The Feminism and Political Radicalism of Helen Taylor in Victorian Britain and Ireland
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The Feminism and Political Radicalism of Helen Taylor in Victorian Britain and Ireland Janet Smith October 2014 Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of PhD awarded by London Metropolitan University Acknowledgements I would like to express my special appreciation and thanks to my supervisors, Dr Lucy Bland and Jonathan Moore, who have given me tremendous support, far beyond what was professionally required. I am indebted to their knowledge, expertise and the enthusiasm they showed for the subject. Without their encouragement and advice this thesis could never have been completed. Thanks also to Dr Katharina Rowold for her initial valuable supervision. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Dr Melvyn Walmsley who proof read the final thesis and offered encouragement in the final weeks before completion. He ensured a flagging PhD student reached the finishing line. Thanks also to the Research Office staff at London Metropolitan University, in particular Cathy Larne and Hema Joshi who provided much valued professional support at a time of great change and upheaval at the university. I would also like to mention the staff of London Metropolitan Library who were always a pleasure to deal with when they too were undergoing uncertain times. I would further like to acknowledge the help I received from the staff of the archives I consulted. In particular the London School of Economics, the British Library, the Newspaper Library at Colindale, the Women’s Library, the Welcome Institute and the London Metropolitan Archives A special place in my affections is for ever reserved for the Clark Archive in Street, Somerset where I spent a most wonderful and unforgettable summer’s day in what must be the friendliest archive in the world. The help and discussion offered by the archivists there and the warmth and hospitality they extended to their visitor will always remain a most pleasant memory. Thanks are also due to family and friends for support during the last years when my one topic of conversation has been Helen Taylor. 2 Abstract This thesis offers an examination of the feminism and political radicalism of Helen Taylor. Despite the growth of interest in the political and social campaigns of nineteenth century women, Helen Taylor has remained a marginal figure of historical enquiry, referenced mainly in terms of her relationships with her contemporary English feminists and step-father, John Stuart Mill. Divisions in the women’s suffrage movement have been blamed on her difficult personality with no examination that it was her socialist anti-imperial feminism which was at the heart of the antagonism. Her important contribution to Victorian social and political life has been largely ignored. The study will examine the significance of her work across a wide range of political and social organisations from 1876 onwards; namely the London School Board, the Irish question, land reform, the Social Democratic Federation, her attempt to become the first woman MP and her membership of the Moral Reform Union. This work will illustrate how the political ideology of her feminist mother Harriet Taylor and her step-father John Stuart Mill remained at the heart of Helen’s political throughout her public life. It will further consider how the organisations she joined were gendered and how she attempted to negotiate and contest this. It will ask why she was able to successfully resist the middle class ideal of separate spheres for men and women. Finally it offers further evidence to challenge the claim made by some historians that all British Victorian feminists were imperialist in nature. 3 Contents Page 1. Introduction: scope and aims; relationship to previous 5 historiography 2. Helen Taylor’s formative years 23 3. The London School Board, 1876–1885 41 4. Helen Taylor and the land question in Great Britain and Ireland, 120 1879-1907 5. The Social Democratic Federation and afterwards - socialism, 192 liberalism and moral reform: promoting feminism and challenging separate spheres within the political and social organisations of the 1880s 6. The feminism and political radicalism of Helen Taylor: a final 231 assessment of her importance in the historiography 7. Bibliography 258 4 1. Introduction: scope and aims; relationship to the previous historiography Scope and aims This thesis will explore the contribution of Helen Taylor to the political, economic and social movements of nineteenth century Britain and Ireland and explain how her political beliefs developed and why they set her apart from many British feminists of her generation. The depth of her political involvement, always driven by her belief in the moral necessity of sexual equality, led to a schism with many fellow suffragists due to her chosen causes, such as Home Rule for Ireland, which was politically unacceptable to many within the British feminist movement. Contemporary sources, both published and private, reveal Helen’s importance to the political and social life of her day, in particular the years 1876 to 1888, though the historiography has failed to show this. Many of her campaigns for equality remain relevant today when women’s pay and employment opportunities still lag behind those of men. Helen’s public work shows how, by the 1880s, women were becoming overtly political and entering the male world of politics and public life in mixed gendered organisations. Anti-slavery and suffrage campaigns had allowed women to carve out political agency but Helen entered the wider political world of men in the organisations she joined and demanded, though she did not always receive, gender equality within them. This work will examine how her feminism informed her radicalism and socialism and vice versa and how these three political commitments determined her participation in politics throughout her public life and influenced the campaigning groups of which she was a member. Thereby this study will enhance our understanding of women’s political involvement in Victorian society through an examination of her work on the London School Board, her support for Irish Home Rule and extensive involvement with the Ladies’ Land League during the Irish Land War, her membership of the Land Reform Union, the English Land Restoration League and the Democratic Federation, and how she combined these campaigns with her work on women’s suffrage. It will further examine her often strained relations with the Liberal Party, her work with the Moral Reform Union and her campaign to be elected as an independent Radical MP for Camberwell in 1885. This analysis of her wide-ranging political allegiances will throw light on her conflicts with contemporary British feminists, which have often been blamed solely on Helen’s ‘difficult’ personality. It will be argued that her reported intransigence can be better explained through an understanding of her radical socialist politics, which informed the international anti- imperial nature of her feminism, at odds with the pro-Empire stance of many within the suffrage movement. Thus this thesis will explore Helen’s hitherto ignored achievements and the important contribution she made to the radical and socialist politics of her day. Despite Henry George, arguably the leading political economist of the 1880s, calling her ‘one of the most intelligent women I have ever met,’1 her contributions across a wide range of political and social arenas have been overlooked. She has been referenced mainly in terms of her relationships with her step-father, John Stuart Mill, and her contemporary English feminists. This, though, ignores her involvement in some of the major political issues of the day – the Irish question and 1 Henry George (jnr), The Life of Henry George (New York, 1904), p. 361. 6 land reform throughout Britain – and her work to ameliorate the lives of the working class through her election to the London School Board. Her involvement in Irish politics and in groups calling for land ownership reform show her to have been a significant political player who rejected the received ideas of the civilising mission of the British Empire. She crossed the political boundaries of her class and nationality to form friendships and alliances with those who worked to bring radical change to Victorian society, including the ex-Fenian Michael Davitt, the Irish nationalist Anna Parnell and Henry George. For example, she was President of the Ladies’ Land League of Great Britain, an organisation which Anna Parnell, President of the Irish Ladies’ Land League, believed had the revolutionary potential to end British rule in Ireland.2 Yet neither this nor her work for land reform has received any detailed attention from historians; she has been mentioned merely as an historical footnote. Indeed, it is literally in the footnotes of historical works she is often referenced. A further objective of this thesis is to locate Helen in the world of Victorian Liberal politics and social campaigning and it will be established in the following chapters that many of the conflicts between Liberals and herself were caused by her move towards radical socialism. After 1885 she returned to her liberal roots and worked more closely with the Liberals after Gladstone’s adoption of support for Home Rule for Ireland which split the party. It is necessary here to briefly clarify what Liberalism meant to those who classed themselves as Liberals during the era of Helen’s public work. This will enable Helen’s liberal heritage, which is a continuing theme of this thesis, to be fully understood. 2 Anna Parnell, The Tale of a Great Sham, ed. Dana Hearne (Dublin,1986). 7 In 1885 Andrew Reid edited a book in which leading Liberals, both MPs and campaigners expressed why they supported the Liberal party and what it meant to be a Liberal.3 Time and time again the contributors mention the utilitarian philosophy of it being a means to secure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.4 This philosophy, founded by Jeremy Bentham earlier in the century, had been the creed of a number of public figures, includes John Stuart Mill’s father James.