Hilda Runciman, Viscountess Runciman of Doxford

Hilda Runciman, Viscountess Runciman of Doxford (28 September 1869 – 28 October 1956) was a British Liberal Party politician.

Hilda Runciman, Viscountess Runciman of Doxford
Member of Parliament for St Ives
In office 6 March 1928 – 10 May 1929
Preceded by	John Hawke
Succeeded by	Walter Runciman
Personal details
Born	28 September 1869
Died	28 October 1956 (aged 87) London
Political party	Liberal Party
Spouse(s)	Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford ​ ​ (m. 1898; died 1949)​

Family and education

A daughter of James Cochran Stevenson, a Liberal Member of Parliament for South Shields, Hilda Stevenson was educated at Notting Hill High School and Girton College, Cambridge where she took first class honours in the History Tripos. In 1898 she married Walter Runciman, a rising politician. They had two sons and three daughters, including Leslie Runciman, 2nd Viscount Runciman of Doxford and Margaret Fairweather, one of the first eight women pilots in the Air Transport Auxiliary.[1]

Political career

Local

She became the first woman member to be elected to the Newcastle on Tyne School Board.[1] She was also a member of the Northumberland County Council Education Committee and one of the earliest women magistrates.[2]

National

In the 1920s Mrs Runciman took on a more national political role. She served as president of the Women's National Liberal Federation, 1919–21, continuing to sit on its executive committee for many years. She also served as president of the Women's Free Church Council, a member of the executive of the League of Nations Union, chaired the Westminster Housing Association, and was a founder of the Westminster Housing Trust. In Liberal Party politics she was a strong advocate of H H Asquith, and under her presidency the Women's National Liberal Federation supported the maintenance of independent Liberalism and an end to the Lloyd George coalition.[3]

Parliament

Viscountess Runciman

She became an MP in her own right in 1928, when she was elected in a by-election as Member of Parliament for St Ives in Cornwall, though she remained in Parliament for only one year, handing the seat to her husband at the 1929 general election. This 'halo effect' of women taking a parliamentary seat to then hand it over to their husband accounted for the election of ten women MPs (nearly a third of the women elected to parliament) between the two world wars.[4]

She herself fought the 1929 general election for the Liberals at Tavistock, having been invited to become the candidate by the local Liberal Association against the wishes of national headquarters who were apparently unhappy that she was not a supporter of party leader David Lloyd George.[5] She narrowly failed to gain Tavistock from the Conservatives by just 152 votes.[6]

Titles

In 1937 her husband became Viscount Runciman of Doxford, and she was styled as Viscountess Runciman of Doxford.[3]

Death

Hilda Runciman died of heart failure at her home, 73 Portland Place, London, on 28 October 1956, aged 87.[3]

References

1. Who was Who, OUP 2007
2. Pamela Brookes (1967) Women at Westminster, Peter Davies Publishing, p. 65
3. Martin Pugh (2004) "Hilda Runciman" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48691
4. Lowe, Eleanor (23 November 2020). "'To Keep It in the Family': Spouses, Seat Inheritance and Parliamentary Elections in Post-Suffrage Britain 1918–1945". Open Library of Humanities. 6 (2): 27. doi:10.16995/olh.556. ISSN 2056-6700.
5. Brookes, p. 71
6. F.W.S. Craig (1949) British Parliamentary Election Results, 1918–1949; Political Reference Publications, Glasgow, p. 330

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Hilda Runciman