Breakthrough Welsh Women

Politics

Annie Powell

Annie Powell was born into a Welsh-speaking family in Ystrad, Rhondda, in 1906. As a teacher in the Rhondda Valley, she witnessed the poverty and hardship suffered by mining families and unemployed workers during the 1920s and 1930s. At first, these experiences led her to join the Labour Party, but after a period of reading and engagement with political theory she decided to join the Communist Party in 1938. There was a significant amount of support for Communism in Rhondda during this period, the Communist Party candidate coming very close to defeating the Labour Party candidate at the 1945 General Election. While Communism remained strong in the trade unions, it diminished as an electoral force in the 1950s. However, Annie managed to push back against these trends in the sphere of local government. She was elected to Rhondda Borough Council in 1955 as councillor for Penygraig. Her work in building the trust and respect of the local community helped her to overcome anti-Communist electoral bias and serve as councillor for almost thirty years.

 

During this time, she was especially active in campaigns to improve housing conditions, health services, nursery education and pensions in Rhondda. She also intervened to end racial discrimination in local businesses.

In 1979 she was elected Mayor of Rhondda, the only Communist ever elected mayor in Wales. When she died in 1986, over seven hundred people attended her funeral.  

 

 

Follow the link to view a BBC Interview of Annie Powell: 

https://twitter.com/i/status/839514178402541573

Emily Phipps

Emily Phipps was born in Devon in 1865. She moved to Swansea in 1895 after taking up the position of headteacher at Swansea Municipal Girls School. It was in Swansea that she became active in the fight for women’s suffrage. She was motivated to join the struggle following a Liberal Convention in 1906 attended by Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Liberals endeavoured to keep feminists out of their meetings, but a few determined suffragettes managed to enter the hall and raise the question as to why Liberals would not support votes for women. Lloyd George responded that if these women desired equal treatment with men they should be ‘flung out ruthlessly’. Dismayed at the injustice of such events, Emily joined the Women’s Freedom League, a militant organisation which developed a particularly active branch in Swansea, specialising in direct action and passive resistance in agitating for
voting rights. Among the actions that Emily was involved in was a boycott of the 1911 Census, in which a group of women from the area stayed overnight in a cave on the Gower coast. As she explained,   

‘Many women had determined that since they could not be citizens for the purposes of voting, they would not be citizens for the purpose of helping the government to compile statistics: they would not be included in the Census Returns’  

 

 

She also campaigned for equality in the workplace through her role as President of the National Union of Women Teachers. A steadfast campaigner for women’s rights, her belief was ‘if you make yourself a doormat, do not be surprised if people tread on you.’  

 

 

Support Groups

During the 1984-85 miners’ strike, thousands of women from the Welsh, English and Scottish coalfields joined the strike effort by establishing support groups. Many had husbands or other family members in the industry, but the groups were also embraced by women from the wider community who stood in solidarity with the miners.  

 

 

 

 

Local groups formed into a unified national support group called ‘Women Against Pit Closures’ (WAPC). These women quickly helped to establish a network of soup kitchens and food parcel distribution centres that fed over 140,000 miners and their families at the height of the strike, forming what has been called ‘an alternative welfare system’.  

Women also joined picket lines, organised rallies, and raised thousands of pounds through fundraising events.  

Some of those involved had previous experience of political organising, through participation in political parties or social movements, while others were new to the kinds of activities that the support groups entailed. Several women have described their engagement with the strike as marking a decisive shift in their lives. Though it ended in defeat, they acquired a new confidence through public speaking, large-scale organisation and political activism, which they would carry into the post-strike years and the task of rebuilding their communities.  

 

Greenham Common

Women’s Peace Camp

 

In August 1981, the South Wales based campaign group Women For Life On Earth began a 120-mile march from Cardiff to RAF Greenham Common, Berkshire, to protest against nuclear weapons being placed at the base. The action led to the formation of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which was occupied by women from across the UK for nearly two decades. When the march arrived in Greenham, eleven days after setting off from Cardiff, the women wrote to the base commander: 

‘Some of us have brought our babies with us our entire distance. We fear for the future of these children. We fear for the future of all our children, and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all life.’ 

The wider Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had been operating since the 1950s, but the Greenham camp was distinct in being led by women; integrating networks and ideas developed in the feminist, environmental and peace movements. At its height, over 70,000 women gathered in Greenham – the largest women-led protest in the UK since women’s suffrage.  

The Canadian documentary photographer, Raissa Page, captured the scenes from the Greenham Common camp in a significant collection of photographs deposited to the Richard Burton Archives, Swansea University. One such image, and perhaps the most iconic, shows women linking hands and dancing in a circle atop a nuclear missile silo at dawn on New Year’s Day, having just breached the perimeter fence of the military base.   

The South Wales Miners’ Library holds protest badges and written sources relating to the Greenham camp. The spider web design, which features on the badges, became a symbol of the camp – representing both fragility and resilience. The Miners’ Library also houses a banner from the Swansea group Women Oppose the Nuclear Threat, who organised trips to Greenham on numerous occasions. There were also strong links between the women of Greenham and women’s support groups in mining communities – with many women from Greenham travelling to South Wales during the 1984-85 strike to march and picket alongside the miners and the women of the coalfields.  

 

 

The nuclear missiles were removed from the airbase in the early 1990s, and the common land occupied by the base was eventually evacuated by the military and bestowed to the local council. The Women’s Peace Camp closed in September 2000, making way for a memorial Peace Garden surrounded by Welsh standing stones. In 2020, a purple plaque was unveiled at Ystradgynlais Welfare Hall to commemorate the peace campaigner Eunice Stallard, who was among the initial Women For Life on Earth marchers.  

 

The formation of the Greenham Camp, following the march from Cardiff, represents an important chapter in the history of women-led non-violent resistance connected to Wales.