare them for enfranchisement. This initiative was widely copied across the country. When the Representation of the People Act afforded women over the age of 30 the right to vote in 1918, Rathbone was instrumental in ensuring this included a local government vote as well as parliamentary. The following year she succeeded Millicent Garrett Fawcett as President of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (the renamed National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies) and led successful campaigns for universal women's suffrage, equal guardianship of children, divorce law reform and widow's pensions. ==Local politician and campaigner==

Rathbone was elected as an independent member of Liverpool City Council in 1910 for the seat of Granby Ward, a position she retained until 1935. The club still meets at the Adelphi Hotel and is reputedly the oldest women's forum still meeting. In 1919, Rathbone co-founded the Liverpool Personal Service Society with social worker Dorothy Keeling. From 1918 onwards, Rathbone campaigned for a system of family allowances paid directly to mothers. She contested the 1922 General Election as an Independent candidate at Liverpool East Toxteth against the sitting Unionist MP and was defeated. In 1924 in the Disinherited Family, she argued that economic dependence of women was based on the practice of supporting variably-sized families with wages that were paid to men, regardless of whether the men had families or not. Later she exposed insurance regulations that reduced married women's access to unemployment benefits and health insurance. ==Westminster politician==

Rathbone campaigned for Parliament as a feminist, stating "I am standing as a woman, not because I believe there is any antagonism between men's and women's interests but because I believe there is need in the House of Commons for more women who can represent directly the special experience and point of view of women." When in 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria, Eleanor Rathbone thought Britain was too complacent and did not explain how Japan could have been deterred, without, like the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, risking a World War.:769 In 1936 she began to warn about a Nazi threat to Czechoslovakia. She also favoured rearmament and argued for its necessity in the Manchester Guardian. She became an outspoken critic of appeasement in Parliament. She denounced British complacency in Hitler's remilitarisation of the Rhineland, In 1936, Rathbone was one of several people who supported the British Provisional Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky, and signed a letter to the Manchester Guardian defending Trotsky's right to asylum and calling for an international inquiry into the Moscow Trials. While she advocated for gender difference, during a speech to Parliament she said that "those who expect women’s contributions to be something completely sui generis, utterly different from the contribution of men, will be disappointed." On 30 September 1938, Rathbone denounced the just-publicised Munich Agreement. In a speech to the House of Commons on 15 October 1945, she was one of few Britons prepared to criticise the expulsion of 2,500,000 people of German origin from Czechoslovakia during the winter months of 1946 because it might create large-scale starvation.:326 Many Germans had been anti-Nazi. Later, Eleanor Rathbone achieved limited success when the minister agreed not to allow the deportation of pregnant women or young children during the winter months.320 ==Personal life==

At the end of the First World War, Rathbone and the social work campaigner Elizabeth Macadam bought a house in London together. The two friends continued to share the house until Rathbone's sudden death in January 1946. Rathbone's studies in Classics and Philosophy, as well as her experience of social work led her to reject religion and adopt a rationalist perspective. She believed that concern for others was the foundation of ethics. holds a number of interviews with employees of Rathbone's. In February 1977 Harrison interviewed Marjorie Soper, who worked for Rathbone at the Family Endowment Society where she was involved in research and propaganda for family allowances which Rathbone considered an integral part of the 'new feminism'. Soper also ghost wrote articles for Rathbone. In March 1977 Doris Cox was interviewed twice, firstly with Marjorie Soper and secondly with Vera Schaerli (the journalist, also known as Vera Craig). Cox and Soper describe Rathbone's personality, her secretarial arrangements and her home, her Parliamentary speeches and relationships with politicians. Cox and Schaerli talk about Rathbone's working and domestic arrangements with Elizabeth Macadam, and of the demands Rathbone placed on her employees and her style of working. An August 1977 interview took place with Helga Wolff, who became an employee of Rathbone after being introduced by Erna Nelki. Wolff was a secretary for Rathbone's refugee work and speaks about the Parliamentary Committee on Refugees as well as Rathbone's secretarial arrangements in the early 1940s. In September 1984 he interviewed Vera Schaerli again, who describes Rathbone's personality and personal relationships as well as her influence on Members of Parliament ==Legacy==

In 1945, the year before her death, Eleanor Rathbone saw the Family Allowances Act pass into law. Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018. The University of Liverpool acknowledges Rathbone by way of its Eleanor Rathbone Building; the site houses the School of Law and Social Justice and the Department of Psychology, as well as the Eleanor Rathbone Theatre used for stage productions and musical performances. Edge Hill University has a hall of residence called Eleanor Rathbone in honour of her work as a social reformer. In 2025, the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford inaugurated the Eleanor Rathbone Chair in Contemporary European History. It was named in her honour "to mark her lifelong work and engagement with issues of contemporary European politics and social inequality". ==See also==