INCREDIBLE STORY OF LADY RHONDDA
The joy of this kind of documentary-making is being immersed in a person’s character and the world they inhabited... In an era when the nearest most of us come to action is an edgy tweet we can’t compare with the courageous women who came before us
FOR the past few months I’ve been steeped in the life and times of Margaret Haig Thomas, aka Lady Rhondda – a suffragette who went to prison, an internationally recognised businesswoman and a ground-breaking journalist.
I’ve been filming a documentary called Rhondda Rebel, which not only explores her remarkable biography, but also traces the creation from libretto to premiere of Rhondda Rips It Up, Welsh National Opera’s vibrant new production inspired by her story.
And what a tale it is. Margaret narrowly escaped death in World War One, surviving the icy waters of the Atlantic which claimed more than 1,100 fellow passengers when the Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed.
Her private life also had its moments of drama. After a divorce in 1923 that made national headlines, she would live with women for the rest of her days.
Believed to be the highest-paid businesswoman in Britain, she was on the board of 33 companies and was the first female president of the Institute of Directors.
Margaret combined her corporate nous with her journalistic talents to create Time and Tide, a weekly magazine which campaigned for women’s rights, mixed arts with politics and featured some of the greatest names in the history of literature – from JRR Tolkein, CS Lewis and George Orwell to Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw and EM Forster. So a life crammed with achievement.
Yet there was one feat Margaret did not feel worthy of – writing for the Western Mail!
I came across a wonderful anecdote in her autobiography, This Was My World, in which she describes a chance encounter with the paper’s editor. At the time she was keen to further the cause of the militant suffrage movement by writing for the Welsh press but believed the Western Mail was beyond her reach.
But a serendipitous Sunday-afternoon stroll with her father in the Brecon Beacons changed everything.
“As we walked along the side of the Merthyr reservoir on our way home, we came upon the editor of the Western Mail, best known of all Welsh daily papers, fishing,” she wrote.
“My father introduced me, and in the same breath inquired whether the editor would like me to send him occasional articles about militant suffrage. What between his natural Welsh desire to be polite and his doubts as to how articles from the pen of a young woman whose sole qualification for writing them lay in her firm belief in the righteousness of militancy would fit into the pages of his respectable journal, the editor’s struggle was not an invisible one.
“For my part,” she adds, “I also was rather taken aback. I did not believe myself a sufficiently experienced writer to be worthy to be printed in the columns of a paper so widely respected as the Western Mail, and indeed, the editor’s own feelings on the subject were far from being hidden from me. But he was too polite to refuse point-blank, and, as for myself, that amazing conscience which the militant movement bred in those who worked for it told me that I had no right to reject such a heaven-sent opportunity to further suffrage and gave me no peace till the first article was written. It was published on an August bank holiday: I have always supposed that the paper was short of copy that day.”
Bank holidays have always been happy hunting grounds for freelancers but I’m sure Margaret’s article earned its place.
It was one of the smaller details that made me feel an affinity with Lady Rhondda.
The joy of this kind of documentary-making is being immersed in a person’s character and the world they inhabited. When it is a figure from the past there’s the obvious hurdle of never having met them, yet by the end of this particular project I feel as if I have. Indeed, as daft as it may sound, I now consider Margaret a friend.
And what a great mate she would be!
I’m sure we’d have bonded as fellow Western Mail contributors. The Valleys connection, however, is not so straightforward. We’re a class apart. I have a friend who calls me Lady Rhondda in my more imperious moments, but Margaret was proper Monmouthshire gentry – her Rhondda title came from her father’s industrial empire centred on the Cambrian Combine of mines.
Yet although her family wealth was built off the backs of the toil of Rhondda colliers – my ancestors among them – she used her privilege in the best possible way, fighting for the advancement of women throughout her life. And to achieve her feminist aims – from setting fire to a post-box to jumping on the running board of the Prime Minister’s car – she did things that posh women weren’t generally prepared to do.
It helped that she’d had an enlightened upbringing. Born in 1883, Margaret was the only child of Liberal MP and industrialist David Alfred Thomas – known as DA – and Sybil Haig, cousin of the World War One Field Marshall Haig and an active suffragist who encouraged her daughter to be politically engaged.
DA was cutting edge as a coal owner. Though he would eventually fall out with his Rhondda miners over the Tonypandy Riots, they were initially impressed when the boss insisted on learning the business from the bottom up by joining them for shifts underground. And he was similarly modern in his approach to parenthood, delighting in the intellect of his daughter with a fervour fathers of his era usually only reserved for their sons.
That’s not to say Margaret entirely escaped the confines of her time. After “coming out” as a debutante she endured three years of London “seasons” before succumbing to a marriage to Monmouthshire landowner Humphry Mackworth that was very much a social union rather than a love match.
But there was passion beyond this stifling relationship – Margaret fell in love with the suffrage cause. The introduction had been made by her cousin Florence Haig, who had already been to prison after agitating for the vote.
Encouraged by Florence, Margaret and her mother joined the great suffrage procession to London’s Hyde Park on July 21, 1908. We have footage of this mass gathering in the documentary and the scale of the women’s march is staggering. An estimated 400,000 from across the UK took to the streets.
Galvanised, Margaret joined the
Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and set up its Newport branch. She had found her calling and it was some epiphany: “For me and for many other young women like me, militant suffrage was the very salt of life. The knowledge of it had come like a draught of fresh air into our padded, stifled lives. It gave us release of energy, it gave us that sense of being some use in the scheme of things, without which no human being can live at peace.”
In the years before the outbreak of the First World War Margaret devoted herself to suffrage activities. She brought Emmeline Pankhurst to Newport to address Welsh suffragettes and took to the stage herself on other public platforms.
She was often met with a hostile response. When she accompanied WSPU star speaker Annie Kenney to an event at the Liberal Club in Aberdare both were pelted with herrings, rotten tomatoes and mice... dead and alive.
Targeting cabinet ministers at public appearances was a favourite suffragette tactic, so when Margaret came face to face with anti-suffrage Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in 1910 she took the opportunity to break through the police cordon and jump on the running board of his car. She and two fellow suffragettes were dragged away by an angry crowd who tore at their clothes and yanked their hair.
And as the all-male Westminster club continued to ignore the votesfor-women campaign, female protestrrs turned up the heat. Frustrated by getting nowhere within the law, women were beginning to break the law. Between 1908 and 1914 more than 1,000 suffragettes spent time behind bars – Margaret among them.
A blue plaque in Risca Road, Newport, marks the scene of her criminality for the cause. In 1913 she set fire to the contents of a post-box and was arrested, tried and found guilty. Much to her husband’s consternation she eschewed the offer of a fine, knowing a prison sentence would capture the headlines – and set every tongue in Monmouthshire wagging. After all, here was one of Wales’ most upperclass ladies heading for Usk jail.
I spent a day in the same prison retracing Margaret’s experiences of incarceration. The staff had managed to find the gate book from 1913, and what a privilege it was to be the first person beyond those thick prison walls to open its pages for more than 100 years.
There, listed among the prostitutes sent down for “riotous behaviour” and theft, was Margaret. Sitting in a tiny cell, I tried to put myself in her shoes. Not for the first time it struck me just how much suffragettes were prepared to fight for a right we now take for granted. In an era when the nearest most of us come to direct action is an edgy tweet, we can’t compare with the courageous women who came before us.
Margaret’s decision to go on hunger strike and refuse water genuinely put her at risk, as she recalled in her autobiography: “I had made up my mind that I would not touch food whilst I was in prison. I had further decided that in order to hurry on the time when I should be weak enough to be let out, I would refuse drink for as long as I could – but would take it if and when I found my thirst unendurable. By the end of three days I’d reached the stage when I had difficulty in restraining myself from drinking the contents of the slop pail.”
Released after five days, Margaret returned home to a husband who was struggling to cope with his spouse’s taste for militant protest but she was never suited to the role of the provincial wife. Her father had effectively made her his right-hand woman in the management of a vast business empire that included coal, shipping, newspapers and rail interests. Every morning she caught the 9.05am train to her father’s Cambrian Buildings headquarters in Cardiff docks. The only other females in the offices were the telephonists.
But Margaret’s annual salary of £1,000 made her one of the richest businesswomen in the world, while her increasing corporate responsibilities made her a story across the globe – her status was marvelled at in the New York Tribune, which deemed her the “foremost woman of business in the British Empire”.
It was on the return leg of a business trip to New York with her father that Margaret survived the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Narrowly escaping death proved a life-changing experience, as historian Deidre Beddoe explains: “Rescued after hours in the freezing water, she later reflected that the shipwreck had altered her opinion of herself. Having gone through that and faced death close-up, she no longer feared anything.”
In World War One she was an integral part of the battle on the home front. As Commissioner of Women’s National Service in Wales and Controller of Women’s Recruiting she poured her energies into enabling women to take a full role in the war effort. When the war ended she campaigned for women to remain in the post-war workforce, setting up the Women’s Industrial League in 1918 to aid this aim.
Between partial suffrage for women in 1918 and full suffrage for females over 21 in 1928 Margaret fought for broader women’s rights, as her biographer, Angela V John, describes: “In 1921 she founded the Six Point Group (SPG), with its own charter. It made gender equality paramount. Margaret argued that women’s voting rights must be accompanied by social and economic legislation.
“Her programme sought legislation for mothers that would give children better protection. It was remarkably prescient in demanding strict laws on child assault and it sought to protect widowed mothers with young children and the unmarried mother and child. The other three points dealt with equal rights for men and women, demanding equal guardianship of children for married parents, equality of opportunity in the civil service and equal pay for teachers.”
Arguably the leading British feminist of her time, every modern female peer in the House of Lords has Margaret to thank for her seat. She had begun the fight for parity in the Second House on the death of her beloved father in 1918.
DA had obtained special permission from George V for Margaret to inherit his title upon his death. So she became Lady Rhondda. But no woman was allowed to sit in the House of Lords. They were finally admitted in 1958 after a campaign Margaret spearheaded for 40 years, battling misogyny and displaying an indomitable spirit that earned her the sobriquet the Persistent Peeress.
Sadly, victory came too late for Lady Rhondda to take her own seat. She died of stomach cancer at the age of 75 – her funeral was held the day after the public announcement of the first four women peers.
The service was in London, but Margaret had always wanted her remains to come home to Wales. Her ashes are interred at the family tomb in Llanwern. Visiting the memorial, I was upset to see the inscription to a woman who made such an impact was barely visible.
But Margaret’s legacy lives on and interest in her story is renewed. Her picture graces the plinth of the statue unveiled this year in Parliament Square to suffragist Millicent Fawcett.
And WNO’s musical celebration of her life – Rhondda Rips It Up – is playing to packed theatres across England and Wales.
Our documentary also aims to bring the inspiring narrative of this extraordinary Welsh woman to a new audience. So Margaret – from one Western Mail freelance to another – I hope we’ve done you justice.
Rhondda Rebel is on BBC1 Wales on Tuesday at 10.40pm, repeated next Saturday on BBC2 Wales at 10.30pm. Directed by Sian Roderick, the programme is a Fresh Catch production for BBC Wales.