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Helen Crawfurd Helen Jack, Born in the Gorbals District

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Helen Crawfurd Helen Jack, Born in the Gorbals District Helen Crawfurd Helen Jack, born in the Gorbals district of Glasgow in 1877, was the third child of William Jack, a Master Baker, and Heather Kyle Jack, of 61 Shore Street, Inverkip. Her father was a member of the Conservative Party and a member of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Helen shared her father's religious views and became a Sunday school teacher. Her siblings were William, James, John, Jean and Agnes. In 1898 Helen married Reverend Alexander Montgomerie Crawfurd, and they had one son, Alexander in 1913. His parish was in a slum area of Glasgow and she was deeply shocked by the suffering endured by the working classes. She wrote to a friend about the "appalling misery and poverty of the workers in Glasgow, physically broken down bodies, bowlegged, rickets." Helen Crawfurd also became very interested in the work of Josephine Butler, particularly The Education and Employment of Women. She became convinced that the situation would only change when women had the vote and in 1900 she joined the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), claiming that "if the Mothers of the race had some say, then things would be changed". She held regular meetings in her Glasgow house and took part in protest meetings but she became increasingly frustrated by the lack success of the movement. By 1905 the media had lost interest in the struggle for women's rights. Newspapers rarely reported meetings and usually refused to publish articles and letters written by supporters of women's suffrage. The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) decided to use different methods to obtain the publicity they thought would be needed in order to obtain the vote. During the summer of 1908 the WSPU introduced the tactic of breaking the windows of government buildings. On 30 June suffragettes marched into Downing Street and began throwing small stones through the windows of the Prime Minister's house. As a result of this demonstration, twenty-seven women were arrested and sent to Holloway Prison. On 13 October 1908 the WSPU held a large demonstration in London and then tried to enter the House of Commons. There were violent clashes with the police and 24 women were arrested, including Emily Pankhurst, who was sentenced to three months in prison. In July, 1909, an imprisoned suffragette, Marion Wallace-Dunlop, refused to eat. Afraid that she might die and become a martyr, it was decided to release her. Soon afterwards other imprisoned suffragettes adopted the same strategy. Unwilling to release all the imprisoned suffragettes, the prison authorities force-fed these women on hunger strike. In one eighteen month period, Emily Pankhurst, who was now in her fifties, endured ten of these hunger-strikes. Helen Crawfurd agreed with the strategy of the WSPU and in 1910 she joined the organisation. Two years later she broke the windows of the Minister of Education's residence in central London, for which she was arrested and sentenced to one month's imprisonment in Holloway Prison. In 1913 Helen Crawfurd was arrested for attacking police officers who were attempting to arrest Emily Pankhurst at a public meeting in Glasgow. Although released later that night without charge, Helen was re-arrested the following night for smashing the windows of the army recruiting offices in the city, and was sentenced to one month's imprisonment in Duke Street Prison. Crawfurd immediately went on hunger-strike and after eight-days she was released. In 1914 her husband and mother both died. Crawfurd was now one of the WSPU leaders in Scotland. In 1914 she spoke at a meeting organised to protest against the imprisonment of two suffragettes in Perth. She was arrested and charged with making inflammatory comments and was sentenced to one month's imprisonment. She immediately went on hunger strike and was released five days into her sentence. Later that year Crawford was arrested and charged for a bomb attack which damaged the Botanic Gardens. She was found guilty and received a prison sentence of two years. Again she went on hunger strike, her third in less than two years, and was once more released. On 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. Two days later the NUWSS announced that it was suspending all political activity until the war was over. The leadership of the WSPU began negotiating with the British government. On 10 August the government announced it was releasing all suffragettes from prison. In return, the WSPU agreed to end their militant activities and help the war effort. After receiving a £2,000 grant from the government, the WSPU organised a demonstration in London. Members carried banners with slogans such as "We Demand the Right to Serve", "For Men Must Fight and Women Must Work" and "Let None Be Kaiser's Cat's Paws". At the meeting, attended by 30,000 people, Emily Pankhurst called on trade unions to let women work in those industries traditionally dominated by men. Helen Crawfurd, disagreed with this strategy and like other militants such as Sylvia Pankhurst, Charlotte Despard, Helena Swanwick, Olive Schreiner, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Alice Wheeldon, Hettie Wheeldon and Winnie Mason eventually joined the Women's Peace Party. She also became active in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and began to organise Scottish women in a campaign to oppose Britain's involvement in the First World War. Soon after the outbreak of war, private landlords in Glasgow began to increase rents. This was seen as a blatant example of war-time profiteering. In response to this action, Helen Crawfurd, Mary Barbour and Agnes Dollan established the Glasgow Women's Housing Association. Crawfurd was elected secretary and helped organise a campaign of non-payment of rents. The group gained support from the Clyde Workers' Committee and the Independent Labour Party. On 17 November 1915 the three organizations took part in one of the largest demonstrations in Scottish political history. Tens of thousands marched through the streets of Glasgow. The government was shocked by this show of force and passed the Rent Restriction Act which froze working class rents, not only in Glasgow but throughout Britain, for the duration of the war. In 1915 with her friends, Mary Barbour and Agnes Dollan, she set up the Glasgow branch of the Women's International League. The following year the three women established the Women's Peace Crusade (WPC). Other members included Ethel Snowden and Selina Cooper. In February 1916 the Clyde Workers' Committee became involved in a dispute at Beardmores Munitions Works in Parkhead. The government claimed that the strike was a ploy by the CWC to prevent the manufacture of munitions and therefore to harm the war effort. On 25 March, Arthur McManus, David Kirkwood, Willie Gallacher and other members of the CWC were arrested by the authorities under the Defence of the Realm Act. The men were eventually court-martialled and sentenced to be deported from Glasgow to Edinburgh. Helen Crawfurd took part in the protests against these deportations and as a result was arrested by the police. However, she was released without charge. Crawfurd was a member of the British delegation to the Conference of the Women's International League at Zurich in 1919. This delegation included Ethel Snowden, Charlotte Despard, Ellen Wilkinson and Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence. This delegation chose Helen Crawfurd to make the report to the Conference on their behalf. After the war Crawfurd continued as one of the leaders of the Independent Labour Party. However, she became increasingly disillusioned with the political direction of the ILP. She argued that it had abandoned its socialism and this feeling increased after attending the Second Congress of the Third International in Moscow in 1920 where she met Lenin, who convinced her that he believed that women had an important role in the global communist movement. In April 1920 Crawfurd joined forces with Willie Gallacher, Arthur McManus, Harry Pollitt, Tom Bell and Willie Paul to establish the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). McManus was elected as the party's first chairman and Bell and Pollitt became the party's first full-time workers. Crawfurd was appointed to the executive committee and given the task of increasing female membership of the CPGB. According to her biographer, Michael Byers, "Helen took to this task with great enthusiasm, editing a separate women's page in the official newspaper of the CPGB 'The Communist', in which she sought to inform ordinary women of the way in which communism could liberate them from both capitalist and sexual domination." Helen Crawfurd in Germany in 1922 During the Russian Civil War Crawfurd played a leading role in the work of the Workers International Relief Organisation (WIR). In 1922 she became secretary of the WIR and arranged for help to be given to aid economically distressed regions in other parts of Europe. This included mining communities during the 1926 General Strike. Crawfurd supported the leadership of A J Cook and was appalled when the TUC General Council announced that the General Strike was over. Crawfurd argued, "The General Council of the Trades Union Congress, in order to save their miserable faces and to whitewash themselves, must needs find a scapegoat and put their sins upon it and send it out into the wilderness - and they foolishly imagine that in their recent attempt to vilify the leaders of the miners, they have as easily hoodwinked the British workers as the children of Israel fondly imagined they could hoodwink their God.... If Cook could be made to hear the voice of the whole working class, who are solidly behind him and the miners, they would never hesitate.
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