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Creating positive footprints

Annual IWD Lecture

A Most Independent Member’: Eleanor Rathbone MP (1872-1946), by Dr Susan Cohen


The subject of this year’s Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art’s International Women’s Day Lecture was the fabulously feisty Eleanor Rathbone. A pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement and a lifelong campaigner for women’s rights.

Rathbone is an unsung heroine of the twentieth century and this year marks the 70th anniversary of her death.

We enjoyed a fascinating lecture from Dr Susan Cohen, historian and author of ‘Rescue the Perishing: Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees’ (2010) and co-founder of the Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group. 


Dr Cohen's talk revealed a most remarkable woman, celebrating Eleanor Rathbone's life and embracing her diverse humanitarian activism.

As an independent MP Eleanor Rathbone argued tirelessly for a family allowance paid direct to mothers and saw this become law in 1945.