John Barnes, Historian

Dame Marjorie Maxse (1881 - 1975)

The first woman Chief Organisation Officer of the Conservative Party and later a Vice Chairman of the Party Organisation from 1944 to 1951, Marjorie Maxse was a natural leader, who, with single-minded determination and a clear vision, furthered the cause of women within the ranks of the Conservative Party. Her freedom from personal animus was an especially valuable attribute in the world of politics, where she made her career. As her obituarist in The Times wrote, she “played a unique part in the building up of the organisation of Conservative women voters” and was “one of the principal architects of their Party organisation.”¹

Sarah Algeria Marjorie Maxse was born on 26 October 1891 at Villa du Palmier, Birmandreis, Algiers, one of two children, and the only daughter, of Ernest George Berkeley Maxse (1863–1943), the British vice-consul at Algiers, and his wife, Sarah Alice Nottage-Miller (d. 1908). One of her cousins, Leo Maxse, became the editor of the National Review, and another, Sir Ivor Maxse, was distinguished as a general in the First World War. Her father was deeply involved in British intelligence and, under the guise of Consul General in Rotterdam before and during the First World War, he ran an elaborate spy network in Germany. Marjorie spent much of the first twenty-five years of her life abroad, and acquired an understanding of foreign countries that was to prove valuable later in her life. During the First World War she served for a time as an auxiliary nurse in a French military hospital. She was appointed MBE in 1918.

With the extension of the franchise to women over the age of 30 in 1918, the Conservative Party needed to find ways of attracting their vote. The Women’s Unionist and Tariff Reform Association, chaired by Mrs Mary Maxse, had relatively few branches and no connections with the Central office, the National Union or constituency associations. There were fears, not wholly without justification, that it might put its own interests ahead of the party’s. Younger therefore asked Caroline Bridgeman to lead a new organisation, the Women’s Unionist Organization, and at her request, it was given complete control over personnel, although not finance, and, from 1919, the status of an Advisory committee to the National Union. By the time Marjorie Maxse was recruited to the women’s department in Central Office as one of the first area agents in 1921, there were already 1,340 women’s branches in England and Wales and a year later, more than 2,000. By May 1923 there were 3,600 branches. Appointed the first administrator of the WUO in 1923, Marjorie Maxse expanded the central organisation and made it more professional. By 1928 it had a staff of thirty and included fourteen area and visiting agents and a dozen salaried women speakers. Their salaries had also been brought more nearly into line with those paid to male employees and the total spend amounted to £11,853 out of a total spend of £106,591.²

The purpose of the WUA, she told the metropolitan agents in 1924, was “to teach women to be voters and Conservative voters, not to create a feminist movement within the Conservative party”.³ She also went out of her way to stress that she did not regard women’s organisations as being independent of constituency associations. This was an obvious attempt to address the inevitable tensions within the party. They were inherent in bringing a large number of new voters and a new organisation into an existing party machine.

McCrillis identifies three main causes for the tension, membership of Conservative Clubs, the role of women organisers, and the question of whether there should be separate women’s organisations.⁴ Two out of the three involved the authority of the agent within the constituency, and it is perhaps not surprising that the editor of the Conservative Agents’ Journal should have raised the spectre of an independent women’s organisation within the constituency in September 1923. The rapid rise in the number of women organisers seemed to many agents to be a threat, but Sir Reginald Hall, the Principal Agent, was reassuring, pointing out that both the agent and the female organiser were under the supervision of the constituency association, and that the latter was concerned almost exclusively with organisational matters, leaving policy and politics to the men The Women’s Department was “not a woman’s movement in any way, nor does it seek to obtain or divert funds for feminist purposes; neither has it ever been the idea of any Central Office Woman Agent to advocate the appointment of Women Agents.”⁵

The more longstanding issue was less the question of the relationship of the women’s organisation to the constituency association and its executive, since it was assumed from the start that women would have a third of the places on the latter, and after 1928 one half, than the question of whether there should be total integration at ward committee or polling district level. The Chief Organising Agent had seen no problem in allowing the women their own groups as long as policy making and election management were not part of their agenda. Robert Topping, the Central Office Agent in the North West, had challenged that view in 1920, believing that it would lead to the “most dangerous of all rivalry – women versus men”. ⁶ Marjorie Maxse always accepted that fusion was likely to come in the long run, but for very practical reasons thought it damaging if proceeded with prematurely. In a brief article that appeared in the Conservative Agents’ Journal in June 1924, she claimed that the fusion of men’s and women’s associations demoralised the latter and reduced membership. The party was being deprived of a large number of workers where fusion was in place. The reluctance to give women the job of organising women “has done incalculable harm to our party, and has helped swell the ranks of that legion of non-party and feminist organizations where women feel they will make their voice heard and their influence felt.”⁷

Elton Halliley, the editor of the Agents’ Journal, and a future chairman of the National Society, had earlier raised the problems caused for the agent by the fact that in a large majority of cases, the women had a paid secretary of their own, whose address was not that of the constituency office. In response Marjorie Maxse agreed to make sure that the agents saw all the notices and circulars issued to WUO officers locally. Nevertheless, her strong wish was to maintain their autonomy under the auspices of the women’s department. . Constructing a separate organization would give women a substantial degree of independence and give them a greater chance to gain recognition of their role. There was an obvious danger that, as a result, they might be marginalised, but she argued rightly that their value as fund-raisers and vote-getters would prevent this from being the case. Her belief in separate organisation never prevented her, however, from doing her level best to bring about a better state of relations between the sexes.

Inevitably there was a great deal of prejudice and inertia to be overcome before harmonious working could be assured. As late as November 1926, when J.C.C. Davidson took over as Chairman of the Party Organisation, he could detect ‘a distinct antagonism running right through the organization in the country between the men and the women’, which he feared would seriously undermine party unity.⁸ Part of the difficulty lay with the fact that the National Society was made up of agents’ unions and agents’ associations in various parts of the country, some of which took a much stricter approach to membership than others. The position altered in 1926 when membership of the National Society was confined to those who had been or would in future be appointed Chief Agent of a constituency or larger area as long as they subscribed to a Provincial Agents’ Association and had passed an examination of the National Society or were certificated by the new Joint Examination Board.⁹ There was no reference to gender in the rules and branches were empowered to admit as associate members organisers of either sex who were responsible for the work of a recognised party organisation, and those training to become an agent. Not every union, however, was prepared to budge on the question of admitting women organisers and the latter took the preliminary steps to forming a National Association of Conservative and Unionist Women Organisers. In April 1927 the National Society recommended the agents’ associations to admit full-time paid women organisers as members, but two unions decided not to do so. The women organisers embarked on the formation of their own association, Marjorie Maxse returned to the charge in November 1927 with an article in which she urged the necessity for every association to have a trained woman divisional secretary and a woman’s branch which would work with and not under the agent. Women organisers sat an examination, held first in January 1928, and of the two dozen who entered, more than half passed to become the first female organisers certified by any party.

The question of the constituency agent’s power to regulate the work of women organisers was a point of great sensitivity and it was addressed with considerable tact in an article written for the Conservative Agents’ Journal in November 1927:

Let me state quite clearly that women have nothing to hide from the men; do not seek to usurp their place or power; and do not work for feminism but for the Party. Nor do women wish to become Agents. They do, however, wish to become efficient Women District Secretaries… On the other hand, it is unwise to drive the women or expect them to work ‘under’ the Agent. Like soldiers or anyone else, they will work their utmost when they are led and still keep some degree of freedom. From a point of view of expediency, it is unwise to build a barrier against women, since in numbers alone they can sweep all obstacles away. Instead give them their own field of work and let them accomplish quickly and efficiently the work which only women can do.¹⁰

While advising the women workers not to seek to usurp the position of men, Marjorie Maxse consistently sought greater parity with the party agents. Davidson supported her in mediating the ongoing disputes, and with powerful backing at Central Office, she overcame much of the resentment. Although he regarded the step as ‘a bold undertaking’, Davidson appointed her as deputy principal agent in 1928. By then nine tenths of the WUO divisional associations had their own organisers. Part of Davidson’s reason for pushing the Party’s Principal Agent, Leigh MacLachlan, into retirement in February 1928, replacing him with Topping, was the tendency of the former in despite of his earlier defence of separate women’s organisations, to undervalue the contribution they made. He was not atypical: it is evident that many of the men continued to resent the increasingly prominent part they played within the party.

Membership figures are hard to come by, but there is no reason to disbelieve claims that there were over a million members of Women’s organisations by the late ‘20s. Already in 1926, the south east area had 104,681 or 16% of the women on the voting register and other areas claimed an even higher percentage. The circulation of Home and Politics, the Conservative publication edited by a woman and aimed squarely at them, topped 2.5 million in 1928. Equalisation of the suffrage in 1928 brought in a new influx of members. Stockton, for example, with 1600 members in 1926, had nearly 3,000 by 1929, while Oswestry, always better organised, saw its female membership rise from 2,549 to more than 4,000 over the five years 1924-29. Women’s organisations also contributed substantially to the finance of constituency associations, and the agents gradually came to terms with the fact that their value to the organisation was great and that there was no evidence that any of their fears about the centrality of the agent’s role had come to pass.

Marjorie Maxse could well have regarded the growth of the women’s organisation as her particular work, but her efforts were not confined to organisation. In September 1928 she can be found lecturing on the position of her party at a summer school organised by the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship at St Hilda’s, Oxford, and she became a regular speaker at Ashridge. After the decision to extend the franchise to younger women she and Lady Myra Fox were added to the governing bodies of the Junior Imperial League and she helped to organize the canvassing of recently enfranchised young women voters, suggesting that the WUO and JIL divide them by age and that they should be invited to special social events at which they would be briefed about current politics, Conservatism and the benefits of joining one or other organisation. He suggestion was widely taken up and resulted in the formation of hundreds of new JIL branches by April 1929. The WUO itself held a rather more low key recruiting campaign itself in February of that year. There was also a special campaign amongst nurses. After the Conservative defeat in the 1929 General Election, much of the party blamed the “flapper vote”, but Marjorie Maxsee vigorously dismissed the suggestion and the available evidence suggested that she was right to do so.¹¹

In November 1930 Marjorie Maxse suffered a severe motor accident, but fortunately made a full recovery, and in 1931 Lord Stonehaven, Party Chairman from 1931 until 1936, appointed her chief organization officer, the first woman to occupy such a role in any political party. She held this post until 1939. Those working for her spoke of their trust in her and their admiration for her, and she was evidently regarded as an wholly admirable colleague. Her patience, serenity of temper and self control enabled her to rise above much of the petty sniping to be found in all organisations and she was never known to be flustered, or at all put out, whatever the problem or person she was dealing with. These were valuable assets, but much of her success was put down to her ability to empathise with the views of others, invaluable perhaps when the party was divided first over India and then, to a lesser extent, over the appeasement policies pursued by Neville Chamberlain. Throughout she remained a staunch supporter of those who led the party, and if she held any different view, it was kept very much to herself.

The onset of the Second World War put a term to her position as Chief Organisation Officer, although her immediate role in the early stages of the war is not altogether clear. She was reputed to have a wartime connection with British intelligence,¹² but the available evidence suggests that this was confined to recruitment in her capacity as chief of staff of MI6 Section D’s training school for propaganda. It was in this capacity that Guy Burgess approached her to suggest the recruitment of Kim Philby and she agreed. Philby recalls being interviewed by a pleasant elderly woman who was clearly in a position to give him a role in the war against the Germans. He was given security clearance by Guy Liddell, but the position to which he was allotted was not only relatively lowly, but little more than a fortnight later passed from SIS to SOE. Marjorie Maxse was not alone in being deceived by Philby and she could claim in her defence that the post to which she recruited him was relatively lowly. His rapid promotion was down to others. After the fall of France, Sir Geoffrey Shakespeare was given the task of organising the selective evacuation of British children to the United States and Canada. He invited Marjorie Maxse to become director of the Children's Overseas Reception Board and to be responsible for all welfare arrangements. It was a formidable task with 220,000 applications, but Marjorie Maxse was more than equal to it. As Shakespeare wrote, she “tackled all these difficulties with sympathy and compassion, with a steady nerve and a cool head, and helped to weave order out of threatening chaos. She was a superb organiser and those who worked with her will never forget her tirelessness, her dedication, her courage, and her strong, but vivid personality.”¹³

In the same year she became, together with Lady Iris Capell and Mary Agnes Hamilton, one of three vice chairmen of the Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defence (WVS), in succession to Mrs Montagu Norman. A great many Conservatives were involved in the WVS, although it remained a non-political organization. Both Marjorie Maxse and her successor, Lady Hillingdon, ‘played a major role’ in its daily running, in contrast to their Labour colleagues, Mary Agnes Hamilton and Dorothy Archibald.¹⁴ In March 1941 she was appointed to an advisory committee, usually chaired by the parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Labour in the absence of the minister himself, on questions affecting the recruitment and registration of women and the best means of securing their services for the war effort. And she clearly had much to do with the Albert Hall rally on 28 September 1943, which was addressed by the Prime Minister and other leading ministers, and which was attended by 6000 women.

Marjorie Maxse relinquished her offices at the Children's Overseas Reception Board and the WVS in 1944, when she accepted an invitation to become vice chairman of the Conservative Party Organization in succession to Mrs Somerset Maxwell. The women’s side of the party was in considerable disrepair. Of the 155 women organisers employed in 1939, three had died, eighteen had retired or resigned their post, eighty were engaged in war service and another twenty one unavailable.¹⁵ The Women’s Conference had not been held since 1939 and was indeed not to be convened until 1946. Since the position was, if anything, even worse where male agents were concerned Marjorie Maxse seems to have anticipated that the way would be open for many women to take up positions as constituency agents. In the immediate aftermath of the war she was quickly proved correct. The National Society of Women Organisers had been suspended during the war, but when it reconvened in 1945 its membership totalled seventy: twenty were agents and six acting in that capacity.¹⁶ The Society was merged into the National Society of Conservative and Unionist Agents and Organisers and qualified organisers of both sexes who did not wish to qualify as agents were admitted to the National Society as associate members and became assistants or deputies to the constituency agents. Henceforth both women and men were accepted as agents on equal terms.

Before that happened, the party had undergone a traumatic election defeat, and in the aftermath of that defeat, the party was forced to look hard at its constituency organisation. The old structure of separate men's and women's branches was abolished and joint branches started in their place. Where women's sections in the constituencies continued, they were co-ordinated by women's advisory committees, whose task it was to advance the interests of women in the party. At least in theory this was a move intended to enable women to exercise influence in the constituency mainstream, while catering also for their special interests, but in practice it may actually have led to a diminution in their strength. Woolton was determined to unify the party structure and there is no evidence that Marjorie Maxse disagreed. However, there is some evidence that the official attitude of benevolence was not translated into equal opportunity where party positions and parliamentary candidatures were concerned, and it is possible to argue that, by being grouped with the men, women party workers lost the autonomy they had previously enjoyed without any real compensatory increase in their power or influence. Speaking at the SE Area’s WAC in June 1948, Marjorie Maxse insisted that they should “not let the existence of joint organisation be the cause of a falling-off on the women’s side, for a falling off had undoubtedly taken place.”¹⁷ Increasingly the trend was to have a Women’s Advisory Committee at constituency level, which recruited from the entire constituency on a voluntary basis, and when the Colyton Committee surveyed fifty six borough constituencies in the mid ‘50s they found that most had a Women’s Advisory Committee of between thirty and sixty members. The Colyton Report identified them as “essential”. Woolton himself placed a high value on Marjorie Maxse's experience of the party machine and she served as his adviser on all women's work.Amongst her routine duties were liaison with the women’s organisation throughout the country and she played a major part in regard to the women’s annual conference and in organising various receptions during the course of its meeting. She had also to do with the appointment of JPs and attendance at Royal Garden Parties. She was a considerable influence on the Women’s National Advisory Committee, whom she persuaded to create a Parliamentary Sub Committee. At the party conference in 1945 a resolution affirming equal opportunities, ‘in order to ensure that the best mind or hand shall have the same chance to excel’, had been rejected, and only Lady Davidson remained in the Commons as a lone voice to express the views of Conservative women. Marjorie Maxse “felt that the women in the Conservative Party were lagging behind the Socialists and Liberals in recommendations put forward on matters of social service and of interest to women, They discussed bills etc., but the Central Women’s Advisory Committee had at no time expressed views on these. There was room for the Committee to make their views known and to play a part in the formulation of policy of special interest to women.” The Parliamentary Sub Committee was duly formed in November 1946 with a remit to consider proposed legislation of special interest to women and to advise on the passage of bills through the Commons in the light of the views of women members of the party. An even more striking instance of her influence can be found in the party’s hostility to the Housewives’ League. This body had been formed by Dorothy Crisp to protest at the continuation of rationing and food shortages and initially it had considerable success. Marjorie Maxse had no doubt that it was being used as a vehicle to secure Dorothy Crisp’s election to Parliament and she saw it as drawing members and funds away from the Conservative party organisation that they were trying to rebuild in the constituencies. In that way it worked against the long-term interests of the party and its chance to defeat the Labour Government. Instead the constituency parties should form housewives committees of their own to organise and voice criticisms of the Labour party’s policy of austerity. The wisdom as well as the logic of her stance was rapidly demonstrated when the Housewives’ League began to establish a reputation of reactionary extremism, and she was instrumental in Lord Woolton’s decision to refuse the Housewives’ League any financial assistance when Dorothy Crisp approached Central Office for funding in the autumn of 1947. Dorothy Crisp resigned her chairmanship on personal grounds in February 1948 and the League went into a rapid decline.

Conservative women were usually encouraged to join outside organisations and to find opportunities for addressing them, although they were to avoid any direct political spiel. In 1946 it was suggested that, with the elderly as a growing part of the population – they would be one sixth of the total by 1961, it would be a good idea for them to join old people’s clubs and a review of the policy in 1949 recommended volunteering to work with hospitals, parent-teacher associations, and socities dealing with housing and the problems of children . Nevertheless Maxse sought to keep a close eye on the activities of other women’s organisations, alert to any hint that they might be captured for the socialist cause. A Mrs Allen was to attend “outside organisations’ meetings and reporting to us fully on them”, she noted, and Mrs Allen duly observed that the Women for Westminster group was entirely non-political and that Duchess of Atholl’s Anti Communist League for European Freedom was “less go ahead”, seeming to prefer sentiment to reason. In response Marjorie Maxse suggested in May 1945, “perhaps you could just keep a watchful eye to see that at no point is political influence brought to bear”.¹⁸ By November, however, the speakers’ department was warning that Women for Westminster had “rapidly veered over towards the socialist camp” and Miss Maxse warned Richard Law, who was invited to speak to them, that they had “got some very undesirable political affiliations”.¹⁹ No doubt part of the reason for suspicion was the provenance of the director of that organisation, Teresa Billington Greig, but at least one notable Conservative, Thelma Cazalet-Keir, was associated with its work, which came to an end in 1949 when it was amalgamated with the National Women’s Citizenship Association. In 1948 Maxse was a member of the party committee set up by Rab Butler to frame a ‘women's charter’: Evelyn Emmet was its Vice Chairman and according to the Yorkshire Post Lady Tweedsmuir, Lady Davidson and Mrs Dorothy Russell were associated with its work. Helen Low was its secretary. The committee's brief was to examine all aspects of women in society, and it attacked the discrimination experienced at many levels. It also called for equal pay in at least some sectors of the economy. The committee's endeavours were warmly supported at the annual conference in 1948, but the idea of a separate women’s charter was rejected. The delegates felt that the issues with which it dealt were best included in statements of general policy, rather than be treated as issues specific to women. It was even thought that bthe Charter could end up as a mere vote-catching stunt. Despite the defeat it was announced in October that the committee was going ahead with its plans, although Mrs T.A. Emmett indicated that suggestions for a new name for the document would be welcome. The charter was published in March 1949 as a party document, A True Balance, and was endorsed with enthusiasm when the Women’s Annual Conference met on 19 May 1949. It was not taken forward to the Annual Conference itself.

Marjorie Maxse resigned as Vice Chairman of the party Organisation in 1951 and, shortly after her retirement, she was appointed a Dame Commander in the Order of the British Empire. She chaired the Conservative Overseas Bureau and took a particular interest in the welfare of students from the colonies who came to this country to study. In 1953 she joined with other members of the United Nations Association to plead that a political consensus be sought before the Central African Federation went ahead and that there should be a clear statement of what partnership between the races meant in practice and vigorous action to remove discrimination. She continued to be active in the work of the United Nations Association and was also active in a number of ways on behalf of the Anglican diocese of Chichester. Although she died unmarried, Alistair Cooke notes that she had earlier defied convention by living openly with a married man. She lived in Court House, Barcombe in East Sussex, but died on 3 May 1975 at St George's Retreat, Ditchling, Sussex.

The Times carried an obituary on 6 May 1975 and Mark Pottle has contributed a brief biography to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.