Who Was Nancy Astor? – Opinion

BY RORY EAVES

Rightly or wrongly, I had never heard of Nancy Astor until I came to Plymouth, and even then I never took the initiative to find out more about her. I knew nothing about her being the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat, nor did I know anything about her vocalisation of anti-Semitic views. Considering that I studied Woman’s Suffrage and pre-WWII Europe for GCSE history, it’s quite alarming that such a pivotal and important figure such as Nancy Astor never once came up. Time to right that wrong and explore the life and importance of one of Plymouth’s most famous public figures.

Nancy Astor’s Claim to Fame

Nancy Astor is revered and remembered as the first female British MP to take her seat in 1919 for Plymouth, (Constance Markievicz was the first elected female MP for Ireland’s Sinn Féin in 1918, however she didn’t take her seat in line with the party policy).

Born in Virginia, USA in 1879, Nancy Astor moved to England in 1905 after divorcing her first husband. On arrival to the UK with her sister Phyllis, Nancy Astor quickly rose up the ranks of the social elite, and after marrying into the Astor family she gained reputable favour as a socialite, often hosting her high class friends at their Cliveden estate in Buckinghamshire. It was here that Astor first became involved in the British political circle as a member of Milner’s Kindergarten. Milner’s Kindergarten were a group that possessed philosophies that included the continued expansion of the British Empire, spurred after the culmination of the Boer War in South Africa.

Astor came to be the Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton after her husband, then MP at the time, ascended to the House of Lords and had to rescind his seat. Nancy Astor contested the by-election and subsequently won through her unorthodox, informal approach to campaigning, charming crowds with her wit and humour.

Astor and Woman’s Suffrage

The aforementioned Constance Markievicz openly criticised Nancy Astor for not involving her self in the Woman’s Suffrage movement, saying that she was “of the upper classes, out of touch”. Despite this criticism, Astor was highly acclaimed by supporters of the suffrage movement, seeing her election success as justification and vindication for their hard fought campaigns and sacrifices over the years, and is credited with the catalysing the continuation of these reforms in 1928.

Did you know? The Woman’s Suffrage movement in the UK was multifaceted, consisting of two main arms; Suffragettes and Suffragists. The movement began with the Suffragists, founded by Millicent Fawcett in 1897 as the consolidation of 17 separate Women’s Suffrage groups. The suffragists believed in a peaceful and non violent approach, believing in the power of discourse and petition.

The Suffragettes on the other hand felt that this wasn’t advancing the cause; they subsequently adopted a more militant and extreme approach. Founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 in Manchester, the Suffragettes were more disruptive, interrupting meetings, chaining themselves together in prominent areas to cause disruption, and ultimately never giving up. The tenacity and determination of the Suffragettes was admirable, as even after getting arrested they continued their protesting by hunger striking while in prison. This led to the government passing an act that was colloquially known as the Cat and Mouse Act. It was so named because the act allowed for hunger striking prisoners to be released from jail when they got close to being seriously ill, and then subsequently re-arrested when they were healthy enough to continue, and ultimately complete, their sentence. Under the Cat and Mouse Act, Emmeline Pankhurst was arrested and released a staggering 11 times!

Perhaps the most well known Suffragette though is Emily Davison. In 1913 Davison shocked the country when she stepped in front of the King’s Racehorse at the Epsom Derby. Her intentions remain unclear to this day, however many theories have arisen as to her motives. I personally believe in the theory that Davison’s aim was to pin a Women’s Suffrage flag to the horse so that when it was photographed crossing the finish line, the flag would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Instead Davison was ultimately killed due to the injuries that were sustained, and somewhat unintentionally became a martyr for the Woman’s Suffrage movement.

The death of Emily Davison is considered by many to be a significant turning point in the Suffrage movement. This momentum continued through the First World War with Woman stepping up to the plate and taking on vital domestic roles that were left absent by men going off to fight. Coupled with the long term support of then Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the first act that granted female householders of the age of 30 the right to vote was finally passed in 1918, along with the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 allowing for female Member’s of Parliament. This paved the way less than a year later for Nancy Astor to become the First Female MP to take her seat in the Houses of Parliament. It wasn’t until a decade later in 1928 that all woman had the same right to vote as men in the United Kingdom.

The Woman’s Suffrage movement can be spoken about for days, so I implore you to find out more. The British Library have a great article that dives deeper into the origins and actions of both the Suffragists and Suffragettes, along with a great in-depth timeline of Woman’s Suffrage events. The British Film Institute National Archives hold actual footage of the Epsom Derby in 1913, documenting the exact moment that Emily Davison collided with the King’s horse and arguably changed the course of the movement (disclaimer for potentially upsetting content).

Astor’s Antisemitic Controversies

Nancy Astor’s Antisemitic views came to the forefront of UK politics in 2019 when a bronze statue of her was revealed in Plymouth. Then Prime Minister Theresa May drew widescale criticism for the unveiling of the statue, with many of those critics using Nancy Astor’s own words against her.

Some of the abhorrent things Nancy Astor is credited with saying in her lifetime in relation to Jewish people are stated below:

Prior to the Second World War she is said to have written to the US Ambassador stating that “Hitler might be the solution to the ‘world problem’ that is the Jews” and that Hitler would have to do more than ‘give a rough time to the killers of Christ’ before she supported an ‘Armageddon’ to save them.

The Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Dr David Feldman, alleges that in a talk with the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Astor said “that there must be something in the Jews themselves that have brought them persecution through the ages”.

Daniel Mandel writes in his book H.V. Evatt and the Establishment of Israel: The Undercover Zionist, that Nancy Astor is reported to have said, in a post war trip to New York, that “I don’t care how many Jews are killed in Palestine; my only interest is in the number of innocent British who are slaughtered”.

The validity of these claims has been questioned by the University of Plymouth’s own Judith Rowbotham, who has undertaken an 18 month long research project on the life of Nancy Astor. In an article earlier this year with the Plymouth Herald, and by her own admission, Judith claimed that she is “probably more acquainted in detail than anybody else at the moment” on the subject of Nancy Astor.

In relation to the claims of antisemitism against Nancy Astor, Judith says that

“… she did not understand the threat faced by Jewish communities. So she was overly ready to believe figures like Lord Lothian when he claimed the Jews were exaggerating their treatment in Germany and that there was a global Jewish conspiracy of some kind … lacking personal knowledge of the impact of hate-driven anti-Semitism, she did not understand and so failed to take it seriously”

Extract from an interview published in the Plymouth Herald

When approached for comment on the fact that this seemingly undermines the intelligence of Nancy Astor, reducing her to the parroting of the strong male figures surrounding her that she, by her feminist nature, so greatly wanted to differentiate herself from, Judith had this to say:

“In response to your queries, I do think it – not ridiculous but a distortion of the reality – to claim she was anti-Semitic. For a start, such blanket labels are often lacking in a sense of the times in which they occur. More specifically, in the case of Nancy Astor such a labelling does not fit someone who was, in her daily life, interacting positively with Jewish individuals and communities in ways that showed admiration and emulation for their values and, in particular, their care for their community […] It is, though, certainly fair to say that she worried that an international Jewish conspiracy might exist and be a challenge to world peace, because very largely she introduced to that idea by members of the Chatham House circle in London – notably her fellow Christian Scientist friend Lord Lothian. “

Judith goes on to say that “the point I would make about the words she used – is that we do not have an assurance that she actually said many of the words she has supposedly used”. Ultimately I think it can be argued that there is no smoke without fire, and Nancy Astor may well have not been as outrageously antisemitic as the high profiled members of the Nazi party; no one is claiming she supported the Holocaust (in fact she is on record denouncing it after the war), however the views attributed to her remain prevalent and problematic to this day.

Should the Nancy Astor Building be renamed?

Quite simply, yes. The dark side of Astor should not be forgotten (I haven’t even touched on the claims that her telling African Americans that they should aspire to be like the black servants she remembered from her childhood, or that they should be grateful for slavery due to it introducing them to Christianity, or the fact that she was proud to be the daughter of a slave owner.) The University of Plymouth could do more to distance themselves from this side of Nancy Astor, especially in this day and age. Renaming the Nancy Astor Building should be a priority and there are many female alumni of the University that are more deserving of such an accolade, such as Sue Austin, or Mandy Chessell.

Final Thoughts

Wherever you stand on the Nancy Astor debate, there is no arguing that she contributed greatly, albeit belatedly, to the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Becoming the first female MP to take her seat in the Houses of Parliament is an accolade that should be lauded and remembered, therefore I think that the statue in Plymouth commemorating this accomplishment should remain. After all she is, alongside Francis Drake, one of Plymouth’s most well known public figures.