UK's 1st female parliamentarian: Nancy Astor

American Nancy Langhorne (1879-1964) was born in Virginia, daughter of a wealthy railroad entrepreneur. In the 1890s Nancy and her sis­ter Irene were enrolled in a finishing school in New York where they were prepared for entering high society. Nancy met and married her first husband Robert Gould Shaw II in 1897 in New York when Nan­cy was 18; in 1898 they had a son. However the marriage was un­happy and the couple divorced in 1903.

Nancy and sister Phyllis emigrated to Britain in 1905. Glamorous and charming, Nancy became popular in aristocratic cir­cles, fancying Waldorf Astor, American expatriate son of Observer Newspaper owner. They married & moved to Clive­den, a great Buckinghamshire estate from Waldorf’s father where Nancy became a key hostess. Note the couple had 5 children together.

Nancy Astor became the first female MP to take her seat 

in parl­iament, Dec 1919

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Nancy’s new husband wanted to enter politics. Waldorf was defeated in his first attempt to win election to the House of Commons in the Jan 1910 but was elected for the Unionist Party in Plymouth in a later by-election. Nancy too had political interests; through her social connect­ions she was involved in a political circle advocating unity and equality among English-speakers.

Waldorf enjoyed a promising political career for some years and in 1918, when his constituency was dissolved, became MP for Plymouth Sut­ton. After his father’s death in Oct 19­19, Waldorf's son succeeded to the peerage, inheriting a] the title 2nd Viscount Astor and b] dad’s seat in the House of Lords. He had to relin­qu­ish his seat in the House of Commons, triggering a by-election.

In Nov 1918, just after some women in Britain won the right to vote, the Qualification of Women Act allowed women to become MPs. Nancy made the decision to stand for her hus­band’s vacant seat in the resulting by-election. A gifted campaign­er, Nancy managed to appeal to all social classes with her charm.

In Dec 1919 Viscountess Nancy Astor became the first female MP to sit in parl­iament. She was a member of the conservat­ive Unionist Party for Plymouth Sutton, winning 52%.

As the only woman in parliament for c2 years, Nancy faced nasty sexism. She gained a reputation for heckling and inter­rupting, at the same time working for welfare reforms, equal voting rights and women’s access to the professions. In Feb 1920, Nancy delivered her maiden speech, amid heckling.

Active both in and out of government, she advocated the devel­opment and expansion of nursery schools for children’s educ­ation, working to recruit women into the civil service, police force, education reform and House of Lords. She was con­cerned about the treatment of juvenile victims of crime. Nancy sup­ported raising the age of drinking alcohol to 18 (not 14) and low­er­ing the voting age of women to 21.

In the 1930s both Nancy and Waldorf, and their Cliveden Set colleagues, backed Neville Chamb­erlain’s appeasement policy. The Cliveden Set believed they were reducing the threat of ent­er­ing into a war against Germany. In 1934 Astor publicly asked the League of Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees whether he be­l­ieved that the Jews had brought persec­ution upon themselves over the years. She was critical of the Nazis for devaluing the position of women but she was very sympath­etic to the Nazis’ brutal attitude to comm­un­ists and European Jewry.  Nancy maintained a pro-German stance, even after the war started. Yet she contributed to the war effort by running Canadian Hospital for Soldiers on the grounds of Cliveden. 

Cliveden, 

Waldorf and Nancy Astor’s country house 

Shed always been anti-Catholic, but during the war Nancy started becoming increasingly erratic, suggesting a Catholic con­spiracy was sub­verting the Foreign Office. After 26 years in the House of Commons and 7 successful elect­ions, Nancy lost popularity among her fellow MPs. She retired in 1945 when the Conservative Party found her a political liability.  

Nancy’s retirement put increasing strain on their marriage so the couple separated for some years. Waldorf’s death was in 1952; Nancy died at Grimsthorpe Castle Lincs in 1964.

Now for the controversial question that historians disagree on: how truly feminist was Nancy Astor? Even before 1919, Astor had feminist sympathies. In 1915 she was wrote often to Emmeline Pankhurst and later worked with suff­rage organ­isations facilit­ating meetings with senior Con­serv­atives politicians. And she worked to support legis­lation on women in the workplace and women's safety out on the streets. Despite claiming to be an ardent feminist, and considering herself a representative of working women, Nancy was one of the richest and most aristocratic women in Britain. Did she know how working families lived.. and suffered?

Astor linked up with women’s peace groups and regarded women as natural pacifists. Yet she vigorously pursued Anglo-German neutrality and entertained the Nazi top brass at her Cliveden seat! American-born Astor was xenophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. Certainly Nancy did not invent pre-WW2 anti-Semitism in Britain and was reflecting only what she believed was the prevalent philosophy then. The racist and anti-Semitic prejudices of her time were found in many men who held similar views. Astor was pilloried in the German-appeasement and anti-Semitic debates, yet she was surrounded by like-minded senior men who escaped scrutiny. Her gender made people judge her by a higher standard.

 

Nancy and Waldorf Astor in 1920

Astor quickly grew into her role as the first woman MP. She could well have steered clear of women’s issues, as many of her Tory colleagues did. But she was det­ermined to prove that women were as physically capable of being full participants in the rigours of political life as men; in fact women were even MORE suited to pub­lic life as women had moral courage. Female moral cour­age was a constant theme throughout her speeches. But for a woman like Astor to be openly racist and openly anti-Semitic was nasty.