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CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION IN |
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 MEN WHO SAID NO | ROAD TO CONSCRIPTION | CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION | PRISONS | SENTENCED TO DEATH | TRIBUNALS | CONTEXT | INDEX | SITE MAP |
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| WOMEN'S PEACE CRUSADE | WOMEN WORKING FOR PEACE |
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| In May 1916 a letter in the Labour Leader wondered why the socialist women of Britain weren’t demonstrating against the war. Helen Crawfurd, a member of the Women’s International League in Glasgow, took up the challenge. Born in the Gorbals, she had become a socialist, feminist and active suffragette, shocked by the poverty around her. From the beginning she had spoken out against the war. She called a meeting of women’s organisations in June in Glasgow to discuss the formation of a Women’s Peace Crusade. 200 delegates from 16 women’s organisations came to the meeting and the Women’s Peace Crusade was launched, lasting until 1918. The Crusade worked for an end to the war by negotiation. In July 5000 came to a demonstration on Glasgow Green, and a later demonstration was held in Edinburgh. The Crusade appealed to working class women suffering the effects of the war. By 1916 there was deep anger about the death toll, conscription, food prices and constant queues for food, and the authoritarian government. In 1917 the Crusade spread to working class areas of the north of England such as Nelson in Lancashire, and Manchester – and then to the Midlands. ‘Everywhere we meet with eager sympathy. The women are sick of this continued slaughter’, reported Isabella Ford from Leeds. By November 1917 there were about 45 local Crusades, in Scotland, south Wales, the industrial Midlands, the North, the North-east, and the West Riding of Yorkshire. In London a Peace Negotiations demonstration was planned with many other groups for 14 July 1918 in Hyde Park – the authorities banned it. Campaigning continued until the Armistice was signed. The Crusade has been described as the first truly popular campaign linking feminism and anti-militarism. |
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