Charlotte Despard Battersea’s socialist suffragette.
Charlotte Despard is a name somewhat revered in left wing circles in Battersea as well as nationally and internationally because of the many causes she espoused and her influence. Yet Tory Wandsworth Council didn’t even mention her for their February 6th announcement on the centenary of the Representation of the People Act!
There has been commemorations of her in the centenary year culminating in the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at 177 Lavender Hill the Battersea Labour Party HQ since 1923. It was unveiled by Marsha de Cordova our MP and the guest speaker at the event afterwards at Battersea Arts Centre/Town Hall was Guardian journalist.
Charlotte Despard 1944-1939 led a fascinating life that can be divided into stages. There was her Battersea socialist-activist phase which coincided with her suffragette era and overlapped with her Irish independence phase. Her final phase was when she relocated Belfast. Her ascetic vegetarian outlook, her anti-vivisection campaigning, her ant-fascist activism, her confused ‘spiritual’ side from Church of England protestant, converting to Catholicism and being active in the Theosophist movement overlapped with all of these.
Her biography by Andro Linklater was published in 1980. An unhusbanded life: Charlotte Despard : suffragette, socialist, and Sinn Feiner. Hutchinson
‘An unhusbanded life’ would probably not have been a title chosen by a female biographer although it is interesting in the context of female suffrage organisations leaders. This was noted by her biographer Margaret Mulvihill
I am writing this blog because of our local campaign to have a statue commissioned to commemorate Charlotte in Battersea in Nine Elms. Of the other two suffragette widowed leaders Emmeline Pankhurst has a statue in Victoria Gardens since 1930 
and Millicent Garrett Fawcett statue has been unveiled in Parliament Square this year 2018 – the centenary year of Votes for Women. This is the first statue there commemorating a woman in Parliament Square and the first by a woman sculptor Gillian Wearing.
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It was a very joyous event.
Millicent Fawcett Statue unveiling at Parliament Square with Sarah Rackham, Lesley from Wandsworth Radio and women from Katherine Low Settlement.
The idea to have a statue has been mooted since the regeneration of Nine Elms area has begun as this where she lived and had her club and welfare facilities when she came here to live when she was widowed in 1890.
I wrote to Anne Mullins who is Head of Culture Nine Elms Vauxhall Partnership two years ago with the suggestion of a statue to commemorate Nine Elms esteemed previous resident as her brief is to coordinate cultural activities in the area but as a council officer she is still looking into it!
In January 2018 I contacted the US Embassy and Ballymore Group, the developers of Embassy Gardens, which was the site of Charlottes home/club in Currie Street with the suggestion of a commemorative statue there in this centenary year. I was curious to see how the US Embassy would say no and noted that Sherri signed of respectfully. It must be American diplomatic speak.
“While we thank you very much for your recommendation that we erect a statue in honor of Charlotte Despard on the embassy grounds, we are currently in the process of installing major art pieces that were selected by the U.S. Department of State specifically for our new embassy. There are no plans currently to add to this collection. However, we will certainly pass along your suggestion to our Art in Embassies colleagues back in Washington for their information.
I hope you were able to follow the link I sent along yesterday acknowledging Charlotte Despard on our social media feed. We really are thrilled to be in the neighborhood and looking forward to getting to know our new neighbors.
I think Charlotte stands out prominently of the three widow suffrage leaders for being a socialist and a Sinn Feiner – a maverick to the establishment which might explain why she hasn’t been championed for commemoration.
This blog piece from The Charlotte Despard Pub in Archway is a good precis mainly gleaned from Margaret Mulvihill’s biography of Charlotte and the article contrasting Charlotte and her brother John is illuminating. http://thecharlottedespard.blogspot.com/p/about-charlotte-despard.html
Charlotte French, the daughter of William French, a naval commander from Ireland was born in Ripple Kent in 1844. By the age of ten her father had died and her mother was committed to an insane asylum and she was sent to London to live with relatives.
She had a conventional education but she recalled trying to run a way. “After that, lest I should infect my sisters with my spirit of insubordination, I was kept in solitary confinement for three or four days, and then sent away to school.”When her husband died in 1890, Charlotte decided to dedicate the rest of her life to helping the poor. She left her luxurious house in Esher and moved to Nine Elms having been introduced to it by her neighbour Lady Albany and her flower mission. She lived among he people she intended to assist.
For several years she toured the continent with her unmarried sisters. Charlotte met Maximilian Despard, an Anglo-Irish businessman who had made a fortune in the Far East and was a founder of what became the HSBC. The couple married on 20th December 1870. Like his new wife he favoured Home Rule for Ireland, rights and careers for women and many other progressive causes of the day. Together they traveled widely, going to India several times but always returning to their spacious country home, Courtlands, in Surrey, which stood amid 15 rolling acres of woods, lawn, stream and formal gardens. With her husband’s encouragement, she published her first novel, Chaste as Ice, Pure as Snow in 1874. During the next sixteen years Charlotte wrote ten novels, mostly romances but A Voice from the Dim Millions dealt with the problems of a poor young factory worker. Tellingly she was unable to find a publisher for this novel.
Her other novels were Wandering Fires, A Modern Iago, Jonas Sylvester, The Rajah’s Heir and Outlawed
When her husband died in 1890, Charlotte decided to dedicate the rest of her life to helping the poor. She left her luxurious house in Esher and moved to Nine Elms having been introduced to it by her neighbour Lady Albany and her flower mission. She lived among he people she intended to assist.
She bought 95 Wandsworth Road first then 2 Currie Street. There she funded and staffed a health clinic, as well as organizing youth and working men’s clubs, and a soup kitchen for the local unemployed. She lived among the local community during the week. She converted to Catholicism as she very much identified with the large Irish community living in the area. At the end of 1894 she was elected as a guardian for the Vauxhall board of the Lambeth poor-law union. She proved herself a brilliant committee woman, bringing a rare combination of informed compassion, practical experience, and military efficiency to the board’s deliberations.
Charlotte became friends with George Lansbury and for the next few years became involved in the campaign to reform the Poor Law system.
She joined the Social Democratic Federation and later the Independent Labour Party and got to know Margaret Bondfield, the trade union leader and Keir Hardie, the new leader of the Labour Party.
Charlotte, known as Lottie to her family, became a member of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies which was spearheaded by Millicent Fawcett but in 1906, frustrated by the NUWSS lack of success,she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU),which had been established by Emmeline Pankhurst and her three daughters. The main objective was to gain, not universal suffrage, the vote for all women and men over a certain age, but votes for women, “on the same basis as men.” This meant winning the vote not for all women but for only the small stratum of women who could meet the property qualification. As one critic pointed out, it was “not votes for women”, but “votes for ladies.”
She later wrote: “I had sought and found comradeship of some sort with men. I had marched with great processions of the unemployed. I had stood on the platforms of Labour men and Socialists. I had tried to stir up the people to a sense of shame about the misery of their homes, and the degradation of their women and children. I had listened with sympathy to fiery denunciations of Governments and the Capitalist systems to which they belong. Amongst all these experiences, I had not found what I met on the threshold of this young, vigorous Union of Hearts.”
On 23rd October, 1906, Charlotte was arrested with Mary Gawthorpe during a protest meeting at the House of Commons….” but in the twinkling of an eye dozens of policemen sprang forward, tore the tiny creature (Mary) from her post and swiftly rushed her out of the Lobby. Instantly Mrs. Despard stepped into the breach; but she also was roughly dragged away.”
In 1907 she was imprisoned twice in Holloway Prison. However, like other leading members of the WSPU she began to question the leadership of Mrs Pankhurst. Some women objected to the way that the Pankhursts were making decisions without consulting members. They also felt that a small group of wealthy women were having too much influence over the organisation.
This a photo of her that was given to me by a family when I visited them whilst organising a funeral. They didn’t know who she was and asked if I wanted it.
In a conference in 1907, Mrs Pankhurst told members that she intended to run the WSPU without interference. “She called upon those who had faith in her leadership to follow her, and to devote themselves to the sole end of winning the vote. This announcement was met with a dignified protest from Mrs. Despard as Pankhurst challenged all who did not accept the leadership of herself and her daughter to resign from the Union that she had founded, and to form an organisation of their own.”
As a result of this speech, Charlotte and seventy other members of the WSPU left to form the Womens Freedom League. (WFL). Like the WSPU, the WFL was a militant organisation that was willing the break the law. As a result, over 100 of their members were sent to prison after being arrested on demonstrations or refusing to pay taxes. However, the WFL was a completely non-violent organisation and opposed the WSPU but did break the law which it deemed unjust. It was especially critical of the WSPU arson campaign. Charlotte was scathing about the WSPU. Elizabeth Elmy a strong-willed suffragist said Charlotte was ‘ rude and rough’ towards her for being a member of the WSPU.
Battersea Labour Luminaries
Charlotte like most members of the WFL were pacifists and so during the the war she refused to become involved in the British Army’s recruitment campaign.
Ironically, her brother, General John French, was Chief of Staff of the British Army and commander of the British Expeditionary forces sent to Europe in August 1914. Her sister, Catherine Harley, was also a supporter of the war and served in the Scottish Women’s Hospital in France. Charlotte argued that the British government was not doing enough to bring an end to the war and supported the campaign of the Women’s Peace Council for a negotiated peace.
After the passing of the Representation of the People’s Act and the Qualification of Women Act in 1918, Charlotte became the Battersea Labour Party candidate (which she financially helped) in the general election called immediately after the war in December as John Burns MP refused to join the Labour Party as he had joined the Liberals by then. (Caroline Ganley had to call to house twice to see if he was going to stand again as a Labour candidate). Charlotte had no time for Burns who ‘had waved the red flag but now played the boss’s tune’ She said at a meeting in Battersea District Library that she hoped that if no other Liberal was thrown However, in the euphoria of Britain’s victory, Despard’s anti-war views were very unpopular and like all the other pacifists candidates, who stood in the election, she was defeated.
Charlotte then left Battersea for Ireland. Mulvihill argued: “Among the suffragette leaders she had stood out as a supporter of Irish home rule, and when that movement gave way to the struggle for complete independence she became an active supporter of the British solidarity organization the Irish Self Determination League. Her sympathy for the Irish republican movement brought her into direct conflict with her brother, who in 1918 had been sworn in as lord lieutenant of Ireland. While he set about crushing the rebels, his sister was supporting them.”
In 1920 Despard toured Ireland as a member of the Labour Party Commission of Inquiry with Maud Gonne with who she shared a house in Dublin. They also formed the Women’s Prisoners’ Defence League to support republican prisoners. In the 1920s Charlotte Despard became involved in the Sinn Fein campaign for a united Ireland.
In 1930 she and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington made a tour of the Soviet Union. Impressed with what she saw she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. and became secretary of the Friends of Soviet Russia. She then relocated to Belfast and continued traveling to Britain for her annual birthday bash given by the WFL as well as attending international conferences and rallies. She wanted to go to Spain but ill health prevented her. She was looked after by republicans Jack Mulvenna and Mollie Fitzgerald. She died on 10th November 1939, after a fall in her new house in Whitehead but her funeral was in Dublin and she was buried in Glasnevin cemetery with a tribute from Maud Gonne and Hanna amongst others.
Her gravestone bears the inscription
She tried to do her duty
“I slept and dreamt that life was Beauty,
I woke and found that Life was Duty.’
There is a mural in Battersea by Brian Barnes which features Charlotte next to Hilda Hewlett first British female licensed pilot.
The image of her on the Charlotte Despard pub in N19 is of her before she married whereas she always wore her mantilla in her widowed politically active years. So, not really very representative of her.
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There is a campaign to have a statue of her in her iconic raised fist pose in Trafalgar square in her ninetieth year commissioned in Nine Elms with the Nine Elms Partnership which is co-chaired by the leaders of Wandsworth sand Lambeth Councils. It includes the area’s main developers and landowners, the Mayor of London, Transport for London and the Greater London Authority. It is responsible for setting and delivering the strategic vision for the area, including the £1 billion infrastructure investment package https://nineelmslondon.com/about-us/partners .
So far I have only had a response from Cllr Lib Peck Leader of Lambeth Council. We know these statue commissions take time.Dame Millicent Fawcett has also waited for over a century to have one of her in Trafalgar Square and the plinth of it has 59 names of suffragettes including Charlotte.
Thanks very much for writing to me and highlighting what a great champion Charlotte Despard is!
Battersea Matters showing our various local celebrations.
The Charlotte head cake made by artist Phillippa Egerton has already graced three events as part of this campaign and is now at Battersea Arts Centre. The Charlotte birthday ‘do’ outside the U S Embassy which was the site of Despard House and where we would like to have the statue, the EqualiTea at the Venue in Battersea Park Road which was organised by Lesley from Wandsworth Radio and on the rooftop of Covent Garden Flower Market on Art Night 7th July.
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Jeanne Rathbone 
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