If you want an icon for International Women's Day in the UK in 2019 you couldn’t do better than Nancy Astor. Born an American, she met her American second husband, Waldorf Astor, on a UK-bound ship, and settled permanently in Britain at the age of 26. We remember her this year for the milestone moment in 1919 when, exactly 100 years ago, she took her seat as the first woman in Parliament.
Nancy probably always had political ambitions. She had grown up in a struggling household until her railroad magnate father secured the family fortunes. After her marriage to Waldorf Astor, she actively encouraged him to follow a political career and interested him in issues of social reform that were close to her heart. When he inherited his father’s peerage and moved to the House of Lords, Nancy decided to campaign for his now vacant seat of Plymouth Sutton herself. It was a crucial moment. The previous year had seen both the passing of legislation which gave the vote to women over 30 for the very first time and the election to parliament of Constance Markievicz as Britain’s first elected female MP. Constance Markievicz was unable to take her seat in Parliament as a member of Sinn Feinn and because she was in prison as one of the leaders of the Dublin Easter Rising. So, the honour of being Britain’s first woman MP fell to Nancy when she was elected in November 1919.
In parliament, Nancy supported women’s rights (though, famously, she was never a suffragette), better treatment for juvenile offenders and controls on alcohol. She was a Conservative, anti-Catholic, anti-Communist and anti-Semitic. She was supportive of other women in Parliament, whatever their political affiliation, even briefly proposing a ‘Woman’s Party’.
Her key skill was her verbal ability; she was a great hostess, had great charm and a sharp wit. Her Plymouth constituents were won over by her direct and informal style of campaigning. Her setting for her political life was the great house at Cliveden, given as a wedding present by her father-in-law. Cliveden is a huge Italianate mansion on the Thames, designed in the 1850s by Charles Barry and given an interior reminiscent of an Italian Palazzo by the first Viscount Astor in the 1890s, incorporating panelling and fireplaces salvaged from European chateaux including the 18th century hunting lodge of Madame de Pompadour. The house gained some notoriety in the 1930s when Nancy was at the centre of ‘The Cliveden Set’ pilloried for its pro-Nazi sympathies before the outbreak of war in 1939. In practice, Nancy’s allegiances were more complicated. She certainly felt that the suppression of Germany after World War I was damaging but the inclusion of her name in a list of British nationals to be arrested by the Nazis should their invasion be successful at least partly exonerates her for her pro-appeasement stance. She was after all instrumental in bringing Churchill to power in 1940. We get a glimpse of her from her recorded repartee with Churchill. It was she who told him “If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea” eliciting the response “If you were my wife, I’d drink it!” and when asked by Churchill for advice for a disguise for a costume ball, she suggested “Why don’t you come sober, Prime Minister?”
If you want to see Nancy Astor today, take a stroll through the gardens at Cliveden, which are opened to the public by the National Trust. In the Second World War, land at Cliveden was made available for a Canadian military hospital. The sculptor, Bertram Mackennal was commissioned to produce a statue as a centrepiece for the Canadian War Cemetery. He used Nancy Astor as a model for the face of his female persona, arms raised in supplication. Not perhaps a typical Nancy Astor pose, but an image of her well planted in the surroundings of Cliveden.
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