Susan Cohen Eleanor Rathbone: Responding to the Czech Refugee Crisis of 1938 This paper examines the response of Eleanor Rathbone MP to the plight of Czech refugees between 1938 and the outbreak of the Second World War. In the first instance it looks briefly at her background and concern for the future of Czechoslovakia and its people. It then considers her role as a campaigner, and the opposition to her activism from officials within the British government. Eleanor Rathbone MP (1872–1946) earned a reputation during her lifetime for her campaigning and humanitarian activism on behalf of refugees fleeing Europe and the threat of Fascism and Nazism before and during the Second World War. Prior to this, the last phase of her long and active career, she had gained renown for her commitment to a wide variety of welfare and social issues, as well as for her role as a suffragist, feminist and pacificist.1 In 1929 she was elected as the Independent MP for the Combined English Universities – Birmingham, Bristol, Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Reading and Sheffield – and the newly achieved platform of the House of Commons became the springboard for her campaigning activities.2 In March 1933 she was the first woman politician to stand up in Parliament and denounce Hitler and his regime and warn, prophetically, of the threat posed to world peace.3 From then on her concern over the future of Europe grew and foreign affairs rather than domestic issues took up most of her time and energy. As she watched the deteriorating situation in Nazi Germany she gleaned as much information as she could from her growing network of contacts at home and abroad. Her concern over the danger that Czechoslovakia faced was well established before the Munich Agreement was signed on 29 September 1938. She had visited the three countries of the Little Entente – Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia – on a Balkan tour in early 1937 and, on her return, had expressed her very strong 148 Susan Cohen views on what she saw as Britain’s responsibility to Czechoslovakia. At that time she had asked in the House of Commons, ‘whether it would be decent to abandon this country, the last free enlightened democracy left in Central Europe? Also, would it be safe?’ reminding MPs of Bismarck’s dictum that ‘he who is master of Bohemia is master of Europe’.4 At the same time she was in contact with her Czech feminist friend, Mme Frantiska Plaminkova, who was a member of the Senate of the Czechoslovak Republic. Eager to raise the profile of Czechoslovakia at home, Eleanor warned Mme Plaminkova how difficult it was to make the British public ‘recognise their duty and responsibility towards Czechoslovakia’ as it was ‘not easy as people know so little about the country’.5 By early September 1938 Eleanor was writing to Henry Wickham Steed, the journalist and political commentator, expressing her concern over the lack of initiatives being taken by the recently established Czech Association of which he was Chair.6 She was constantly being asked how the Czech case could best be publicised and sought his help. There was a possibility of getting Mr Kosina and Dr Boer, the International Secretary of the Social Democrat Trade Unions and the Social Democrat Vice-Mayor of Brno respectively, to speak whilst on their planned visit to Britain in late October.7 Divisions between those on the political left and right were an impediment and Steed’s suggestion was that a European Association be formed, with sub-committees, the first of which would be a Czech Committee.8 Against the background of a mounting crisis, Eleanor remained a proponent of collective security, and supported foreign policies that were aimed at averting war. As a pacificist, she wanted peace, but not at any price, and talk of appeasement in 1938 was beyond the pale. Far from rejoicing at Chamberlain’s settlement with Hitler, whereby Germany was granted the strategic Sudeten northern frontiers of the Czechoslovak Republic in return for Hitler’s promise not to attack the rest of the Republic and to keep the peace in the future, Eleanor viewed the Munich Agreement as a betrayal and a humanitarian disaster. It may have resolved the immediate international crisis and delayed war for the time being, but in its wake was the human tragedy that Eleanor had envisaged. Ultimately it propelled her into the campaign to pressurise the British government to face up to what she, .