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

X.com

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.

Leonard Cohen: mystical roots of his music

Everyone in Australia knows I've always been a Leonard Cohen fan, and last year my best birthday present was the new book Leonard Cohen The Mystical Roots of Genius by Harry Freedman (Bloomsbury). Good choice, spouse.

Leonard's (1934–2016) maternal family were Lithuanian rabbis. His paternal grandfather left Poland for Ontario in 1869, where he too was a rabbi (as the surname Cohen often suggests) and founder of the Can­adian Jewish Times. In Montreal young Leonard attended Sunday school, learn­ing Hebrew and relig­ious sour­ces. And given he was born into a scholarly fam­ily, he hoped to become a poet, then a song writ­er and event­ually a comp­oser. But by 1963, he was clear in public about his different beliefs. Cohen imag­ined himself as part of an underground crypt-religion of poets.

Sadly Leonard’s father died when he was just 9; his mother suffer­ed from depressions and the lad too. His song Dan­ce Me to the End of Love has a line about burn­ing violins in the Nazi concen­t­­rat­ion camps, inspired by camp photos that he saw after dad died.

Who By Fire, sung by Cohen to soldiers

during the Sinai War 1972

Photo credit: Times of Israel

In time Cohen had published 2 volumes of poetry that had a limited audience, and one unusual novel. Cohen himself planned to “go into exile” from his faith, to think up other possibilities for spir­itual life like love and sex and drugs and song, not seen in any synagogue.

Leonard was also learned in Christianity, the other sp­irit­ual tradition that he used to make sense of the world eg the four Gospels of the New Testament appear­ed in his songs, as did scenes of Jesus be­ing baptised and crucified; the Spirit of God was a dove descending to earth.

In fact Cohen's music was scattered with allusions to Jewish, Christian and Zen trad­ition. But even then, his Christian and Zen Buddhist in­fl­uences appeared via the lens of Kabbalah myst­ic­ism. Freed­man traced every Kabb­al­istic source that stressed the mys­tic­al value of sex, and their infl­uen­ce on Cohen’s art.

Leonard Cohen The Mystical Roots of Genius 

by Harry Freedman, 2022

 

Freedman showed the spiritual journey that took Cohen through lovers and drugs. His knowledge of the Bible and rel­igion was deep: nearly every­thing he wrote touched on a relig­ious idea, even if the song itself was not rel­ig­ious. Freedman noted pop music had long explored the sh­ifting borders of sacred and profane devot­ion!

Cohen found how reconcile his lifelong obsess­ion with earthly and mystical love.. when he met the modern danc­er Suz­anne Verdal. She took Cohen to her flat in a poor waterfront warehouse. She served him jasmine tea and mandarin oranges from Chinatown, and they walked along the river past sailors’ Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours. Cohen used their shared activities in his first huge song, Suzanne (1967); it became a unique pattern for lyrics that mov­ed between convers­at­ion with a lover or with God.

Hallelujah (1984) opened: 'Now I've heard there was a secret chord, that David played, and it pleased the Lord... the baffled king compos­ing Hal­­l­elujah'. As Cohen moved through the Old Testament, he sang of Samson having his hair cut by Delilah. Coh­en’s sex­ual im­agery best showed his belief in sex as a div­ine act­ivity: 'I remember when I moved in you, and the Holy Dove she was mov­ing too’. And note modern incantations that rival the Lord’s Pray­er. The centre­piece of Cohen’s album, The Future (1992), provided the key line “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”.

How did Freedman know that Cohen spent 5 years writing Hallelujah, fil­l­ing booklets with 80 ver­ses, before he found the six that might best please the Lord, and his concert audience? And how did Free­d­man know Cohen identified him­self with King David, “the embodiment of our higher possib­il­ity” in synthesising the sensual and the divine. In part Cohen’s own life over the decades displayed this identity.

Freedman wrote that we also hear a powerful sense of mission accomp­lished. Late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks g­reed: 'Leonard Cohen taught us that even in the midst of darkness there is light, in the midst of hat­red there is love, with our dying breath we can still sing Hallelujah.'

Later in life, Cohen was engrossed in Zen Buddhism, living from 1990 in a Zen priory on Mt Baldy near Los Angeles. Learning from Master Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Cohen was ordained as a Zen monk in 1996. The Zen in Cohen’s art was the sil­ence and the ready willingness to question everything, perhaps leading to enlightenment.

Cohen trained as a Zen monk

Pinterest

Having forged his own spiritual path, Cohen en­joyed the irony that the album he released 45 years into his career, Old Ideas (2012), almost topped the charts. That final hallel­ujah was a dark joke by his Gods. Cohen died 2016, after his final album came out: You Want it Darker! From his classic Who by Fire, to his final challenge to the divinity, his spirituality inspir­ed him.

This great book looked deeply into the soul of the best singer and lyricist, to see how Cohen re­worked myths, prayers and legends. It gave us a better pereption of Cohen's soul. And thanks to Tim Adams for helping Freedman’s task. For a different review of Cohen's importance, read Beth Dwoskin's review of Cohen's concert for soldiers in the Sinai War.

Saving Jewish orphans Ochberg 1921

I was fascinated by Isaac Ochberg (1879–1938) who was born in Uman in Russia/now Ukraine. With thousands of other Russians, the Ochbergs went to South Africa in 1894 where Isaac became a successful Cape Town businessman.

Isaac Ochberg, March 1921

aish.com

After the old Czarist regime ended in 1917, rival armies were fighting for control. With law and order failing, transport for many thousands of demob'd soldiers ended. Plus vast armies of German ex-POWs tried to make their way home after the Soviets’ Peace Treaty at Brest-Litovsk.

The battles did not start out as particularly anti-Semitic. But owing to the oppression to which they had been exposed for gener­ations, the lives of the impoverished Jews worsened. With famine and typhoid epidemics, ancient horrors surfaced in the misery. Polish and other peasants joined forces with reactionary officers and troops, to kill Jews in pogroms.

Survivors begged their cousins in South Africa for help. A great surge of compassion swept the South African Jew­ish community who would try to save some of the victims, partic­ul­arly children. But would the Union Government create any difficulties in admitting them? 

Ochberg quickly met Gen Jan Smuts, prime minister between 1919–24, who gave the children entry visas. Smuts could have sunk the rescue plan in an instant, had he chosen to. His support was essential and warmly welcomed.

A South African Relief Fund for Jewish War Victims was already in place when Ochberg pro­p­osed that the Cape Jewish Orphanage take responsibility for the children. The Relief Fund had to raise £10,000, enough for 200 or­phans. [Sadly 400,000+ destitute Jewish orphans were eventually found]. By Jan 1921 the Un­ion Gov­ernment agreed to give pound for pound to the Pogrom Orphan Fund.

Someone had to go to Europe, so Ochberg made himself respon­sible in Mar 1921. He travelled to Ukraine for a few dangerous months, vis­iting lots of villages in the Polish Ukraine and Galic­ia. Och­berg proceeded from town to town, visiting Minsk, Pinsk, Lodz, Lemberg, Stanislav and Wlodowa etc. When a letter came to him from Port Elizabeth's com­munal leaders, Ochberg answered and expressed his very great thanks for their boxes of second-hand clothing. The gen­er­os­ity displayed by South African Jewry made it possible to rescue the children. Otherwise they would surely have died of st­arvation, disease or Ukrainian pogrom wounds.

At first Pinsk was isolated by the fighting and Ochberg and helpers were thrown on their own resources. The 3 Jewish orph­an­ages in Pinsk had few beds, bedding and clothes - they used flour bags to sleep on. Typhus spread in the orphanage and shells were bursting in the streets. A notorious Ukrainian fanatic descended with his gangs and the pogroms raged for a week. The Federation of Ukrainian Jews did its best to assist but with civil war raging over large areas of Poland and elsewhere, and only a minimum of transport in operation, progress was slow. As order was restored, supplies began to arrive, first from Juedischer Hilfsverein in Berlin, and then from U.S Joint Distrib­ution Committee: cocoa, condensed milk, cooking oil and clothes.

One day the orphans heard that a "man from Africa was coming". He was going to take some of them away with him and give them a new, safe home. Nearly all the orphans had lost both par­ents, many in pogroms, on the Ukrainian border, at Minsk, Pinsk and other places. 

Group passport photo

The Observation Post

Confronting Ochberg was how to make his choice from the vast number of destitute children. He chose 8 children from each orphanage, making a total of 200 for whom he had funds. Since the South African Government had specified that the children must be in good health, of reasonable intel­lig­ence and willing to leave, the cream of each orphanage was selected.

Even though they were scared of being eaten by African tigers, the children were excited. And when Ochberg appeared, with his gingy hair and welcoming smile, the orphans called him Daddy.

The Polish authorities put many children trav­elling to Warsaw on cattle-trucks. Though their passports carried the usual Polish word Paszport with the Polish Eagle, there were no individual photos. Instead group photos app­eared, some with 30-40 small children sitting in rows.

They travelled in overcrowded, dirty trains to Warsaw, each child having a tiny package of clothing sent from overseas. In the middle of Warsaw was a restaurant, belonging to Pan­ya Engel, a kindly Jewish woman who the children adored. For several months the Ochberg orphans stayed in local schools, and Panya Engel and friends worked hard to protect them. Just as it seemed as if most of the difficulties had been overcome, there was a serious outbreak of eye trachoma which held up their departure.

From Warsaw, they travelled by river boat down the Vistula to Dan­zig. There, on the Baltic, they boarded a steamer bound for London, and the other kind people took charge of the orphans. A few of them were again taken ill, and spent the time in London in hospital.

Warm reception awaited the orphans

who came ashore in Cape Town, late 1921.

Observation Post

There was a warm reception when they finally landed in Cape Town in Sept, with huge crowds waiting on the quay for them. So large was the group of children that Cape Jewish Orphanage could no longer house them all, and some went to Arcadia Johan­nes­burg Orphanage instead.

In South Africa, the once-pathetic, poorly dressed children clearly profited from the kindness and instruction they received. There were numerous invit­ations to Jewish homes, and some of the children were adopted. Special English language classes were organised.

Nicholas Winton saved far more children from murder before WW2 and took them to Britain. But Ochberg set the model for humanitarian heroism in taking c190 Jewish pogrom orphans from the Ukraine and Poland to South Africa after WWI. See the honours he received and the formal dedication that was made in 2011.

Read Ochberg Orphans and the horrors from whence they came, David Solly Sandler, 2014

The tragic, early death of Prince Albert

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819-61) came from a small German state whose ruling family married into many European royals; in 1840 he mar­ried Vict­or­ia, his first cousin. The Queen came to rely heavily on his advice, and their marriage seemed happy. With his wife con­stant­ly preg­nant (9 babies in 17 years), Albert performed the fun­ctions of king, driving himself on through his offic­ial dut­ies. He’d been an unof­ficial govern­ment min­ister to Victoria, and she always def­erred to his ad­vice. Especially since the couple mostly spoke German with each other.

How much real influence did Prince Albert have on British culture?
History Extra

Victorian Britain had been a land of nasty capit­al­ism, where government regulation was minimal and welfare was left to the Church. With little tax burden and low labour costs, indust­rial­­­­­­is­ation helped Britain’s middle class thrive while the working class suffered. And the state helped safe­guard trade through tough foreign pol­icies. But Albert was a royal consort with a high le­v­­el of learning in architecture & design. He ended the dissol­ute Han­overian reputation and he “gov­erned England for 21 years with a wisdom and energy such as none of our kings has ever shown" (Disraeli) .

The Royal Family in 1846 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Wiki

When Albert died from ?typhoid in Dec 1861 at Wind­sor, London’s lord mayor was told to toll St Paul’s Cathedral bells. As any widow would und­er­stand, his death left the Queen grief-stricken and she with­drew from public life. How could a vig­orous 42 year old have died without warn­ing? How would Victoria cope with all her onerous duties alone?

Albert’s death dealt the royal fam­ily a blow from which it almost didn’t recov­er. But why was Albert's death regarded as a national cal­amity? His death had come at a time of polit­ical crisis, with the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment entangled in a tense diplom­atic standoff with the North­ern states in the American Civil War. This had prompted Albert’s final act of pub­lic busin­ess in Dec 1861. He’d amended an aggressive despatch from Lord Palmerston after the Nor­th’s seizure of two Confederate ag­ents from a British West Indies mail packet. Albert had warned that forc­ing the issue with­out finding a dip­l­omatic path would mean war, soon af­ter U.K had recov­ered from the dis­as­trous Crimean War (1853-6). His med­iation helped defuse a tense political situation, prompt­ing P.M Henry Temple to stress the Prince’s value to the government.

Britain had lost Victoria's "king". The immediate public response show­ed the national outpouring of grief. The middle classes put themselves and their children in black: shops closed, blinds dropped, flags at half mast, theatre performances and concerts cancelled. Even the poor­est rur­al workers put on black armbands. That 1861 Christmas was very sad.

During their 21 years of marriage Victoria and Al­bert had rescued the ailing monarchy and reinvigorated it for a democ­ratic new age. The royal family became ac­c­ess­ible to ordinary people as an ex­ample of the simple domestic virtues of monogamy, bourgeois decen­cy and family life. It was an image that Al­bert had actively pro­moted. And he actively promoted his diverse cultural legacy. 

It was only after Albert died that the nation acknowledged its debt and stopped calling him a bloody foreigner. Tragic obituaries fill­ed the Brit­ish press, many tinged with a profound sense of guilt that Al­bert had never been suffic­iently valued in his lifetime – for his notable contrib­u­tions to British culture, a patron of the arts and science.

Queen Victoria in black mourning clothes

It was clear that Victoria’s retreat from her public and her in­t­ense sorrow would not end with the normal two years of formal mourn­ing. Bertie had caused anxiety via indiscreet affairs, and in her fury, Vict­oria she blamed her son and heir for Albert’s death. And with 9 child­ren to parent alone, she retreated into paroxysms of despair, and imposed the same rigid ob­serv­ance of mourning on her family and staff!

Victoria focused exclus­ively on memorialising her husband. She turned her griev­ing into a formality, initiating a variety of artistic and cultural monuments commemorating Albert. 

But by the mid-1860s her ministers and her own family were becoming fr­antic at her ongoing retreat from public view and her refusal to part­icipate in any form of cerem­onies. Anti-monarchical feeling was growing, with regular complaints that Victoria did nothing to justify her Civil List income. By the late 1860s discontent spiralled into blatant repub­lican chall­en­ges and calls for Victoria’s abdication.

The first state ceremonial since Al­bert died was for Bertie Prince of Wales, a thanks­giving service at St Paul’s Cath­edral in 1872. A poor assass­ination att­empt against Victoria only rallied public symp­athy FOR the Queen.

Life improved for Victoria, thanks to the support of her trusted High­land servant John Brown and, in 1874, the return of her adored Disraeli as prime minister. It was by now clear that the queen would retain her black coverage for 40 years, but as she was coaxed back into public view, she did so as a respected figure of grandmotherly dignity.

Two last questions. We know the extent of Victoria’s dependency on her late husband, both emotionally and in dealing with all the official business. But had Albert insisted on their relat­ionship being this way and Vic­toria merely acceded, or had she never wanted to make all decisions? And when was Albert forgiven for being foreign?

Read: Helen Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death that Changed the Monar­chy, Hutchinson, 2011.