Politics and Feminism in “Outcast London”: George Lansbury and Jane Cobden's Campaign for the First London County Council

Extract

This article examines Jane Cobden's campaign for the London County Council (L.C.C.) in 1888–89 and its controversial aftermath. Cobden's effort, a pioneering political venture of British feminism, illuminates late-Victorian concepts of gender. It provides at once an anticipation of, and a distinct contrast to, the militant suffragism of the Edwardian era. In addition, it suggests new ways of thinking about the connection between women's-suffragist and labor politics. Perhaps because the campaign was a comparatively obscure incident when measured against the broad sweep of British political history, however, no scholar has done much more than sketch its bare outline. Hopefully, the fuller depiction provided below will accord it the treatment it really deserves.

This article approaches the subject from a tangent, however. Cobden's campaign was a significant if little-known episode not only in the history of British suffragism but also in the life of a man who went on to play a major role in British politics long after the first county council elections had been forgotten. This was George Lansbury, Cobden's political agent during 1888–89 and secretary of the Bow and Bromley Radical and Liberal Federation. Lansbury eventually became one of the main architects of the socialist movement in East London and a chief male supporter of the militant suffragettes during the Edwardian era (in 1912 he temporarily lost his seat in the House of Commons and went to prison on their behalf). He also became a founder and editor of the quintessential “rebel” newspaper, the Daily Herald (which was designated Labour's official organ after Lansbury left it in 1922), a pacifist opponent of World War I, and, from 1931 to 1935, leader of the Labour party itself.