26 Facts About Jessie Stephen

Jessie Stephen, MBE was a twentieth-century British suffragette, labour activist and local councillor.

Jessie Stephen grew up in Scotland and won a scholarship to train as a teacher.

Jessie Stephen became involved in national labour issues as a teenager, via organisations such as the Independent Labour Party and the Women's Social and Political Union.

Jessie Stephen was elected as a local councillor several times and stood as a candidate in general elections.

Jessie Stephen was appointed MBE in 1977 and her life is commemorated by a blue plaque in Bristol.

Jessie Stephen is recorded in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as a "suffragette and labour activist", and has been described as "virtually the only Scottish working-class Women's Social and Political Union member about whom anything is known".

Jessie Stephen was born in Marylebone, London, on 19 April 1893, the eldest of the eleven children of tailor Alexander Stephen and his wife Jane Miller.

Jessie Stephen's father was a founder member of the Independent Labour Party when it was established and she described her mother as being "so quiet and the very opposite of dad".

Jessie Stephen attended Sunday schools separately linked to the church and to socialism, and was educated at North Kelvinside School.

Jessie Stephen won a scholarship to train as a pupil-teacher.

Jessie Stephen was referred to as a "young activist in the Maryhill Branch of the ILP", before she joined the WSPU in 1909, aged 16.

Jessie Stephen organised her fellow maids through meetings firstly in the streets and later in Alston's Tea Rooms in Bothwell Street, Glasgow.

Jessie Stephen was the youngest member of the WSPU Glasgow delegation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George in 1912, and, she took part in the first of the "Scottish Outrages", involving attacks on pillar boxes, in Glasgow in February 1913.

Jessie Stephen was approached by Sylvia Pankhurst and moved from Glasgow to London, where she became considered one of the "most active members" of the Workers' Suffrage Federation.

Jessie Stephen was an active member of the Women's Peace Crusade and at the 1920 ILP conference argued against the use of force during events preceding the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR.

Jessie Stephen visited Vancouver, where she encouraged migrant English domestic workers to unionise.

Jessie Stephen later lived in Lancashire and in London, where she became involved in the East London Federation and sold the Women's Dreadnought.

Jessie Stephen was elected Labour borough councillor for Bermondsey in 1922, after failing to be selected as a parliamentary candidate for the ILP, and worked for Bermondsey MP Alfred Salter.

Jessie Stephen stood as Labour candidate for Portsmouth South in the general elections of 1923,1924 and 1929, and for Kidderminster in 1931.

In 1944 Jessie Stephen was appointed as the first woman area union organiser of the National Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union for South Wales and the West of England and moved to Bristol.

Jessie Stephen worked at the Broad Quay branch of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, later becoming chair of the local CWS management committee.

Jessie Stephen was appointed MBE for "services to the trade union movement" in June 1977.

Jessie Stephen died from pneumonia and heart failure at Bristol General Hospital on 12 June 1979.

Jessie Stephen's life is commemorated by a blue plaque at her former home in Bedminster, Bristol.

Jessie Stephen is included in River of Words, an artwork by Anoushka Havinden at the Stockingfield Junction on the Forth and Clyde Canal in Maryhill, Glasgow, which lists local people of historic significance.

Jessie Stephen is the subject of a short animation made as part of Glasgow Women's Library's Vote 100 project and an exhibition Jessie Stephen: Maryhill's Suffragette at Maryhill Burgh Halls running from 11th March 2025 to 13th June 2025.