This article analyses the parliamentary phenomenon that historians have referred to as the ‘halo effect’. A model adopted by Nancy Astor, the ‘halo effect’ describes candidates fighting parliamentary seats that had previously been contested by their spouse and accounted for almost a third of the women elected to parliament between the wars. Instead of dismissing its presence as a lack of political progress for women post-suffrage, this article suggests that the ‘halo effect’ was part of the early attempts of political parties to accommodate gender in public life. It indicates the continued relevance of the family as a political organising unit within the era of mass democracy. Rather than understanding seat inheritance between spouses as simply nepotism, this article demonstrates that, for women, their status as wives provided excellent political training and a committed political partner to help them in their careers. Beyond ‘male equivalence’, their relationships helped them to present an identity that allayed some of the tensions surrounding women in public political life and partly accounts for the great success of the ‘halo effect’ in bringing women into parliament in this era.
The death of William Waldorf Astor was problematic for the political career of his son, Waldorf Astor. Waldorf had been elected as the MP for Plymouth Sutton and had proved himself as an active and politically ambitious member in the nine years he had served. The death of his father meant that he was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Astor, disqualifying him from sitting in the House of Commons. Legally, Waldorf had no choice. Although he investigated the possibility, he could not relinquish his peerage. But there was another option. His wife Nancy was well-known and well-liked within the constituency and in 1919 was now eligible to stand as an MP. Nancy maintained that it was Waldorf who first suggested the idea of her going into Parliament, with Nancy saying: ‘So it seemed that it was best … to keep it in the family, and for me to try for it, which I did’ (
Wives standing in seats previously held by their husbands became an incredibly successful route for women to enter parliament prior to 1945. Eleven women contested seats previously held by their husband, and ten of them were elected.
This article uses the presence, and undeniable success, of the ‘halo effect’ or ‘seat inheritance’ between husbands and wives to explore the wider gendered cultures of British politics after women’s suffrage. It complicates the idea that the ‘halo effect’ was simply about legitimization for female candidates through their husbands. Instead, it asserts that the success of ‘halo effect’ candidates shows the enduring role that marriage, family and relationships played in political cultures – their importance did not diminish with the arrival of mass democracy and women’s suffrage. As Susan Pedersen (
This challenges some suggestions within the historiography, discussed below, of the ‘halo effect’ as indicative of women’s failure to break onto the political stage post-suffrage. The presence and success of the ‘halo effect’ is not simply representative of unfair nepotism. Their position as wives meant that they could overcome many of the barriers that other women faced in reaching the Houses of Parliament. This is not to say that this route was fair to other women who did not share their class or social privileges, but by condemning them simply as ‘halo effect’ candidates, we ignore the enduring realities of political cultures in interwar Britain and remove much of the agency and ability that is credited to some of the better-known female politicians of this era.
The obstacles for women in being elected as MPs in this period were considerable. Krista Cowman (
There was even greater uncertainty towards selecting women candidates in the Conservative party. Despite pressure from Nancy Astor and the hierarchy of the party, there was great prejudice against woman candidates in the constituencies and many refused to consider them (
Jean Mann herself was sympathetic to the women who had entered parliament in seats left vacant by their husbands. She said that: ‘Knowing these MPs, and having worked with them, I cannot agree that they did not have a place in the House on their own right’ (
The struggle for political parties to bring women into their structures has been well discussed elsewhere. But there were also considerations for how they incorporated women into party structures in their roles as wives. Women and men were not automatically brought into their spouses’ political work; this was an active process within political cultures. In this period, political parties were often facing difficulties as spouses did not feel not sufficiently supported and involved in their husbands’ work, and this incorporation was important to the parties. The Conservative party especially saw the role of the MP’s wife as more codified than the Labour party. In the 1930s, the Conservative Training Centre developed a course for MPs’ wives, training them in political issues, public speaking, party organisation, local government, and running bazaars, amongst other issues. Local newspaper reports on the new course commented that: ‘It is a sign of the times that many MPs who were necessarily kept at Westminster during the Parliamentary Season rely on their wives to maintain that personal contact with voters which, to-day, is regarded as essential’ (
It is useful to further investigate the adopters of ‘seat inheritance’ and to move beyond monolithic considerations of this group of candidates. Table
Candidates standing in a seat previously contested by a spouse. Results taken from Craig (
Name | Year | Party | Outcome | Constituency | Circumstance for candidacy | Turnout % | Results | % | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1918 | Conservative | Unsuccessful | Lambeth, Kennington | Widowed | 29.7 | Co L |
42.4 |
|||
1919 (15/11) | Conservative | Successful | Plymouth Sutton | Husband elevated to the House of Lords | 72.5 | |||||
1921 (22/9) | Liberal | Successful | Louth | Widowed | 72.1 | |||||
1922 | Liberal | Unsuccessful | Oldham | Husband elevated to the House of Lords | 78.8 | NL |
28 |
|||
1923 | Conservative | Successful | Kinross and West Perthshire | Husband elevated to the House of Lords | 72.6 | |||||
1923 (31/5) | Conservative (husband Liberal) | Successful | Berwick-Upon-Tweed | Husband barred from standing | 74.9 | |||||
1927 (19/11) | Conservative | Successful | Southend-On-Sea | Husband elevated to the House of Lords | 73.2 | |||||
1929 | Liberal | Successful | St Ives | Political Tactics | 76.5 | |||||
1929 | Labour | Successful | Bishop Auckland | Political Tactics | 76.5 | |||||
1930 (9/7) | Labour | Successful | North Norfolk | Husband elevated to the House of Lords | 75 | |||||
1931 | New Party | Unsuccessful | Stoke | Political Tactics | 75.9 | C |
45.6 |
|||
1937 (22/6) | Conservative | Successful | Hemel Hempstead | Husband elevated to the House of Lords | 55 | |||||
1937 | Labour | Successful | Glasgow Springburn | Widowed | 50.9 | |||||
1938 (11/2) | Liberal | Unsuccessful | Pontypridd | Political Tactics | 78.3 | Lab |
59.9 |
|||
1941 (11/3) | Conservative | Successful | Bodmin | Widowed | ||||||
1943 | Conservative | Successful | Bristol Central | Widowed | 32.9 | |||||
1945 | Common Wealth | Unsuccessful | Midlothian and Peeblesshire | Political Tactics | 70.1 | C |
47.9 |
|||
Co L | Coalition Liberal | Co C | Coalition Conservative | |||||||
IndC | Independent Conservative | NL | National Liberal | |||||||
ILP | Independent Labour Party | CW | Common Wealth Movement | |||||||
Lab | Labour | Con | Conservative | |||||||
Ind Lab | Independent Labour | NP | New Party | |||||||
L | Liberal |
The analysis here has characterized the circumstances of the seat inheritance into three categories. Two of these circumstances are simple to group together – instances, like that of the Astors, where women succeeded their husbands when they were elevated to the House of Lords. After the death of a family member who held a hereditary title, men would have to, often begrudgingly, relinquish their seats in the Commons, and their wives stood in the subsequent by-elections. This method had a near total rate of success within this period. Only one woman who stood in a seat after her husband had been elevated to the Lords did not win her election.
The third has been characterised here as ‘political tactics’, where couples used seat inheritance for politically motivated reasons. While wives succeeded husbands in all the examples above, there were three instances of men standing in seats previously held by their wives. Walter Runciman and Hugh Dalton employed what was known at the time and in the historiography as the ‘warming-pan’ strategy. They both were already elected as MPs but wished to change their parliamentary seats. In both cases, to avoid triggering two simultaneous by-elections, their wives stood in their desired seat and resigned once their husbands were available to take over. These circumstances did indeed mean that the Runcimans and Daltons were the first married couples to sit concurrently in the house. Both couples were very frank with the electorate about this scheme. The Runcimans saw this as a boon for the constituency and suggested that the voters were flattered by the suggestions that electing Hilda meant they would gain two Liberal members representing them in parliament rather than one (
I am afraid I was only a wife, which is not quite the same thing. It was not so much on my merits that I was invited to contest the seat but because they thought any wife could be relied on to vacate the seat for her husband when the time came. (
The Daltons had similar logic in their representation of Bishop Auckland for the Labour party. The sitting MP for Bishop Auckland, Ben Spoor, died before the planned retirement of his seat at the next general election. He had been due to be replaced by Hugh Dalton as the candidate for Bishop Auckland, moving from his marginal Peckham seat. In order to keep the seat ‘in the family’ Ruth Dalton was nominated in the ensuing by-election. Though she did not attend the selection meeting, she was unanimously selected to be the by-election candidate. She had two main credentials in her favour: she was a well-respected LCC councillor and, most importantly for the constituency who wanted Hugh Dalton as their MP, she could be relied to stand down as soon as Parliament was dissolved. The idea of Ruth as a ‘warming pan’ was widely acknowledged, as Hugh said in his diaries: ‘They say they don’t want any other warming-pan … they want to get people into the habit of voting Dalton’ (
The other man to stand in a seat that had previously been contested by his wife was Oswald Mosely. In 1931 he stood in Stoke-on-Trent for his fledgling New Party, a seat previously held for Labour by his wife Cynthia Mosely. Although her constituency party wanted her to continue, Cynthia did not fight for reelection due to health considerations and political disillusionment. Cynthia’s connections in Stoke did not pull Oswald through and he finished in last place. This use of seat inheritance for political tactics was not as successful as the circumstances of elevation or widowhood. There were others who used the ‘halo effect’ as a form of political tactic. Along with the ‘warming-pan’ candidates and Oswald Mosley, two women – Juliet Rhys-Williams and Kitty Wintringham – stood in seats that had been previously contested by their husbands in the pursuit of some political advantage. These instances will be discussed later in the article.
Beverley Stobaugh (
A unifying factor of this cohort of candidates was also their class. All would be considered upper-middle or upper-class, except for Agnes Hardie who was drawn into the Labour movement as an organizer for the National Union of Shop Assistants (Knox, 2004). This does place them in contrast to pioneering Labour women such as Margaret Bondfield and Ellen Wilkinson, who like Hardie, found their way into politics through the Trade Union movement. The ‘halo effect’ was a larger part of the continuation of class privileges that served political dynastic ambitions for men and women, but it does not deprive us from seeing political agency and ambition in the women who benefitted from it.
The peak of the ‘halo effect’ was before 1939. Twelve women contested seats previously held by their husband, and ten of them were successful. This meant that almost a third of women MPs elected between the two world wars held a seat that their husband had previously won. During the Second World War, two women, Violet Bathurst (Lady Apsley) and Beatrice Rathbone, won uncontested by-election seats after their MP husbands were killed in action. Yet by 1945, when the largest number of female candidates stood and won seats, the ‘halo effect’ had all but disappeared. Only one candidacy could tentatively be classed as an attempt to capitalize on a seat previously contested by a spouse. From this time until 1970, only two women stood in seats previously held by their partners – in both instances standing in by-elections when they had been unexpectedly widowed.
This lessening of the power and adoption of the ‘halo effect’ is useful in considering how political parties and cultures were changing during the early twentieth century. The era of mass democracy did not necessarily result in MPs and their families feeling any less personal ownership over their constituencies, but the fact that wives could now be incorporated into keeping a seat raises interesting questions about gendered political cultures. Due to the changing nature of politics, with an increased emphasis on an active role in the constituency, administering welfare and civic presence, women were now eligible to be considered as political successors, just as brothers, sons and nephews had been for the preceding centuries.
The seat of Southend-on-Sea and its association with the Guinness family is a useful example of changing attitudes to familial politics as the twentieth century progressed. Rupert Guinness had first won Southend in 1912 for the Conservative party. His wife, Gwendolen, took over the seat in a 1927 by-election when Rupert was elevated to the peerage as Lord Iveagh. Lady Iveagh was reported as saying that she was seeking election for the borough ‘partly because she and her husband had been associated with it for so long that she felt loath to allow circumstances over which they had no control to sever that connexion’ (
It is with the keenest regret that, after fifteen years I am retiring from that position, but my regrets are lessened by the hope that you may return my wife as your Member, placing that confidence in her which you have never failed to give me throughout the years during which we have been so happily associated. Should this come to pass I shall rejoice that my connection with Southend will still remain.
The tendrils of the Guinness family did not retreat when Lady Iveagh retired. In 1935 the son-in-law of Rupert and Gwendolen Guinness and future political diarist, Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, took over Southend-on-Sea (which became Southend West when the constituencies’ boundaries were redrawn in 1950). Henry Channon stayed in office until his death in 1958. Although only 23 and still an undergraduate at Oxford, Henry’s son Paul wanted to represent the Southend constituency in the by-election triggered by his father’s death. Although the local constituency party ultimately backed Paul over 129 other candidates, his selection was not plain sailing. Lord Beaverbrook’s
This change over time can also be contextualized within a wider cultural turn against the value of familial political dynasties. Familial ties to constituencies did not die away with the abolition of pocket boroughs in the Reform Acts.
the idea that when a member dies his widow should succeed him is bad, not good at all. It establishes an hereditary principle in the Lower Chamber … we must for the future seek out those who have greater claims upon our suffrage than the simple one of family connection. (
As the seat was uncontested, the criticism had no effect, but Rathbone was not to be a long serving MP and stood down at the next General Election. This growing turn against the idea of seat inheritance and the longstanding relationships of families to certain constituencies is a topic ripe for further investigation. But although there were voices of dissent, for male and female candidates alike, the endorsement of a family member could be the tipping point for selection in a winnable seat. Participation in familial political networks was both a stepping stone to consideration for selection and a vital training ground for the skills required for an electoral career. The remainder of this article will examine in more detail the types of training that female candidates in particular benefited from. It examines how beyond simply legitimizing them, their experiences as wives gave them political experience and access to established networks that helped them surmount the barriers in place for other women seeking to enter public political life.
There is no question that the barriers facing women seeking election between the world wars were very great. All parties experienced significant tensions in accommodating gender within political party structures. Martin Francis (
Juliet Rhys-Williams encountered these tensions when she first stood for the seat of Pontypridd in a 1938 by-election. Juliet had met her husband, Rhys Rhys-Williams, when she worked in his office during his time as a junior transport minister and Liberal MP. Rhys had initially held the seat of Banbury in Oxfordshire but then set his aspirations on representing the seat of Pontypridd where his family home, Miskin Manor, was located. He unsuccessfully stood here in 1922 and lost by over 6,000 votes. When a by-election was called in 1938 for Pontypridd Rhys did not stand again, presumably as he was now in his seventies, but Juliet Rhys-Williams decided to try for the seat. The press noted Juliet’s candidature for the by-election for the fact she accepted the invitation to stand only eight days after giving birth to her youngest daughter, Elspeth. The reporter requested Juliet respond to comments made by the Conservative MP Sir Paul Latham, who had said that he was not going to stand for parliament when his term ended because his parliamentary duties ‘did not allow him to see as much of his four-year-old son as was proper for a father to see of his child.’ (
Widowhood similarly presented an opportunity for women to embody the identity of a loyal wife whilst being able to allay concerns that she would not be able to perform her duties and role in the domestic sphere. This was certainly portrayed as a benefit in the case of Margaret Wintringham when
There are not many men in the House of Commons with so fine a record of service outside. Mrs Wintringham has had to do a considerable amount of speech-making in the discharge of these multifarious duties during the past 20 years … She has no children, and this absence of home ties affords her all the necessary leisure to devote herself to the business of the House.
These women could thus still be considered as appropriately and safely feminine without concern that they were neglecting any of their traditional duties in the domestic sphere. The theme of mourning was present in Beatrice Rathbone’s election after her husband was killed in the Battle of Britain. On being sworn into the House she was described as in ‘deep mourning, and her only ornament was a silver brooch of the Royal Air Force’ (
Mrs Wintringham was known during the contest at Louth as the silent candidate. That was not because [she] has not the gift of speech-making. She is on the contrary, an experienced and fluent public speaker. But having regard to her recent bereavement – the sudden death of her husband in the smoking-room of the House of Commons – she naturally thought it more fitting not to take a prominent part in the election. She was, however, to be seen, in deep mourning, on the platform at Liberal meetings. (
Four women in the interwar period came to the House in by-elections triggered by their husband’s death and this was a key part of their public identity during the campaign. Like those women who gained their seats after their husband’s elevation to the peerage, it is wrong to imagine that these women’s forays into the political scene came only after their husband was deceased. These women had been highly active within the political sphere, not just as an appendage to their husband but as activists in their own right. Margaret Wintringham and Lady Apsley both served as presidents of the local women’s associations for their respective parties in their husband’s constituencies. Agnes Hardie had been a Labour party organiser and served on the Board of Education even before her marriage to George Hardie (incidentally the younger brother of Keir Hardie) (Knox, 2004). They met through the Labour movement and worked together in politics a great deal before their marriage.
The narratives of the success of the women candidates were constructed differently at the time of their reporting. Taking Agnes Hardie for example, her pronouncement on her victory with a majority of 5,978 (2,449 votes fewer than her husband George received at the last poll) she felt showed: “The magnificent result … indicates that Springburn had remained loyal to its Labour allegiances and has given entire support to the Labour Party’s programme of reconstruction at home for the benefit of all people’ (
There has been greater consideration of the tensions between marriage and parliamentary careers for women in the Labour party. Historians have often characterized Conservative and Liberal party women as typically married, whilst Labour women are presented as spinsters, the single ‘battleaxe’ who was ‘married to the party’ (
if a woman is to marry and have children, her peak period is between eighteen and twenty-five. But if her ambition is to be … a politician, she inevitably kicks her colt-feet around till well in the thirties, as a man does, suffering and learning from her mistakes, building the personality that can do things in the forties. (
This article takes a different view, arguing that through marriage to a politically active man we do see these women ‘building a personality’. In fact, it was one of the best forms of political training, and this may attest to why comparatively so many women found their route to parliament in this way. The ‘halo effect’ MPs were not plucked from the domestic hearth, adorned with a rosette and thrust clueless onto the hustings stage; they often had long political experience both before and throughout their marriages. Lucy Noel-Buxton met her husband Noel on a campaign trail in North Norfolk in 1914. They had become acquainted as Lucy (then a Conservative in her formative political years) was speaking on a platform against his then Liberal politics under the slogan ‘No Noel for North Norfolk’. They later joined the Labour party together and Lucy was very active within the ‘Half-Circle Club’ of Beatrice Webb.
Mary Emmott, who unsuccessfully fought the Oldham seat some years after her husband Alfred was elevated to the peerage, had served on the Oldham Board of Guardians since 1898, and had been the vice-chair of the national Women’s Liberal Federation and numerous other political organisation and societies (
Regardless of their levels of experience, the political connections and networks of these women was often considerable. Although taking over the Southend-on-Sea seat directly after her husband’s elevation to the House of Lords, the Countess of Iveagh was the 22nd member of her own family to enter parliament, including three former speakers of the Commons (
I therefore began to think over his proposal seriously, and of course discussed it with Bardie [the Duke of Atholl]. He raised no difficulties, and shortly after the Prime Minister and Dame Margaret had left us, we had a talk about it with Sir George Younger, Chief Unionist Whip … The King was our guest at luncheon one day, on his way south from Balmoral at the end of the shooting season. I told His Majesty of the proposal the Prime Minister had made to me. He was evidently doubtful how I should be able to combine the duties of hostess at Blair with parliamentary work, but I knew I could rely on Bardie, with his wonderful domestic gifts, to make good the deficiencies such work might force on me. (
It is not enough to decry the advantages that these women had because of their relationships with their husbands without considering the other, and often more important, social and cultural capital that they possessed in their lives. And indeed, the prominence of these connections was no less important for men when seeking candidature for parliament. In the case of the Plymouth Sutton seat, if Nancy hadn’t accepted the role it would have still been an Astor on the ballot paper: the committee would have asked Waldorf’s brother John Jacob Astor to fight the seat in the event of her refusal (
Being married to and fighting a seat after their husbands did give some of the women a significant advantage for their political career in another, more direct, way. In addition to any political connections they possessed or developed, it was often through their husbands’ campaigns that they discovered and then honed their political talents and abilities. For the Duchess of Atholl, whilst her parents had been politically inclined, she was not active in party politics until her husband was adopted as the Unionist candidate. Katharine took up canvassing and campaigning to support the Duke of Atholl enthusiastically, but it also gave her the opportunity to engage politically in a public forum herself. As is reflected throughout her autobiography, she presents herself as the altogether more politically interested of the pair, as for example she says on campaigning: ‘He was not, I think, as interested in political speaking as I was, for I enjoyed trying to explain things … In the election which came a few weeks later, I spoke in public every night for the last week or two’ (
The work that women had undertaken in the constituencies was also essential in helping their selection and election. Many had built up significant experience of serving alongside their husbands in their constituencies. This was very clear in the case of the Duchess of Atholl. When an election was called in 1923, the local association felt that they needed a strong local candidate so unanimously voted for her as the wife of the former MP and current President of the local association (
Having such a prominent role in the constituencies also allowed women to build upon the persona of ‘Lady Bountiful’: the image of the women doing good deeds for the poor and needy in society. For Nancy Astor, this grounding in the local community of the constituency, and the ability to cite the works she had done in the areas of maternity work and child welfare, enhanced her political credibility and public image (
Particularly within the Conservative party, selection of a male candidate for a seat would also involve his wife, as they would attend the selection meetings with their husband. Viscountess Davidson had played an important role from the early days of her husband’s Hemel Hempstead seat, feeling that at her husband’s selection for the seat, it was not just he who was being selected but also her:
We were met by the agent … he having talked to us, decided at once – I think I am right in saying – that we were the couple he would like to have work for the constituency and with him; we were young and active and keen, and my husband had very high recommendations from Bonar Law and other leading people in the Party. (
Joan Davidson refers to the Hemel Hempstead constituency repeatedly as ‘our seat’ in her writing even before she was elected as an MP (
The idea of the ‘political wife’ was not one constructed just for public image; it also reflected the demands of modern political representation. The independent, and unmarried, MP Eleanor Rathbone experienced the problem when she was elected in 1929, that ‘representing a constituency was really a two-person job’ (Pederson, 2004: 169). Although wives had been working with their husbands politically for centuries, a distinctive feature of this period is the shift in the dynamics of marriage that allowed wives greater opportunity to have public profiles themselves and stand for elected office. Many historians have noted the prevalence of husbands and wives working together in political partnerships in this period. Although usually considered a more common Labour party occurrence for their shared views and outlook, within these candidates we see couples from all political parties who worked together in political partnerships.
‘Halo effect’ candidates experienced a bonus to their candidature by having the support and experience of their husbands. In her study of the election of Nancy Astor’s 1919 election campaign, Karen Musolf characterises Waldorf Astor as ‘keeping control over the overall operation’ (
Yet, there is little in this list of duties and roles that these women had not performed themselves in their husbands’ election campaigns. They all canvassed enthusiastically, explained their husbands’ positions, spoke on platforms and provided logistical support. However, there is a gendered element to how this political work is characterised. Whilst in their roles of wives, women’s work is characterised in the mode of supportive wives and hostesses. Once their husbands were the ones in the back seat, so to speak, the men were viewed as ‘organisers’ and ‘strategists’, even if there was little difference in the actual work that they performed. This may be a useful consideration of historians in their reading of wives’ political work for their husbands.
Katharine’s characterisation of her life with the Duke of Atholl is perhaps more of a ‘Working Partnership’ (as is the title of her autobiography) than it is any kind of romantic marriage. The numerous affairs that her husband engaged in were no secret, and whilst not referred to in her autobiography, there is a certain distance that comes through in her writing. A quote from the Duchess in Sheila Hetherington’s (
My husband and I made a success of our marriage, largely because we tried to devote ourselves to causes in which we believed. We took immense interest in each other’s activities, but sometimes out paths diverted. One of us would be fighting in one cause while the other was battling in aid of another.
As discussed above, Juliet and Rhys Rhys-Williams were another example of a political partnership who were both politically active and engaged throughout their lives. Although in the early stages of marriage we see Juliet in traditional ‘political wife’ mode, she was deeply interested in a range of political interests and causes. There was a large age gap between the two, with Rhys thirty-three years Juliet’s senior. This gap allowed for her political career to ascend while his was waning, and in him she had a deeply experienced and, most importantly, loyal and trustworthy political partner. We see evidence of Rhys acting as Juliet’s secretary and assistant during her career. When she was away he would open and organise her post for her and only send on anything that
Politics and activism were often shared passions between these spouses. We have already seen how George and Agnes Hardie met through the ILP, Lucy and Noel Noel-Buxton on the North Norfolk campaign trail, and the Rhys Williams in a parliamentary office. Tom and Kitty Wintringham were another couple for whom politics and activism were an integral part of their relationship. When fighting in Spain as part of the International Brigades, Tom Wintringham met American journalist Kitty Bowler and they married back in Britain in 1941. Tom had a turbulent relationship with the Communist party and in 1942 he and Kitty were founding members of the new Common Wealth party. Tom stood in the 1943 by-election for Midlothian and Peebles under the Common Wealth banner. Although ultimately unsuccessful, he polled an impressive 48% of the vote, missing out on victory by a few hundred votes. For the 1945 general election, the couple decided that Kitty would try her luck in the same seat. She had come to know the constituency when campaigning for Tom and they hoped that the Wintringham name and previous success of her husband may help to carry a decent poll. Kitty’s election material reflected this theme. Her election leaflet carried a large endorsement in the centrespread from her husband Tom, proclaiming:
Kitty Wintringham does five jobs well: wife, politician, secretary, housekeeper and journalist. She is particularly good at the first two of these, and I am all in favour of her concentrating on them. Working with me as my secretary she has often completed things I left unfinished: pamphlets for training the Army and Home Guard, choosing instructors for the Osterley Home Guard School, and articles for the papers. In Midlothian I left something not quite finished. The Tory majority came down from over 10,000 to under 900. You can see that she finishes that up neatly.
Unfortunately, this was not a job that Kitty could finish up neatly. She finished in last place with a paltry 6.4% of the vote. Correspondence between Tom and Kitty reveals the rationale for Kitty contesting the Midlothian seat; they had built up connections in the area during Tom’s campaign that they felt that Kitty could capitalise on. They were both simultaneously contesting seats in the 1945 election and with Kitty in Scotland and Tom in Aldershot, their contact was limited to frequent letters. However, from Tom’s experience he was able to suggest possible supporters and endorsers for Kitty. Yet the election leaflet reveals the importance that the Wintringhams felt was attached to the name after Tom’s success. The belief in this name ignored the other circumstances that had led to Tom’s impressive share of the vote in 1943; this was a by-election held during WWII when the parties in the coalition governments had agreed not to stand against the incumbent party. Once Kitty stood in the 1945 general election, she came a distant third to the Unionist and Labour party candidates, who fought a close contest.
Political activism and public office was a peculiar path, demanding intense sacrifice and commitment. Both men and women were aided with the support of a spouse to navigate these waters. The 1930s and 40s were noted for the move towards more companionate forms of marriage. By the post-war period marriage was being redefined as a relationship in which the partners negotiated their roles in accordance with personal preferences rather than externally imposed expectations.
Historians seeking to document political agency for women before suffrage have often looked to the work of women within the political activities of their families. We should not discard this method of analysis from the point at which women were able stand as MPs themselves. Simply the theoretical ability to be added to a ballot paper did not mean that the obstacles for women had been removed. The presence and success of the ‘halo effect’ indicates the continued relevance of the family as a political organising unit within the era of mass democracy. Enduring links of family, kinship and personal relationships were as crucial to political activism as has been seen in the centuries before. The fact that many successful political women benefited from the knowledge, political experience and connections of their husbands should not be seen in a negative light. Their relationships with their husbands provided them with attributes that were necessary to forge a parliamentary career when many were still so resistant to lady members. They had experienced an excellent training in political organisation, platform speaking and canvassing, they had built up the trust and loyalty of local constituencies and they had a supportive and politically experienced spouse to help them navigate their route.
For men as well as women, the position of MP was often suffused with family and dynastic ambitions.
A further three, Alice Lucas, Juliet Rhys Williams and Kitty Wintringham, stood in seats previously contested but not won by their spouses.
See Vallance (
See, for example, Gleadle (
Half Circle Club, ‘Prospectus and notice of first gatherings’, 6 January 1921,
The only ‘elevation’ candidate to not win their seat was Mary Emmott in standing in Oldham in 1922. Her husband Alfred was raised to the peerage in 1911, so her candidacy was not a directly successive attempt.
Lena Jeger (Labour, St Pancras, 1953) and Muriel Gammans (Conservative, Hornsey, 1957) succeeded their husbands on being widowed. A handful of more recent examples do exist, including a candidacy at the 2019 general election where Natasha Elphicke stood for the seat of Dover in place of her husband. Charlie Elphicke was unable to stand as he had been suspended from the Conservative party on charges of sexual assault.
Countess of Iveagh’s 1927 Election Address,
For historiography on parliamentary familial ties after reform see Jalland (
A message from Lady Rhys-Williams, 1959,
The resolution of
For example, see Joan Davidson to Col. Storr, 28 November 1923,
Susan Davson to Juliet Rhys-Williams, 13 August 1949,
Kitty Wintringham North Midlothian Campaign Leaflet, 1945,
See Szreter and Fisher (
For more on the importance of relationships in the Labour party see Hannam (
Although referring to the current parliament, a research paper by Priddy (2020) gives an interesting insight into the deep familial connections between MPs that still remain.
I would like to thank Dr Helen McCarthy, Harry Mace, Lisa Berry-Waite and the members of the New York–Cambridge Training Collaboration (NYCTC) for their help and comments on an earlier version of this article.
The author has no competing interests to declare.