- Helena Swanwick
Helena Lucy Maria Swanwick CH (1864 – 1939) was a British
feminist andpacifist .As a schoolgirl, she read "On the Subjection of Women" by
John Stuart Mill , which influenced her to become a feminist. She was educated atGirton College, Cambridge , and she married theManchester University lecturer Frederick Swanwick in 1888. She worked as ajournalist , initially as a sort of protegée ofC.P. Scott , and wrote articles for theManchester Guardian . In 1906 she joined theNational Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in preference to theWomen's Social and Political Union , because of her belief in non-violence. She quickly became prominent in the National Union, and was editor of its weekly journal, "The Common Cause" from 1909–1912. She remained on the NUWSS Executive until 1915. She was also a member of the Labour Party.On the outbreak of
World War I , she began campaigning for a negotiated peace. In 1915, together with such other prominent suffragists asCatherine Marshall andAgnes Maude Royden , she resigned from the National Union over its refusal to send delegates to the International Women's Congress at the Hague. She was one of the founding members of theWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom . From 1914 she had already been active in theUnion of Democratic Control .G. K. Chesterton would criticize her pacifism in theSeptember 2 ,1916 issue of "Illustrated London News "::Mrs. Swanwick, the Suffragist who has reappeared as a Pacifist, has recently declared that there must be no punishment for the responsible Prussian. She puts it specifically on the ground that they were promised, or promised themselves, the conquest of the whole world; and they have not got it. This, she says, will be punishment enough. If I were to propose, to the group which is supposed to inspire the Pacifist propaganda, that a man who burgled their strong boxes or pilfered their petty cash should suffer no punishment beyond failing to get the money, they would very logically ask me if I was an Anarchist. If I proposed that anybody trying to knife or pistol another person should walk away and resume his daily amusements if the knife broke or the pistol missed fire, they would certainly ask me if I had contemplated the possibility of encouraging the employment of knives and pistols. Crime can be only insufficiently restrained when the alternative is between success and punishment. It could hardly be restrained at all if the alternative were only between success and failure; that is, between success and freedom—including freedom to try again.
This quotation amply illustrates both Chesterton's anti-German and anti-feminist prejudices, as well as his tendentiousness as a journalist. In fact, this was far from the only opposition she suffered both as a suffragist and internationalist, including physical violence.
After the war she maintained her internationalist views, opposing the punitive terms of the
Treaty of Versailles and serving as the United Kingdom substitute delegate to theLeague of Nations . In the 1930s she became increasingly depressed by the growing cult of violence and oppression, which was increased by the death of her husband in 1934. After the outbreak of theSecond World War she committed suicide with an overdose of veronal in November 1939.Her brother was the well-known painter
Walter Sickert . Her fatherOswald Sickert was a painter technically of Danish nationality, though he always considered himself German and did not speak Danish. Her mother Eleanor Louisa Henry was English, the illegitimate daughter of astronomerRichard Sheepshanks , a Fellow ofTrinity College, Cambridge and an Irish dancer. Her autobiography "I Have Been Young" among much else gives a remarkable account both of the non-militant women's suffrage campaign and of anti-war campaigning in theFirst World War , together with philosophical discussions of non-violence.Books
*"The Future of the Women's Movement" (1913)
*"Builders of Peace, Being Ten Years History of theUnion of Democratic Control " (1924)
* "I Have Been Young", autobiography, (1935).
*"The Roots of Peace: A Sequel to Collective Insecurity, Being an Essay on Some of the Uses, Condition" (1938)External links
* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wswanwick.htm Helena Swanwick ] at www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
* [http://www.triangle.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=whr&vol=1&issue=1&year=1992&article=1-1-SH The Suffragist and the 'Average Woman'] Sandra Stanley Holton, University of Adelaide
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