Crossing the Border of Citizenship: Helen Taylor, the Independent Radical Democrat Candidate for Camberwell North, 1885

Abstract

‘Until 1918, in principle, and 1928 in practice, women’s political activity in Britain was defined as beyond the frontier of formal citizenship’ ( Abrams and Hunt, 2000). This article explores the campaign of one such frontier woman, Helen Taylor, to become the first woman MP. Taylor accepted the nomination of Camberwell Radical Club to stand as the Independent Radical Democrat candidate for Camberwell North in the November 1885 election. The radicals of Camberwell were, thereby, directly challenging the 1832 Reform Act which had legally excluded women from full citizenship.

This article locates Taylor in the historiography of resistance to elite political culture, by radical clubs, in 1885. Links were made between Taylor’s candidature and that of previous non-elite candidates, namely the attempt of Daniel O’Connell, David Salomon and Charles Bradlaugh to breach the frontier of full citizenship for Catholics, Jews and atheists in previous elections. The Liberal Party had become more centralised through the power of local Liberal Associations and committees based on the Birmingham caucus model ( Lawrence, 1998; Parry, 1993). This led to some radical clubs challenging the Liberal establishment ‘wire pullers’ and standing their own candidates, creating triangular contests between the Liberal, Independent/Radical and Conservative candidates ( Owen, 2008). This article further explores the anomaly of all three Camberwell North candidates openly supporting Home Rule, in an election where the contentious Irish question has been identified as being avoided by the majority of candidates (Biagini, 2007). In Camberwell North this saw two factions of Irish nationalism endorsing separate candidates.

The provenance of Taylor’s feminism, socialism and anti-imperialism is also examined, which rescues the campaign from being the actions of a well-connected upper middle-class eccentric. The only previous detailed exploration of Taylor’s candidature claimed it was the idiosyncratic whim of a political maverick whose manifesto would need explaining to the electorate ( Pugh, 1978). On the contrary, Taylor’s candidature and manifesto were located in contemporary socialist, radical and liberal politics and no such explanation would have been necessary. It was very much of its time.