Farquharson was born in 1884 and graduated in 1908 with a master's degree from the
University of Glasgow. She came to notice before the
First World War as a leader in the women's suffrage movement. In 1909, she was arrested as a suffragette and jailed for five days in
Holloway Prison. She was a salaried organiser for the
Women's Freedom League in
Liverpool with
Mary Adelaide Broadhurst. However, the WFL failed to establish a voice distinct from the
Women's Social and Political Union. Money was requested for a full-time organiser in Liverpool, but the salaried posts in Liverpool were not supported after January 1909. In 1911 the National Political League (NPL) was formed, led by Broadhurst, its president. Broadhurst was its secretary, and the league was based in
St James's Street, in
London. In 1913, it organised a meeting at
Kingsway Hall, where 1,500 people, including
George Bernard Shaw, attended to discuss and protest the
force-feeding of hunger-striking suffragettes. The meeting was reported word for word to the
Home Office. During the war, the league had created the National Land Council, a body that created eleven locations in Britain for women to be trained to work on the land. By 1922, the league had aligned with supporting the Palestinians and the Arabs in general. It would appear that the leage supported the Arab cause, as it objected to the British governments support for Zionism. It also resisted the rise of
Bolshevism. From March to May 1930, the British police kept her and the
antisemite fascist Robert Gordon Canning under observation to monitor their interactions with a delegation sent to London by the executive committee of the
Palestine Arab Congress (ECPAC). The league was funded by leading Muslims, and British cabinet members were advised to avoid it. The league tried to undermine or overturn the
Balfour Declaration. Broadhurst died in 1928. From 1929, the league continued its work and was in touch with the Muslim–Christian Alliance of Palestine. A 1937 report intelligence report noted, "Miss Margaret Milne Farquharson [was] obtaining money from affluent Indians and Arabs". She was using the money to support the Pan-Islamists' and Palestians' point of view. == References ==