Plaque pays tribute to campaigner
ONE hundred years to the day after the first General Election in which women were able to vote, Swansea Council honoured one of the women who helped to bring it all about.
The council has installed a blue plaque to Clara Neal, a campaigner for women’s voting rights and leading member of the Swansea Women’s Freedom League branch.
It was unveiled by 15-year-old Pentrehafod pupil Sandy Ibrahim, of Mayhill, who has just been elected to the Welsh Youth Parliament, and Terrace Road Primary School head girl Hafsa Kayum.
The plaque is on a wall of the Swansea school with which she was long associated, Terrace Road.
Born in Devon in 1870, Clara Neal lived most of her adult life in Swansea.
She took up the post of head teacher at Terrace Road School in Mount Pleasant in 1901, and remained there until 1921.
During this period she was active in the women’s suffrage movement.
She was inspired – along with her friends Emily Phipps and Mary Mcleod Cleeves – to found in 1909 a Swansea branch of the Women’s Freedom League; this suffragist group advocated less militant tactics than the better known Women’s Social and Political Union associated with the Pankhursts.
The group held women’s suffrage meetings and events in Swansea throughout the years leading up to the First World War, despite opposition from male protesters.
Terrace Road School head teacher, Alison Evans, said: “I feel honoured that a female head teacher of this school was such an important champion for the rights of everybody, but in particular for the right for women to vote.
“The Terrace Road School log book records that on September 5, 1918, Clara Neal closed the school for the afternoon so women staff could register to vote.
“She must have felt so proud when that day came after so many years of struggle.”
Carol Shephard, working for Swansea-based international charity Women4resources, has been working with years three and four at the school in celebrating Clara Neal’s life.
The children have been learning and writing about Clara, and used some of their material when they wrote to the council in support of the blue plaque nomination.
Carol added: “A group of 11 children worked with me to prepare a performance for the Women’s Archive Wales conference at Swansea University’s Bay Campus on October 7. The children read poems, acted out scenes from Clara’s life and sang the song ‘Nana was a Suffragette’ with an extra verse about Clara.”