From Peace to Development: a Re-Constitution of British Women’s International Politics, c. 1945 – 1975 By Sophie Skelton A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Modern History School of History and Cultures The University of Birmingham April 2014 i University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Abstract This thesis aims to make clear British women’s experiences of the international between 1945 and 1975. It analyses how international development came to feature at the centre of British women’s organisations international programme by the late 1950s. The origins of this process date back to the immediate post-war years. Inspired by a new sense of duty and internationalism, British women’s organisations embraced the new international institutions that had formed as a result of War with a newfound sense of purpose, one which allowed them to join new organisational partners. In the late 1940s, world peace was taken up by a broad spectrum of British women’s organisations as a potentially powerful means of bringing women together from diverse political, social and cultural backgrounds to co-operate on both national and international levels. The failure of peace to unite women across social and political lines in the face of the ‘red scare’ in the early 1950s forced British women to look for an ‘apolitical’ means of promoting human relations. The UN technocratic approach positioned international development as the convenient space for British women to act out these new post-war international commitments. However, the results of this new international priority within Britain were informed directly by histories of imperial power which left assumptions about priorities and Western superiority uncontested until the 1980s. i Acknowledgements This research project was made possible by a Studentship Award (3+1) funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. I would like to thank my thesis supervisor Professor Matthew Hilton for his help, guidance and for reading through my multiple drafts. I am particularly grateful to the staff at the Women’s Library in London which has now moved to its new home at the London School of Economics. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Richard Skelton for his help in the multiple archives we visited throughout the country. I would also like to thank Robert Foster, Jackie Skelton and Robert Skelton for all of their support over the last three years. ii Contents Page List of Abbreviations iv List of Illustrations v Introduction 1 From Peace to Development: a Re-Constitution of British Women’s International Politics, c. 1945 – 1975 Chapter One 38 The Revival of Internationalism in the Immediate Post-War Period, c.1944 – 1948 Chapter Two 86 British Women’s Organisations and Peace during the Cold War, c.1948 – 1953 Chapter Three 142 A New Conception of Peace: Women’s Organisations, Technical Assistance, and the Freedom from Hunger Campaign, c.1952 – 1965 Chapter Four 197 The ‘Vanguards of Development Planning’: Women’s Organisations and Women-Centred Development, c.1965 – 1975 Conclusion 255 Appendices 265 Bibliography 268 iii List of Abbreviations For clarity, organisations are referred to inter-changeably by their abbreviation and full title throughout this thesis. ACWW Associated Countrywomen of the World BFBPW British Federation of Business and Professional Women CHR UN Commission on Human Rights CSW UN Commission on the Status of Women DD2 UN Second Development Decade ECOSOC UN Economic and Social Council FFHC Freedom from Hunger Campaign IAW International Alliance of Women ICW International Council of Women IWDC International Women’s Day Committee LNU League of Nations Union MWA Married Women’s Association NAW National Assembly of Women NCW National Council of Women NUTG National Union of Townswomen’s Guilds NWCA National Women’s Citizens Association SJCWWO Standing Joint Council of Working Women’s Organisations SPG Six Point Group UN United Nations UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund VCOAD Voluntary Committee for Overseas Aid and Development WAC UNA Women’s Advisory Council to the United Nations Association WCG Women’s Cooperative Guild WFL Women’s Freedom League WFW Women for Westminster WGPW Women’s Group on Public Welfare WI Women’s Institute WIDF Women’s International Democratic Federation WILPF Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom iv List of Illustrations 1. The front cover of Monica Felton’s controversial pamphlet ‘What I Saw in Korea’. 128 2. An illustrated map depicting the scope of the Women’s Institutes Freedom from 143 Hunger projects. 3. A photograph of a British graduate sent overseas to Fiji with money raised for the 190 Freedom from Hunger Campaign by the Women’s Institutes in 1965. 4. A photograph of two Fijian students displaying the domestic equipment they had 190 made themselves following the establishment of a WI funded course in 1965. 5. A photograph of a typical cookery demonstration for women in Mexico in 1961. 193 6. A photograph of girls being taught to sew in the Windward Isles in 1968. 229 v Introduction From Peace to Development: a Reconstitution of Women’s International Politics, c.1945 - 1975 In April 1945 the International Alliance of Women (IAW), one of three major transnational women’s organisations, sent two observers to the San Francisco Conference that founded the United Nations (UN). Their subsequent reports to the Executive of the IAW emphasised the limited role accorded to women and concluded that the conditions of international politics were ‘still far, far from satisfactory’.1 Concerted effort was required by transnational organisations such as theirs to ensure that women were granted their ‘proper’ place in the multitude of committees which, they believed, would shape the future global social, economic and political order. Never before, they argued, had the efforts of individual women in their affiliated societies been so important and so necessary. Many of the women activists in international women’s organisations at this time had learnt first- hand before the war of the difficulties in securing international measures to protect women’s status, when women as a group were excluded from those very bodies responsible for internationally binding legislation. What was needed then, according to the IAW, was a clear and persistent campaign to ensure the real participation of women and their interests in these new transnational bodies, so that they might take an equal role in the reconstruction of global stability following the devastating effects of the Second World War. Arguably, it is this sentiment that characterised the international program of both transnational and British women’s organisations in the immediate post-war period. 1 Women’s Library (Hereafter WL), 7MCA/C FL 438, International Alliance of Women (IAW), Letter from Margery Corbett Ashby to Members of the IAW, 11th August1946; WL, 7MCA/C FL 438, IAW, ‘Reminiscences of the San Francisco Conference that Founded the United Nations’, Bertha Lutz, October 1947 1 This thesis will show that the immediate post-war period saw an increase in activity in the international sphere on behalf of a broad spectrum of both transnational and British women’s organisations. It will argue that the years 1945 – 1975 saw the culmination of a process that served to re-constitute women’s international politics. This process began in 1945 in the original search to claim a new international role for politically organised women; a role which would allow them to act within the international political process rather than lingering on the periphery as they had with the League of Nations. Initially these efforts were diverse; British women’s organisations in particular were keen to take advantage of the new opportunities available for international work and cross- organisational collaboration afforded by the end of the Second World War. By the late 1940s, the volume of international activity had convinced a minority of British women’s organisations of the necessity for a central, organised international focus which drew on both historical and contemporary connections. Taking inspiration from their international parent bodies, world peace was utilised by British women’s organisations as a means of appealing to women across political and social lines. Leading members hoped that this would facilitate a new, broad based movement of women inspired directly by the new post-war international spirit. However by the 1950s, international women’s organisations decided to deliberately replace world peace with international development as their main international focus in direct response to the challenges of the contemporary political climate. The link between world peace and Communism directly challenged the founding principle of non- partisanship to which the majority of transnational and British women’s organisations subscribed. Accusations