Margaret Haig Thomas was born on 12 June 1883 in London.[citation needed] Her parents were industrialist and politician David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount Rhondda, and Sybil Haig, also a suffragette. In her autobiography, Margaret wrote that her mother had 'prayed passionately that her baby daughter might become feminist', and she indeed became a passionate activist for women's rights.
An only child, she was raised at Llanwern House, at Llanwern near Newport, until the age of 13, when she went away to boarding school, first to Notting Hill High School then St Leonards School, in St Andrews. In 1904, aged 19, she took up a place at Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied history. Despite her tutors providing positive feedback on her academic progress, she returned to Llanwern to live with her family after two terms.
Working for her father at the Consolidated Cambrian company headquarters in Cardiff Docks, she earned a salary of £1,000, a significant sum at that time.[1]
Women's suffrage
Pillar box burnt in 1913, Newport
In 1908 aged 25, Thomas joined the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and became secretary of its Newport branch. Between 1908 and 1914, she took the campaign for women's suffrage across South Wales. This activity saw her attend protest marches with the Pankhursts, endure an attack from the crowd after she attempted to stop the prime minister's car, and suffer a period of imprisonment, ended only by her going on hunger strike, after she tried to ignite a Royal Mail letter-box with a chemical bomb.[2][3]
Despite these setbacks, Thomas remained very committed to the women's suffrage movement, considering it a draught of fresh air in what she described as her ‘padded, stifled life’.[4] She was awarded a Hunger Strike Medal 'for Valour' by WSPU. When Emmeline Pankhurst died in June 1928, it was Kitty Marshall, Rosamund Massey and Thomas who arranged her memorials. They raised money for her gravestone in Brompton Cemetery and a statue of her outside the House of Commons, which she had frequently been prevented from entering. Money was also raised to buy the painting that had been made by the fellow suffragette Georgina Brackenbury so that it could be given to the National Portrait Gallery.[5] It was unveiled by Stanley Baldwin in 1930.
First World War and sinking of RMS Lusitania
On the outbreak of the First World War, she accepted the decision by the WSPU leadership to abandon its militant campaign for suffrage. She was by this time working for her father as his confidential secretary and ‘right-hand man’. Thomas had great pride and belief in his daughter, and had argued with her on equal terms since she was twelve or thirteen.[4] She thus went with him when he was sent by David Lloyd George to the United States to arrange the supply of munitions for the British armed forces.
Her father became aware of his daughter's depressive state, and although she brushed her father's concern aside, he became aware of tensions within her marriage. On 7 May 1915, she was returning from the United States on the RMS Lusitania with her father and his secretary, Arnold Rhys-Evans, when it was torpedoed at 14:10 by German submarine U-20. Her father and his secretary made it onto a lifeboat since they had been blown overboard, but she spent a long period in clinging to a piece of board before she was rescued by the Irish trawler "Bluebell", as recalled in her 1933 autobiography, This Was My World. By the time she was rescued and taken to Queenstown, she had fallen unconscious from hypothermia. After a period in hospital, she then spent several months recuperating at her parents' home.
During the war Rhondda helped to place Belgian refugees in Monmouthshire and was then employed by the government to encourage women to undertake war work in essential industries, most notably in agriculture. In early 1918 she was promoted to Chief Controller of women's recruitment at the Ministry of National Service in London to advise on women's recruitment policy, experience which she later used to good effect.[6]
Peerage
On 3 July 1918 her father died. While the Rhondda Barony died with him, the title of Viscount Rhondda passed to Margaret by special remainder, which Thomas had insisted on from King George V when he was offered the honour.[6]
After her father's death, Lady Rhondda subsequently tried to take his seat in the House of Lords by citing the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 which allowed women to exercise "any public office". After initially being accepted, the Committee of Privileges membership was altered and her request was rejected.[7][8][9] When rejecting her petition the Lord Chancellor, Viscount Birkenhead LC, said: “On many grounds I regret this circumstance, for that history would upon its personal side have been worthy of the massive irony of Gibbon.”[10] She was supported for many years by Lord Astor, whose wife Nancy had been the first woman to take her seat in the British House of Commons.
Shortly after Lady Rhondda's death in 1958, women entered the Lords for the first time thanks to the Life Peerages Act 1958. Five years later, with the passage of the Peerage Act 1963, hereditary peeresses were also allowed to enter the Lords.[11]
Business interests
She succeeded her father as chair of the Sanatogen Company in February 1917.[12] In total, she was a director of 33 companies throughout her life, chairing six,[1] having inherited 28 directorships from her father. Most of her business interests were in coal, steel and shipping via Consolidated Cambrian Ltd. She was passionate about increasing the number of women in the corporate world, and at this time was probably the best-known businesswoman in Britain.[6] However, with the slump in coal prices during the late 1920s, the collieries of Consolidated Cambrian fell into receivership, and its assets later sold to GKN. After the collapse of Consolidated Cambrian, her personal accounts show that her outgoings always exceeded her income.
In the summer of 1919, Rhondda was involved in creating and chairing the Efficiency Club, a networking organisation for British businesswomen, which she envisioned would have four aims: to promote greater efficiency and co-operation between established businesses and professional women, to encourage leadership and self reliance amongst all women workers, to form a link between businesses and professional women for their mutual benefit and to work towards the admission of women to the British Chambers of Commerce.[13]
She was elected as the Institute of Directors' first female president in 1926, having been a member of its Council since 1923. In 2015 the Institute launched the annual Mackworth Lecture in her honour.[14][6]
Women's rights
In 1918 Rhondda lobbied for the government's proposed Ministry of Health to have women properly represented by an all-woman advisory council, and she formed a Watching Group to monitor progress. Rhondda wanted more than a few token women on committees, and was especially concerned that the importance of maternity and infant welfare should be recognised. In the event, the government's new Ministry of Health Act 1919 created a Consultative Council on General Health Questions which had a majority of women members and which was chaired by Rhondda herself.[6]
In 1919 Rhondda founded the Women’s Industrial League with the aim of seeking equal training and employment opportunities for women in industry, and to resist a return to pre-war conditions which largely designated women's labour as unskilled with low pay and poor prospects. She was particularly concerned that the Ministry of Labour seemed to recognise only three forms of work for women – tailoring, laundry and domestic service. The Women's Industrial League publicised the issue and tried to hold the government to its war-time promises relating to working women.[6]
In May 1926 Rhondda was a founding member of the Open Door Council which was formed to advocate for equal pay, status and opportunity for women. As such, in 1929 she led a deputation to the Home Secretary asking him to repeal the Factory and Workshop Act 1901 which prevented women taking well-paid jobs in mining and other industries.[6]
Time and Tide
Aside from inheriting her father's publishing interests, Rhondda had founded in 1920 Time and Tide magazine, at first a left-wing feminist weekly magazine, but later a more rightist general literary journal. She was the long-time editor of the magazine and sustained it with a large portion of her inheritance.
Rhondda recalled that she had always wanted to edit a paper. She knew that most weekly reviews lost money, but accepted this as the price of getting at the ‘keystone people’ - the inner group in society who influenced the general public.[15] Rhondda appointed an all-woman board and ensured that the journal was entirely controlled, staffed and edited by women. She took over the editorship herself in 1926 and continued in the post until her death. George Bernard Shaw, who wrote for the paper, was one of those who had a high opinion of her abilities as an editor and, according to Rebecca West, who was also a contributor, she insisted on a very high standard of writing.[6]
Rhondda saw Time and Tide primarily as a platform from which to advocate women's equality and the journal constantly drew attention to women's advances such as the election of women to parliament, the appointment of women as magistrates and as members of juries, and the granting of degrees to women at Oxford University. Under her editorship the journal became ‘an innovative, imaginative and adaptable weekly paper’ which soon achieved a circulation of between 12,000 and 15,000 copies.[6]
In 1928 Rhondda gave the journal an enhanced literary focus, publishing more book reviews and work by modern women novelists including Virginia Woolf, and from 1931 there was a new emphasis on international issues and world politics. This reflected Rhondda's own concerns about threats to peace. Similarly, in the 1940s the journal's content became increasingly right-wing as Rhondda's own political views moved to the right. Circulation then rose to 40,000 despite the loss of progressive readers, but Rhondda still had to subsidise the journal out of her own pocket.[6]
Six Point Group
In 1921, Rhondda set up and chaired the Six Point Group, an action group that focused heavily on the equality between men and women and the rights of the child.[16]
The group's manifesto of equal rights for women within the workplace and for mothers and children sought the following:
Satisfactory legislation on child assault
Satisfactory legislation for the widowed mother
Satisfactory legislation for the unmarried mother and her child
Equal rights for Guardianship for married parents
Equal pay for Teachers
Equal opportunities for men and women in the Civil Service
These were issues which had not been covered by the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and which Rhondda believed to be easily understandable and attainable. They had all been considered and debated publicly, and some could be achieved without the need for parliamentary legislation. Rhondda argued, for example, that if the government stopped dismissing women civil servants when they married, local authorities would probably follow suit.[6]
Lady Rhondda was one of five women shortlisted in 2019 to be portrayed in the first statue of a woman to be erected in Cardiff.[24] Subsequently, the Monumental Welsh Women campaign aimed to erect statues in Wales of all five women. Statues depicting Betty Campbell, Elaine Morgan and Cranogwen have since been unveiled, with one for Elizabeth Andrews planned for 2025.[25] The Lady Rhondda statue was created by artist Jane Robbins and was installed in Newport on 25th September 2024.[26] The statue includes a circle of hands cast from about forty women’s hands, among them the hands of Olivette Otele and Helen Ward.[27]
Arms
Coat of arms of Margaret Haig Thomas, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda
Escutcheon
Per pale Ermine and Ermines three chevronels Gules between as many eagles displayed Or collared of the third.
Supporters
To the dexter a miner resting the exterior hand upon a shovel to the sinister a like miner holding in the interior hand a safety lamo and in the exterior hand a pickaxe over the shoulder all Proper.
Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist who organised the British suffragette movement and helped women to win in 1918 the right to vote in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1999, Time named her as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating that "she shaped an idea of objects for our time" and "shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back". She was widely criticised for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognised as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.
Dame Christabel Harriette Pankhurst was a British suffragette born in Manchester, England. A co-founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), she directed its militant actions from exile in France from 1912 to 1913. In 1914, she supported the war against Germany. After the war, she moved to the United States, where she worked as an evangelist for the Second Adventist movement.
David Alfred Thomas, 1st Viscount Rhondda, PC, was a Welsh industrialist and Liberal politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Merthyr Tydfil from 1888 until the January 1910 general election, then MP for Cardiff until the December 1910 general election, when he left politics to concentrate on his business interests. He was made a member of the Privy Council in 1916. He later held office, notably as "Food Controller" in Lloyd George's wartime coalition government.
The Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) was a women-only political movement and leading militant organisation campaigning for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom founded in 1903. Known from 1906 as the suffragettes, its membership and policies were tightly controlled by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia. Sylvia was eventually expelled.
Viscount Rhondda, of Llanwern in the County of Monmouth, was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 19 June 1918 for the Welsh businessman and Liberal politician David Alfred Thomas, 1st Baron Rhondda, with special remainder to his daughter Margaret and her heirs male. Thomas had already been created Baron Rhondda, of Llanwern in the County of Monmouth, on 28 January 1916, with normal remainder to the heirs male of his body. The barony became extinct on his death in 1918, whereas he was succeeded in the viscountcy according to the special remainder by his daughter Margaret. She was a well-known suffragette. On her death in 1958 this title became extinct as well.
Rosa May Billinghurst was a British suffragette and women's rights activist. She was known popularly as the "cripple suffragette" as she campaigned in a tricycle.
Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Baroness Pethick-Lawrence was a British women's rights activist and suffragette.
Edith How-Martyn was a British suffragette and a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). She was arrested in 1906 for attempting to make a speech in the House of Commons. This was one of the first acts of suffragette militancy. She met Margaret Sanger in 1915 and they created a conference in Geneva. How-Martyn toured India talking about birth control. She had no children and died in Australia.
Sybil Margaret Thomas, Viscountess Rhondda, was a British suffragette, feminist, and philanthropist.
A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in particular to members of the British Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), a women-only movement founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst, which engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. In 1906, a reporter writing in the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, derived from suffragistα, in order to belittle the women advocating women's suffrage. The militants embraced the new name, even adopting it for use as the title of the newspaper published by the WSPU.
The Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst Memorial is a memorial in London to Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel, two of the foremost British suffragettes. It stands at the entrance to Victoria Tower Gardens, south of Victoria Tower at the southwest corner of the Palace of Westminster. Its main feature is a bronze statue of Emmeline Pankhurst by Arthur George Walker, unveiled in 1930. In 1958 the statue was relocated to its current site and the bronze reliefs commemorating Christabel Pankhurst were added.
Women's suffrage in Wales has historically been marginalised due to the prominence of societies and political groups in England which led the reform for women throughout the United Kingdom. Due to differing social structures and a heavily industrialised working-class society, the growth of a national movement in Wales grew but then stuttered in the late nineteenth century in comparison with that of England. Nevertheless, distinct Welsh groups and individuals rose to prominence and were vocal in the rise of suffrage in Wales and the rest of Great Britain.
Helen Alexander Archdale was a Scottish feminist, suffragette and journalist. Archdale was the Sheffield branch organiser for the Women's Social and Political Union and later its prisoners' secretary in London.
Florence Eliza Haig (1856–1952) was a Scottish artist and suffragette who was decorated for imprisonments and hunger strikes.
The statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, honours the British suffragist leader and social campaigner Dame Millicent Fawcett. It was made in 2018 by Gillian Wearing. Following a campaign and petition by the activist Caroline Criado Perez, the statue's creation was endorsed by both the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. The statue, Parliament Square's first monument to a woman and also its first sculpture by a woman, was funded through the government's Centenary Fund, which marks 100 years since some women won the right to vote. The memorial was unveiled on 24 April 2018.
Janet Augusta Boyd was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and militant suffragette who in 1912 went on hunger strike in prison for which action she was awarded the WSPU's Hunger Strike Medal.
Sir Humphrey Mackworth, 7th Baronet JP was a Welsh soldier.
Sir Arthur William Mackworth, 6th Baronet DL JP CB was a Welsh soldier.
Jane Robbins is a sculptor. She works in cast bronze, resin and also other materials, primarily to make figurative and portrait sculptures. Her sculptures have been commissioned as public art in the UK as well as private works.
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