25 Facts About Helen Crawfurd

Helen Crawfurd was a Scottish suffragette, rent strike organiser, Communist activist and politician.

Helen Crawfurd's father, a master baker, was a Catholic, but converted to the Church of Scotland and became a conservative trade unionist.

In 1944, Helen Crawfurd remarried, to widower George Anderson of Anderson Brothers Engineers, Coatbridge.

Helen Crawfurd's second husband was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Helen Crawfurd first became active in the women's suffrage movement in about 1900, then in 1910 at a meeting in Rutherglen.

Helen Crawfurd was jailed three times for "militant" political activity during her career as an activist.

In 1912, Helen Crawfurd smashed the windows of Jack Pease, Minister for Education, and received a one-month prison sentence.

In March 1914, Helen Crawfurd was arrested in Glasgow when Emmeline Pankhurst was speaking.

Helen Crawfurd received another month in prison and went on an eight-day hunger strike.

Helen Crawfurd spoke at the Music Hall, Aberdeen on 26 February 1914, in favour of militarism.

Helen Crawfurd had co-founded the Glasgow branch of the Women's International League and become secretary of the Women's Peace Crusade.

On 23 July 1916, Helen Crawfurd organised the first demonstration of the Women's Peace Crusade, which was attended by 5,000.

Helen Crawfurd formed a branch of the United Suffragists in Glasgow.

In 1918, Helen Crawfurd was elected as vice-chair of the Scottish division of the Independent Labour Party, and was said to be a convincing speaker when she spoke in the Market Place at the branch meeting in Loftus.

Shortly afterwards, Helen Crawfurd became a founder member of the ILP's left-wing faction, which was campaigning for it to affiliate to the Communist International.

Helen Crawfurd served on its Central Committee and involved herself in various journalistic projects.

In 1919, Helen Crawfurd was a delegate to the Congress of the Women's International League in Zurich.

Helen Crawfurd ran in 1921 as the first Communist Party candidate in the Govan ward of Glasgow.

In 1927, Helen Crawfurd was an official delegate to the Brussels International Conference against Oppressed Nationalities, at which the League against Imperialism was established.

Helen Crawfurd stood for the CPGB in Bothwell at the 1929 general election, and Aberdeen North in 1931, but did not come close to being elected.

Helen Crawfurd unsuccessfully stood for Dunoon Town Council in 1938.

Helen Crawfurd died in 1954 at Mahson Cottage, Kilbride Avenue, Dunoon, Argyll, aged 76.

Helen Crawfurd was included in a series of posters in 2019 and an educational resource called Scotland's Suffrage Education Pack.

Helen Crawfurd was memorialised in 2024 in stained glass window by Artist Keira McLean in Glasgow's Woodside Library, working with young people from the local community.

Historical information about Jessie Soga and Helen Crawfurd was shared by Clare Thompson from Protests and Suffragettes.