Scotland’s Forgotten Suffragette
Apples do not fall far from the tree. Well, I am grateful that this one fell very far indeed. My link with Agnes Dollan sounds more like a tongue twister than a familial connection but it exists, nonetheless.
I’ve always felt the attraction that comes with tracing your family tree. Coming from a large and confusing Scots-Irish family that is scattered across the world, it would be hard not to be. I made my first family tree at 7 but my dedication wavered. There were too many questions and too little answers. My ancestors were working class; some were good people and others were…complicated. They were interesting to a little girl putting the pieces of her family together like one big dysfunctional jigsaw puzzle. So, that maybe she could make sense of where her piece would fit.
Sadly, my jigsaw pieces must seem less interesting to everyone else. There are no Kings or Queens or famous authors or explorers. That being said, the name Dollan was tossed around once or twice when I was little. We had some ties to the Dollan Baths in East Kilbride, where my dad grew up. It was named after some relative of ours. It was a point of pride in our family but for decades, that was all I or any of us knew. It was just a forgotten story.
Forgotten until very recently at least. Until a trip to Ayr beach and a drive through his old hometown reminded my Dad of our connection to the Dollan name. Curious, I turned to Google and was flooded with accounts because in case you are wondering, you have to do a fair bit to have a swimming pool named after you.
RACING BACK MY FAMILY HISTORY
My ancestor Sir Patrick Dollan was the Lord Provost of Glasgow in the early years of the Second World War. He was a prominent figure in the city as a journalist and activist in the Independent Labour Party. I rattled off his life’s achievements in complete awe and admiration. Some came as a surprise to my family, but others felt vaguely familiar.
The same could not be said about his wife, Lady Agnes Dollan. I asked my family about her after a brief Wikipedia scan, but no one had heard of her, her life or anything that she had done. I chalked this up to an oversight; her husband was such a significant figure in Glasgow’s history that his success seemed enough to satisfy the family ego. In truth, Patrick Dollan himself was so distantly related to us (my paternal Grandmother’s Grandfather’s cousin) that looking any further into our connection with his family would be like sifting through a completely different orchard. While I can’t rule either justification out, there is a more tragic explanation as to why Agnes Dollan’s story has been forgotten to history. One that I’m sure has crossed your mind already.
Agnes Dollan was a woman and women aren’t supposed to make history. We aren’t supposed to remember the things they did or the impact that they have made. Especially a woman of Agnes’ era. She existed to support her husband and nothing more. To live and breathe her husband’s needs and desires, to go to bed just to do it all again tomorrow. The world teaches us that women didn’t make history because they weren’t allowed to. Except that’s not true at all.Agnes did things, she made an impact but somewhere along the way, someone decided that her husband’s legacy was more important, valued more and for some reason worthy of a mention on a swimming pool.
Well, she’s making history now.
WHO WAS AGNES DOLLAN?
Agnes Dollan (née Moir) was born on the 16th of August 1887 in Springburn. Whilst working as a telephone operator, she discovered the concepts of women and worker’s rights. She entered into the Women’s Labour League and thus began a career and a lifetime passion for the political sphere. She later joined the Women’s Social and Political Union and was a vocal advocate for Emmeline Pankhurst’s militaristic tactics. Agnes was one of the “Red Skirts of Clydeside” or so she would become known in the 1984 documentary of the same name. It was her work with the Socialist Sunday School and the Independent Labour Party that led her to meet her husband.
Although she went on to support her husband’s political career, in the role of Lady Provost of Glasgow, she never sacrificed her beliefs or dreams of having a political career of her own. When war broke out, Agnes and her husband led a small group of anti-war protesters in Glasgow as vociferous pacifists. A stance that was not only unpopular and frowned upon but one that could be very dangerous as well. In fact, Patrick was arrested and taken to Wormwood scrubs prison for those very beliefs. Agnes’ own pacifist stance led her to join the Women’s Peace Crusade and organise anti-war protests in Glasgow Green in 1914 with a friend and fellow suffragette,Helen Crawfurd . The pair went on to establish a Glasgow branch of the Women’s International League the following year as well as travel the country, raising awareness of the League’s principles.
Her commitment to worker’s rights was limitless so much so that the Dollans became two of the lead campaigners in the 1915 Rent Strikes in Glasgow. You may have heard of Mary Barbour but she did not act alone. Agnes worked as the treasurer of the Glasgow Women’s Housing Association. Her commitment to workers’ rights even got her briefly incarcerated in 1917.
The point is, I could not stop reading. Not when I saw that she had written a piece in the Sunday Post in 1924, supporting an amendment to the 1918 Representation of the Peoples Act, otherwise known as the first piece of UK legislation, that allowed women to vote. Not when I saw that she was the first woman Labour candidate to run for Glasgow City Council in 1919. She went on to run several other campaigns and even became a justice of the peace in 1928. And finally, not when she ran as the first woman Labour candidate for Dumfriesshire in the 1924 General Election. Although she was unsuccessful, she was relentless and passionate in her pursuits. She went on to work with the Labour Party National Executive and even spoke at the 1933 National Conference of Labour Women, calling for more women candidates in the party. In an article in the Glasgow Herald, she even stated that she was convinced that “women were just as good as men, and better in some cases” when serving in political office.
Lady Agnes Dollan is extraordinary even by today’s standards. Her dedication to the rights of women and workers is inspiring. Her view of the world, her socialism and pacifist beliefs were undoubtedly ahead of her time. I wonder what she would do in a world like ours, in a society that would let her do things, have an impact, and even make history. What kind of difference could she have made in a world that did not constrain her character or was not determined to forget her? Then I remember, we did not. We have not forgotten her at all. It took a hundred-odd years but here is her story and I am sharing her legacy with you.
Not to mention that that little girl has another piece of her jigsaw puzzle. She knows where her passion for feminism, drive to make a change and hope that we can make the world a more equal place comes from. She is descended from a freaking suffragette!
Original article published on YWCA Scotland.
