“This project is a timely reminder that child poverty is not only still with us but is rising, and that the caring work of mothers and others remains undervalued.”

A free online event will launch a publication which focuses on Eleanor Rathbone, a former MP, women’s rights activist and social reformer who pioneered family allowance in the UK.

The online conference is part of Parliament’s Oral History Project, and has been organised by Crossroads Women and
The Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group.

The invitation for the event says:

“Seventy-five years from the first payment of family allowance (now child benefit), on 6 August 1946, mothers and other family members remember the formidable feminist campaigner who made this happen. A team of volunteers interviewed 145 women and 10 men, aged 36 to 95, from different regions and backgrounds in the UK, on what this payment meant to them and their families.

The publication also includes excerpts from Rathbone’s pathbreaking The Disinherited Family and from the historical parliamentary debates which prefaced the introduction of the Family Allowances Act 1945 – the first measure of the new Welfare State.

This project is a timely reminder that child poverty is not only still with us but is rising, and that the caring work of mothers and others remains undervalued.”

Speakers at the event will include:

Baroness Lister, Professor of Social Policy, Loughborough University

Jenny Rathbone, great-niece of Eleanor, Member of the Senedd for Cardiff Central

Solveig Francis, Crossroads Women

Lesley Urbach, The Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group

Mothers who contributed interviews.

The event takes place on Thursday 18 November from 6 to 7.30pm, and anyone interested in attending can register here.

Many thanks to Legal Action for Women for alerting us to this event.