Jessie Stephen

Jessie Stephen, MBE (19 April 1893 – 12 June 1979) was a twentieth-century British suffragette, labour activist and local councillor. She grew up in Scotland and won a scholarship to train as a teacher. Family finances dictated otherwise, leading to her becoming a domestic worker at the age of 15. She became involved in national labour issues as a teenager, via organisations such as the Independent Labour Party and the Women's Social and Political Union. After moving to Lancashire and London she visited the United States and Canada, where she held meetings with the public including migrant English domestic workers.

Jessie Stephen MBE
1930 portrait (aged 36–37)
Born	(1893-04-19)19 April 1893^[1]
Died	12 June 1979(1979-06-12) (aged 86)^[1] Bristol
Nationality	British
Occupation	Journalist
Known for	Trade unionism Councillor

Stephen later become more involved in formal political parties, being elected as a local councillor and standing as a candidate in general elections. After moving to Bristol she became the first woman president of Bristol Trades Council. She was appointed MBE in 1977 and her life is commemorated by a blue plaque in Bristol.

Biography

Stephen is recorded in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a "suffragette and labour activist",^[1] and has been described as "working-class".^[2]

Early life and family

Jessie Stephen was born in Marylebone, London, on 19 April 1893, the eldest of the eleven children of tailor Alexander Stephen and his wife Jane Miller. The family moved to Edinburgh, then Dunfermline, before settling in Glasgow in 1901.^[1] Jessie has been described as "virtually the only Scottish working-class Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) member about whom anything is known".^[2] She attended Sunday schools separately linked to the church^[1] and to socialism,^[1][3] and was educated at North Kelvinside School.^[1] She won a scholarship^[4] to train as a pupil-teacher.^[5]

Her father's low and variable income meant that she could not afford to pursue her aspiration to become a teacher, and became a domestic worker^[2] at the age of 15.^[6] Her father was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) when it was established in 1893.^[2] She described her mother as being "so quiet and the very opposite of dad".^[7]

Unfortunately for my dreams, unemployment became worse so there was nothing for it but to leave [scholarship as a pupil teacher].

Jessie Stephen, quoted by Jill Liddington in The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain Since 1820^[4]

Early career

She was referred to as a "young activist in the Maryhill Branch of the ILP", before she joined the WSPU^[8] in 1909, aged 16.^[2] In around 1911–12, as noted in her unpublished autobiography Submission is for Slaves (held at the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester), she formed the Scottish Federation of Domestic Workers. She organised her fellow maids through meetings firstly in the streets and later in Alston's Tea Rooms in Bothwell Street, Glasgow. The organisation eventually merged with the London-based Domestic Workers' Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1913.^[9]

Stephen was the youngest member of the WSPU Glasgow delegation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George in 1912,^[5] and, she took part in the first of the "Scottish Outrages", involving attacks on pillar boxes, in Glasgow in February 1913.^{[3][10][11][12]} Her job as a maid worked in her favour during these attacks, as she explained in a 1975 interview:

"I was able to drop acid into the postal pillar boxes without being suspected, because I walked down from where I was employed in my cap, muslin apron and black frock... nobody would ever suspect me of dropping acid through the box."^[13]

Stephen was approached by Sylvia Pankhurst and moved from Glasgow to London,^[1] where she became considered one of the "most active members" (along with Emma Boyce, around 1916) of the Workers' Suffrage Federation.^[14] In April 1919, Stephen was one of a number of speakers to address a crowd of "about 10,000 people" in Trafalgar Square, opposing the Blockade of Germany.^[4] Other speakers included Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Theodora Wilson Wilson.^[4] She was also an active member of the Women's Peace Crusade and at the 1920 ILP conference argued against the use of force during events preceding the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR.^[15]

In the 1920s she visited the United States, holding public meetings with immigrant communities from Scotland and Wales.^[1][16] and fund-raising for the Socialist Party of America.^[1] She also visited Vancouver, where she encouraged migrant English domestic workers to unionise.^[1]

Middle years

 

Blue plaque in Bedminster, Bristol

Stephen later lived in Lancashire^[5] and also in London,^[5][3] where she became involved in the East London Federation and sold the Women's Dreadnought.^[3] She was elected Labour borough councillor for Bermondsey in 1922, after failing to be selected as a parliamentary candidate for the ILP,^[5] and worked for Bermondsey MP Alfred Salter.^[3] She stood as Labour candidate for Portsmouth South in the general elections of 1923, 1924 and 1929,^[17] and for Kidderminster in 1931.^[3]

From 1924 she worked as a freelance journalist,^[3] established a secretarial agency in Lewes in 1935^[3] and joined the National Union of Clerks in 1938.^[1] At the time of the Second World War, she worked for Murphy Radio in Welwyn Garden City.^[3]

Later life

In 1944 Stephen was appointed as the first woman area union organiser of the National Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union for South Wales and the West of England and moved to Bristol^[1]. She also worked at the Broad Quay branch of the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), later becoming chair of the local CWS management committee.^[1] Around this time, she spoke publicly and gave advice on birth control.^[3] She was elected to the city council.^[18] In 1952 she became the first woman president of Bristol Trades Council^[18] and in 1955 she was awarded the TUC Gold Badge.^[19]

In the 1964 general election, she was a candidate for the Labour Party in the Weston-super-Mare constituency.^[3] She was appointed MBE for "services to the trade union movement" in June 1977.^[20]

In later life Stephen was blind.^[21] She died from pneumonia and heart failure at Bristol General Hospital on 12 June 1979.^[1]

Commemoration

 

River of Words by Anoushka Havinden (detail)

Stephen's life is commemorated by a blue plaque at her former home in Bedminster, Bristol.^[18] On 10 November 1995, the Party of European Socialists group in Bristol honoured her memory by holding the inaugural Jessie Stephen memorial lecture, 'Women in European politics'.^[1]

She is included in River of Words, an artwork by Anoushka Havinden at the Stockingfield Junction on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Maryhill, Glasgow, which lists local people of historic significance.^[22]

Stephen's unpublished autobiography, Submission is for Slaves, is available digitally via the Working Class Movement Library.^[23] She is one of over 200 Suffrage campaigners interviewed by historian Brian Harrison in the 1970s, the audio files of which are available on the LSE Library webpages.^[24] She is also the subject of a short animation made as part of Glasgow Women's Library's Vote 100 project.^[25]

References

1. Canning, Audrey (2004). "Stephen, Jessie (1893–1979)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
2. Leah Leneman (15 September 1995). A guid cause: the women's suffrage movement in Scotland. Mercat Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-1-873644-48-5. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
3. "Stephen, Miss Jessie 8SUF/B/157". The National Archives. 1 July 1977. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
4. Jill Liddington (1989). The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-Militarism in Britain Since 1820. Syracuse University Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-8156-2539-1. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
5. Elizabeth Crawford (2001). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928. Taylor & Francis Group. p. 653. ISBN 978-0-415-23926-4. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
6. Schwartz, Laura (August 2012). "Rediscovering the Workplace". History Workshop Journal. 74: 270–277. doi:10.1093/hwj/dbs024.
7. Spare Rib (February ed.). Spare Ribs Ltd. 1975. p. 13. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
8. Esther Breitenbach; Eleanor Gordon (1992). Out of bounds: women in Scottish society 1800–1945. Edinburgh University Press. p. 186. ISBN 978-0-7486-0372-5. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
9. Schwartz, Laura (June 2014). "'What we think is needed is a union of domestics such as the miners have': The Domestic Workers' Union of Great Britain and Ireland 1908–14". Twentieth Century British History. 25 (2): 173–198. doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwt028.
10. Elspeth King (1978). The Scottish women's suffrage movement. People's Palace Museum. p. 24. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
11. T M Devine (5 July 2012). The Scottish Nation: A Modern History. Penguin Books Limited. p. 752. ISBN 978-0-7181-9673-8.
12. Riddoch, Lesley (8 April 2014). . NewsNetScotland. Archived from the original on 10 April 2014. Retrieved 6 May 2014.
13. King, Elspeth (1993). The hidden history of Glasgow's women. Mainstream Publishing. pp. 125–6.
14. Prague Papers on History of International Relations. Institute of World History, Charles University. 2009. p. 322. ISBN 9788073082963. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
15. June Hannam; Karen Hunt (12 November 2012). Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s. Psychology Press. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-415-14220-5. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
16. Life and Labor Bulletin. National Women's Trade Union League. 1922. Retrieved 7 December 2012.
17. Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 219. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
18. "List of Blue Plaques in Bristol". Bristol City Council website. Bristol City Council. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
19. Ewan, Elizabeth; Pipes, Rose; Rendall, Jane; Reynolds, Siân, eds. (2018). The new biographical dictionary of Scottish women. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-3628-1.
20. "Supplement to The London Gazette, 11th June 1977". The London Gazette (47234): 7099. June 1977.
21. ukvote100 (2 March 2018). "Suffragette and Activist Jessie Stephen: A Life Remembered by Jean Corston". UK Vote 100: Looking forward to the centenary of Equal Franchise in 2028 in the UK Parliament. Retrieved 28 October 2023.
22. "Stockingfield Artwork projects". Scottish Canals. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
23. "Jessie Stephen". WCML. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
24. "The Suffrage Interviews". London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 30 August 2023.
25. "Vote 100: The Films". Glasgow Women's Library. Retrieved 30 August 2023.