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, England |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Known for |
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Jessie Stephen,MBE (19 April 1893 – 12 June 1979) was a twentieth-century Britishsuffragette,labour activist andlocal councillor. She grew up inScotland 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 theIndependent Labour Party and theWomen's Social and Political Union. Stephen moved to London duringWorld War I and in the 1920s she toured the United States and Canada, where she held meetings with the public including migrant English domestic workers.
Stephen was elected as a localcouncillor several times and stood as a candidate in general elections. After moving to Bristol in the 1940s she became the first woman president of Bristol Trades Council. She was appointed MBE in 1977 and her life is commemorated by ablue plaque in Bristol.
Stephen is recorded in theOxford Dictionary of National Biography as a "suffragette and labour activist",[1] and has been described as "virtually the only Scottish working-classWomen's Social and Political Union (WSPU) member about whom anything is known".[2]
Jessie Stephen was born inMarylebone, 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] Stephen's father was a founder member of theIndependent Labour Party (ILP) when it was established[2] and she described her mother as being "so quiet and the very opposite of dad".[3]
She attended Sunday schools separately linked to the church[1] and to socialism,[1][4] and was educated atNorth Kelvinside School.[1] She won a scholarship to train as apupil-teacher.[5] Family circumstances meant that she could not afford to pursue her aspiration to become a teacher, and she became adomestic worker at the age of 15.[2]
Unfortunately for my dreams, unemployment became worse so there was nothing for it but to leave [scholarship as a pupil teacher].
She was referred to as a "young activist in theMaryhill Branch of the ILP", before she joined the WSPU[7] in 1909, aged 16.[2] In around 1911–12, as noted in her unpublished autobiographySubmission is for Slaves (held at theWorking Class Movement Library inManchester), she formed theScottish 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-basedDomestic Workers' Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1913.[8]
Stephen was the youngest member of the WSPU Glasgow delegation to the Chancellor of the ExchequerDavid Lloyd George in 1912,[5] and, she took part in the first of the "Scottish Outrages", involving attacks onpillar boxes, inGlasgow in February 1913.[4][9][10][11] 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."[12]
Stephen was approached bySylvia Pankhurst and moved from Glasgow to London,[1] where she became considered one of the "most active members" (along withEmma Boyce, around 1916) of theWorkers' Suffrage Federation.[13] In April 1919, Stephen was one of a number of speakers to address a crowd of "about 10,000 people" inTrafalgar Square, opposing theBlockade of Germany.[6] Other speakers includedEmmeline Pethick-Lawrence andTheodora Wilson Wilson.[6] She was also an active member of theWomen's Peace Crusade and at the 1920 ILP conference argued against the use of force during events preceding theTreaty on the Creation of the USSR.[14]
In the 1920s she visited the United States, holding public meetings with immigrant communities from Scotland and Wales.[1][15] and fund-raising for theSocialist Party of America.[1] She also visitedVancouver, where she encouraged migrant English domestic workers to unionise.[1]
Stephen later lived in Lancashire[5] and also in London,[5][4] where she became involved in theEast London Federation and sold theWomen's Dreadnought.[4] She was electedLabour borough councillor forBermondsey in 1922, after failing to be selected as aparliamentary candidate for the ILP,[5] and worked for Bermondsey MPAlfred Salter.[4] She stood as Labour candidate forPortsmouth South in the general elections of1923,1924 and1929,[16] and forKidderminster in1931.[4]
From 1924 she worked as a freelance journalist,[4] established a secretarial agency inLewes in 1935[4] and joined theNational Union of Clerks in 1938.[1] At the time of the Second World War, she worked forMurphy Radio in Welwyn Garden City.[4]
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 toBristol.[1] She also worked at the Broad Quay branch of theCo-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), later becoming chair of the local CWS management committee.[1] Around this time, she spoke publicly and gave advice onbirth control.[4] She was elected tothe city council.[17] In 1952 she became the first woman president ofBristol Trades Council[17] and in 1955 she was awarded the TUC Gold Badge.[18]
In the1964 general election, she was a candidate for theLabour Party in theWeston-super-Mare constituency.[4] She was appointedMBE for "services to the trade union movement" in June 1977.[19]
In later life Stephen was blind.[20] She died from pneumonia and heart failure atBristol General Hospital on 12 June 1979.[1]
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Stephen's life is commemorated by ablue plaque at her former home in Bedminster, Bristol.[17] 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 inRiver of Words, an artwork by Anoushka Havinden at theStockingfield Junction on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Maryhill, Glasgow, which lists local people of historic significance.[21]
Stephen's unpublished autobiography,Submission is for Slaves, is available in theWorking Class Movement Library in Salford.[22]Brian Harrison recorded an oral history interview with Stephen, in July 1977, as part of the Suffrage Interviews project, titledOral evidence on the suffragette and suffragist movements: the Brian Harrison interviews.[23] Stephen talks about the influence of her Father, her activities with the WSPU, theEast London Federation of Suffragettes, theNational Federation of Women Workers, theNational Union of Clerks, theWomen's Cooperative Guild, and theWorkers' Birth Control Group as well as her involvement with Sylvia Pankhurst.
She is also the subject of a short animation made as part ofGlasgow Women's Library's Vote 100 project[24] and an exhibitionJessie Stephen: Maryhill's Suffragette atMaryhill Burgh Halls running from 11th March 2025 to 13th June 2025.[25]
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