“If Swanwick were alive today she would be horrified by the lack of progress that has been made over the last century.” Donald Mitchell
Helena Swanwick was a feminist, peace activist, and journalist. Born in 1864 to a Danish painter and English mother, Helen spent most of her life in England and attended Girton College, Cambridge despite the opposition of her father. Upon reading John Stuart Mills On the Subjugation of Women, she became an active campaigner for a woman’s right to vote. A lecturer in psychology at Westfield College and a journalist writing for the suffragette publication Common Cause and the Manchester Guardian, Swanwick believed strongly in non-violence.
She was a co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom during World War I and was a British delegate to the League of Nations. She suffered extreme depression during the build up to World War II and died, perhaps by suicide, in November 1939 at the start of the war.
The following excerpt is from her pamphlet Women and War published in 1915.
We are told that wars are an eternal necessity. We must take this from no one, but examine for ourselves whether it is true, Men make wars, not women. Not only do women not fight men, but they do not fight each other. Why? We are so used to this fact that very few of us have asked why. Is it because women chiefly desire security? It is true some people will answer that women do not fight because men fight for them. Men commonly speak of ” fighting for hearth and home,” and it is this aspect which is commonly put forward in popular appeals. Women and children are always put into the firing line of pro-war argumentation, but it is obvious that the settlement of national quarrels by an international tribunal would provide far better security for women and children than the incessant menace of war which we call peace. The organisation of physical force will not give security until it is known that such organisation will be used only in defense of international right. It is impossible to believe that men have merely lacked the wit to devise means of attaining security (at least as against one another) if, indeed, security had been their chief desire. It has not. Men have desired other things and have striven, by physical force, to grasp their desire. Individual men, groups of men, classes of men, do sometimes -attain their desire, for what it is worth, in this way. But the masses of the people and all women everywhere pay the penalty. (p. 7)
The real danger lies in the factious nature of our party system. This is the real danger which politicians will not face, because so few of them are free from the factious spirit.
Helen Swanwick War and Women
Learn more about Helen Swanwick
The Future of the Women’s Movement by Helena Swanwick
Women Vote for Peace Biography
Helena. The Secret Suffragette
Against All Odds: The Life and Work of Helena Swanwick by Donald Mitchell
Helena Swanwick believed that if women had the right to vote, there would be no more wars. Why hasn’t that happened?
I welcome your thoughts and comments
I think she is right that male politicians seem to find it difficult to tear free from “factious” spirit. And maybe they’re fractious too. And facetious when speaking to intelligent women, because they don’t know better. (Sorry, I had to look up the definition of factious, and that got me on a word ramble!)
I have also wondered why women vote for warmongers (and for the current president, who was always openly woman-hating, makes it even more confusing). My only conclusion has been that the majority of people just aren’t very good at thinking, sadly.
Democracy doesn’t seem to be working out well, because about 50% of people seem to behave like a pack of rabid dogs instead of with compassion and the spirit and will to help lift us all up.
It would be a really interesting spirit to remove all the conservative voters from a society and see how society would turn out after three generations if only peace-loving, thoughtful, education-minded, feminist, non-racist people were allowed in at the start. Would the same 50-50 divisions arise? Or would we finally move forward if we could stop our peers from electing conservative governments?
It almost seems like COVID-19 is targeting conservative countries/provinces/states, while providing mechanisms where more enlightened societies CAN save themselves to some extent — but then somewhere like France that starts off well, goes completely crazy.
I guess what I’m asking is — is that weird tendency to vote for war-mongers (or, I am equating that to conservative government) something that lives in half the population? or something that lives in all of us and can be turned on or off by the power of words?
And, in case it wasn’t obvious there, I was equating the idea of enlightened France going crazy after originally beating back the virus, to what might happen if we had all enlightened beings to start? But gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a break from the conservatives.