Helen Fraser (feminist)


Helen Miller Fraser, later Moyes, was a Scottish suffragette, feminist, educationalist and Liberal Party politician who later emigrated to Australia.

Background

Fraser was born in Leeds, Yorkshire to Scottish parents. She was educated at Higher Grade School, Queen's Park, Glasgow. She opened a studio in Glasgow that specialised in black and white illustration work and embroidery.

Political career

She joined the Women's Social and Political Union after hearing Teresa Billington speak in Glasgow. She travelled to England to help the WSPU campaign at the 1906 Huddersfield by-election. She became Treasurer of the Glasgow WSPU and a WSPU Scottish Organiser, one of the fifty-eight funded branches in the UK. On 20 December 1906, with Flora Drummond, Fraser and three others attempted to enter the Stranger's Lobby in the Parliament, and after a skirmish Drummond was arrested. In 1907, Fraser organised the WSPU campaign, using press publicity handbills about the demonstrators ' CRUSHED BY THE MOUNTED POLICE AGAINST THE RAILINGS OF THE ABBEY, AND TRAMPLED UNDER THEIR HORSES HOOFS'. Fraser had the help of Mary Phillips in East Fife and during the 1907 Aberdeen South by-election she met Adela Pankhurst with whom she remained close friends throughout her life. Her sister Annie, along with Maggie Moffatt, became one of the first Scottish suffragettes to be arrested. In 1907, Janie Allan, being inspired by Fraser and Theresa Billington-Greig speaking about suffragette activity and organised a large WSPU meeting in St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow.
Fraser also took a prominent role in the WSPU's 1907 Hexham by-election campaign; which she was praised for by the Daily Mail. She worked with Rachel Barrett, Elsa Gye and Mary Gawthorpe during the Dundee by-election the next year. In 1908, Fraser attended the 'monster meeting' Women's Sunday and wrote to Isabel Seymour that it was 'successful but not entirely satisfactory', Fraser estimated half a million people attended but said that at three of the speaker platforms 'there was much rowdyism' and said 'it seemed to me that the mass of people were simply curious - not opposed- simply indifferent. Fraser was also becoming disillusioned with the violent militant tactics of the WSPU. She criticised the actions of one WSPU member who broke the windows of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith. She resigned from the WSPU soon afterwards, and was approached by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies and agreed to work for them. She was a member of the NUWSS national executive committee for fourteen years.
Fraser was effective as a public speaker and had speaking engagements not just in Scotland, but all around the UK. In a one-year period, her meetings collected a total of £56.19.10 for the NUWSS. In 1912, she spoke at a meeting in Cambridge organised by the Cambridge Women's Suffrage Association, held during a course of University Extension Lectures. In 1915, she acted as temporary Honorary Secretary of the Penarth Women's Suffrage Society.
During the First World War, she worked as a Commissioner for the National War Saving Committee. She was seconded to the Board of Agriculture to persuade women to work on the land. In 1917, at the suggestion of Millicent Fawcett, she was included by the UM Government as part of the official British War Mission to the US, to speak about Britain's war effort. She travelled through 40 states and spoke 332 times in 312 days. In 1918, upon her return to Britain, her book of the tour Women and War Work was published.
In 1918, when women gained the right to stand as parliamentary candidates, she turned her attention to the campaign to elect women as Members of Parliament. She spoke in Cardiff on behalf of the Joint Committee for Getting Women into Parliament. She did not contest the 1918 general election. She took an active role in the affairs of a number of organisations; she was a member of the Executive Committee, of the NUWSS successor organisation the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship, she was a member of the Common Interests Committee of the English-Speaking Union, she was involved in the Reunion of British War Missions in USA, she was a member of the Council for the Representation of Women in the League of Nations and she was a Member of the British Institute of International Affairs.
Her efforts during the war and after had come to the attention of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and she joined his National Liberal organisation. In 1922, she was the first woman to be adopted in Scotland as an official prospective parliamentary candidate when she was selected as National Liberal candidate for the Govan Division of Glasgow for the 1922 general election. She was one of only three women candidates to contest the general election in Scotland. Govan was a safe Labour seat and she was not expected to win. Fraser was a prominent member of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Association for Women's Suffrage. She had the GWSAWS backing to stand in Govan on the platform of the Liberal manifesto. This platform included the establishment of widows' pensions and an equal franchise for women. During her campaign she criticised her male Labour party opponent's "appropriation of our feminist ideals and policies."
In 1923 she went to Paris, France to attend the conference of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship as a delegate of the NUWSS.
Later in 1923, following re-union between Lloyd George and Asquith, she switched constituencies to stand as Liberal party candidate for the Hamilton Division of Lanarkshire at the 1923 general election. Though also a Labour seat, it was believed that her prospects here were a little better. However, abuse and calumny by the Labour Party candidate Duncan Macgregor Graham made the experience a thoroughly unpleasant one.
Her last political invitation was to fight the 1924 Glasgow Kelvingrove by-election but the Conservative candidate Walter Elliot was a friend, and she knew that she could poll enough votes to cause him to lose the seat, so she refused and gave up the idea of a career in politics. Fraser then moved to London, earning money from freelance articles on women's issues. She was elected to Kensington Borough Council, sitting as a member for seven years.

Personal life

While living in London, Fraser was in contact with an old friend named James Moyes who had emigrated to Australia. His wife had died, and he asked Fraser to marry him several times before she accepted. She emigrated to Sydney in 1938 or 1939. Late in her life she wrote an autobiography, entitled A Woman in a Man's World, that was published in 1971. Fraser died in Australia in 1979.

Publications