Lady Rhondda – The Original Girl Boss

By Claire Miles of Hisdoryan

You don’t have to be a queen to wield power. One of the most powerful British women of the interwar period wasn’t a queen or a princess – she was the daughter of a Welsh industrialist and politician, who rose to become one of the most politically influential female figures and equality campaigners of the 20^th century.

Suffragette

Born Margaret Haig Thomas on the 12^th of June 1883, the future Lady R was the daughter of MP and Welsh businessman David Alfred Thomas and his wife Sybil Haig (yes, she was related to that Haig of WWI fame). Nearly all the females on her maternal side were committed suffragettes – and Margaret inherited the same dose of girl power.

1908 was a big year for Margaret. She married local South Wales landowner Sir Humphrey Mackworth, but more importantly, she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) – the militant women’s suffrage movement founded by Emmeline Pankhurst.

And she was not afraid of getting stuck in. She got into trouble for jumping on the Prime Minister’s car in St Andrews but managed to escape on a passing golf cart. More famously, she was convicted for blowing up a Royal Mail post box with a chemical bomb. She refused to pay the fine and was sent to prison for one month. She was released after five days after going on a hunger strike.

World War One – And A Fucking Torpedo

Naturally, the militant suffrage campaign was paused at the outbreak of World War One – but Margaret threw herself into war work with the same determination she threw herself onto Prime Minister’s cars.

But the future Lady R almost didn’t survive the war. Luckily this absolute queen survived a FUCKING TORPEDO! Both Lady R and her daddy were aboard the now-infamous HMS Lusitania when it was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland in 1915. Margaret was thrown into the sea. When she was first rescued by a trawler the fishermen initially thought she was dead. But it would take more than a torpedo to finish Lady R off!

After recovering Margaret devoted her time to recruiting women into the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) to serve in France, and also to work in agriculture. She was so good at what she did that he became Commissioner for Wales in the Women’s National Service Department. And in February 1918 she took up a major new role in London, as Chief Controller of women’s recruitment in the Ministry of National Service.

Girl Boss

In a world where the hustle was the preserve of men, Lady Rhondda bought a much-needed dose of girl power to the boardroom. She was the greatest global businesswoman of her era. In fact, she often outshone her male counterparts. Think of her as the Jeff Bezos of the interwar period. In July 1918, Margaret’s father passed away. The new Lady R had been a daddy’s girl, and the two had been incredibly close. She now inherited her father’s business empire. She owned coal mining, shipping, and newspaper interests across the globe. She held more directorships than any other woman in the UK.  And in 1926 she became the first and – to date – the only female president of the Institute of Directors.

“…the foremost woman of business in the British Empire.“

The New York Tribune, 1927

And – this is what I really love about Lady R – she continued to use her position to help other women. She was passionate about having more women in the business world to help her keep shattering that glass ceiling. She formed the Women’s Political and Industrial League in 1919 to lobby for equal employment opportunities and campaigned for the rights of women workers who did not want to be pushed back into the home. She also established the Efficiency Club, the first networking organisation for British women.

The Persistent Peeress

The House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament (much like the Senate in America). For an institution established in the 14^th Century, you can imagine they weren’t keen on letting the ladies in for a VERY long time.

Lady R became a hereditary woman peer in her own right after her father’s death. She fought a famous test case in an unsuccessful attempt to take her seat in the House of Lords in the 1920s. Actually, she was successful the first time round but the incumbent Lord Chancellor was a male chauvinist of the first degree. He reconvened the relevant parliamentary committee, quadrupled it in size, and packed it with his friends (the committee was literally a bag of dicks). He made sure Lady R lost. Many would have given up at this point. But that wasn’t Lady R’s style. She kept campaigning. She lived to see the passage of the Life Peerages Act on 30 April 1958 but died on the 20^th of July. The public announcement of the first four women peers was made the day before her funeral. Only in the Peerages Act of 1963 were women like herself, peeresses in their own right, permitted to sit in the House of Lords. Her portrait now has pride of place in the Peer’s Dining Room, in recognition of the fact she is the reason women of today can sit in the House of Lords.

Cultural Side Hustle

If all that wasn’t enough, Lady R also found the time for a bit of a (groundbreaking) creative side project. Time and Tide turned into one of the most influential interwar publications. A magazine for the thinking man or woman, it had a pioneering all-female board and featured names such as D.H. Laurence, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia Woolf. It also explored politics, and was used to push Lady R’s other project – The Six Point Group. This progressive group campaigned on key issues for women, including equal pay and equal opportunities.

Any one of these achievements would award someone a place in the history books – but combine them all together, and you have a truly remarkable and trailblazing lady who is often overlooked by history. Lady Rhondda will always be my queen, mainly because she spent so much of her life advancing the cause of all women. And we all know real queens fix each other’s crowns.

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