Scotland's Red Duchess challenged fascism and changed Westminster

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

But Kitty, as she was known, had no interest in the passive comforts of aristocracy.
Instead, she forged a path so contrary to expectation that newspapers breathlessly declared, 'Anything the Duchess does is news.'
The Duchess of Atholl was Scotland's first woman MP (Image: Newsquest)
She'd witnessed poverty and hardship across the Highlands and Islands to match any inner-city squalor, and with her husband in Gallipoli, she'd served in the dusty, bloody wards of military clinics in Egypt.
She had loudly campaigned for better schools and child welfare with a fervour that impressed both the drawing-room elite and the political men who ran the country.
Then, in 1923, she crossed a line few titled women dared to approach – and one few even imagined was ever really open to them – when she stood for election and won.
Read more by Sandra Dick:
It was an extraordinary leap. Here was a duchess born into privilege, mistress of an ancient estate, one of only eight women among 600 men in the House of Commons.
She was the first woman ever elected to represent a Scottish constituency at Westminster, and the first duchess – and so far, the only one – to become an MP.
Perhaps more remarkable, a few years earlier she had shared platforms with vociferous anti-suffrage campaigners who raged against the idea that women should get the vote, never mind worry their pretty little heads over great matters of state.
The Votes for Women movement. At heart, a shy and withdrawn young woman who preferred the company of her piano and Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, she would become a thorn in the side of the political elite and Prime Ministers, so much so that some waged a dirty tricks war against her.
Her warnings of Hitler's horrific intentions led to her being placed on a Gestapo death list, then post-war she became entangled in a shadowy M16 operation involving spies carried out under the cover of quaint Morningside tea parties.
Whether raising the issues of female circumcision to a mainly male House of Commons in an era when such matters were taboo, to guiding to safety 4000 Spanish Civil War refugees, she blazed a trail.
What on earth drove her from the comfort of her Blair Castle drawing room to embark on all of that?
And why, despite having been one of the nation's most talked-about women, would she eventually fall off the radar and, unlike contemporaries such as Nancy Astor, find her name airbrushed from her former colleagues' memoirs?
Nancy Astor arguing with a spectator at the hustings during the election campaign in Plymouth. (Image: Topical Press Agency/Getty Image)
Clues behind the personal heartache that drove her headlong into political life have been explored in a new biography.
Written by Amy Gray, Red Duchess: A Rebel in Westminster was inspired by a passing comment from a friend about how, despite opposing votes for women, Kitty had become Scotland's first female MP.
Astonished that so little was known about the Duchess's political life, she delved into her extraordinary life story to discover how she'd gone from loyal government minister to serial rebel against her own party, ahead of her time on issues as diverse as nursery education to the governance of India.
How could a unionist politician be dubbed the Red Duchess for her apparently communist leanings also campaign against the Soviet threat; be anti-suffrage yet also a pioneer for women in Westminster?
'How had all of this existed in the same life?,' Gray wondered.
Born Katherine Ramsay, her ancestor Neis de Ramsay was credited with saving King Alexander II's life in 1232 with pioneering abdominal surgery to remove a hairball – a feat that led to him being granted Bamff House and an estate 20 miles north-west of Dundee.
Her father Sir James Ramsay was an academic and climber who made one of the early ascents of Mont Blanc in the French Alps. Her mother, Charlotte, came from a family descended from Robert the Bruce.
Edinburgh-born Kitty, meanwhile, studied at the Royal College of Music in London and seemed destined for a future of aristocratic comfort.
Her marriage to 'Bardie', the Marquess of Tullibardine, in 1899, however, was not smooth: she suffered a string of miscarriages made all the harder by his infidelities, illegitimate children and brushes with insolvency.
The 8th Duke of Atholl and his wife, Katherine, aka Kitty, outside Blair Castle (Image: Michel BARET/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
'Her family were not really public servants, but the Marquess of Tullibardine was devoted to the idea of service,' says Gray.
'He said that they had a responsibility to Perthshire and Scotland, and she took that idea and ran with it.'
With no children to consume her time, she supported his role as Unionist MP for West Perthshire.
Emboldened by rave reviews for her work on a highly acclaimed book on the county's military history, she was soon standing for him at meetings – often outperforming any opponents.
When a committee was set up in 1912 to improve medical provision in the Highlands and Islands, she became its sole female member.
The role opened her eyes to appalling levels of poverty beyond the comfort of her Perthshire estate.
Across the Highland and Islands she found families sharing overcrowded living spaces with cattle, well-furnished churches but doctors in homes without bathrooms.
Read more by Sandra Dick:
Smallpox raged and babies were dying in childbirth for the lack of medical care.
The committee's report led to pioneering state-funded medical services 35 years before the National Health Service – and laid the foundations for Kitty's future political career.
This was a time when the women's suffrage movement was gaining momentum yet, says Gray, Kitty had had no appetite for votes for women.
'In 1912 she speaks at one of the largest anti-suffrage meetings in Scotland, it's held in Glasgow and one of the speakers is Lord Curzon,' she adds.
A new book explores the life and work of the Duchess of Atholl (Image: Newsquest)
While he argues female suffrage would take women away from 'her proper sphere and highest duty', namely maternity, Kitty has a different approach.
'She notes some already have the right to vote in local elections and by and large don't use it.
'Some have rights to stand in various local elections but don't use it.
'Her argument is that women need more experience of local politics and local government before they are ready for decisions on the big 'masculine' issues on things like war.'
As time would tell, she soon switched sides.
By 1917 and with war raging in Europe, Kitty had thrown herself into more service: the Women's Agricultural Committee, the Prisoner of War Committee, Red Cross fundraising bazaars, and recruiting drives for the Women's Land Army and the Women's Auxiliary Corps.
'In 1919 she gets elected to Perthshire education authority,' adds Gray. 'She is doing what she says women should do, getting experience of local government.'
With her husband now the Duke of Atholl and the race on among political parties to draw more women to Westminster, Kitty was wooed by political heavyweights to stand as Scottish Unionist MP for Kinross and West Perthshire.
She was elected as Scotland's first woman MP in December 1923.
But what changed her mind?
That was partly down to the influence of another Scottish woman, Elsie Inglis, who had defied being told to 'go home' by First World War military chiefs to establish the frontline Scottish Women's Hospital.
Read more by Sandra Dick:
'The whole suffrage campaign had been interrupted by the First World War,' says Gray. 'Kitty goes to Egypt – her husband is a brilliant commander who leads the retreat from Gallipoli.
'She spends time nursing his soldiers, running hospitals, running entertainment for them, and she visits the Scottish Women's Hospital.
'That's really important because she comes into contact with former suffragettes and suffragists.
Blair Castle in Perthshire (Image: VisitScotland / Paul Tomkins)
'She has started to see that women and children don't get the attention they need if women are not there.'
By the time Lloyd George and others are approaching her to stand as an MP, she has mellowed.
'Lloyd George is the first person she records as saying to her 'have you ever thought about standing as an MP?',' adds Gray.
'That's something we still see now: women still need that extra nudge to get involved.'
Aged 49 when elected, Kitty remained as an MP for 15 years, during which time there was never more than 15 women MPs.
Early on, she became the first woman minister, overseeing education much to the annoyance of some fragile male egos.
So miffed was one colleague that he was openly rude to her and tried to confine her to menial speaking tasks.
That, however, may simply have fuelled her fire: 'When the Conservatives lose the 1929 election, she takes on causes that are remote from what party leadership wants to do,' says Gray.
'She becomes more rebellious, she is the 'Red Duchess', not quite part of the political establishment.
Kitty had become concerned by fascist movements in Europe, and unlike others, took time to read Hitler's full German version of Mein Kampf which laid bare horrifying detail of his true vision.
Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister (1937-1940), who pursued a policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany (Image: PA)
Appalled, she spoke out against Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement, setting her at odds with many political companions and going further than even Sir Winston Churchill dared to go.
With the Spanish Civil War raging, she had become increasingly horrified by the British government's non-interventionist stance as Franco, supported by Hitler and Mussolini, battled Spain's Republican government.
Basque refugee children aboard The Habana. Their evacuation was aided by the efforts of the Duchess of Atholl (Image: Getty Images)
She visited and witnessed the impacts of Nazi bombing, going on to persuade the British government to rethink its policy of non-intervention and to help evacuate around 4,000 Basque children to Britain.
The plight of children, whether through poverty or war, was a particular concern for Kitty who had suffered a string of miscarriages and, with her husband having fathered at least one illegitimate child, finally conceded she would not be a mother.
Infertility had been one of the most painful wounds of her life, now she channelled that maternal instinct into caring for refugees.
But her empathy earned her enemies.
Right-wing papers dubbed her the 'Red Duchess' while her warnings about the risks of appeasing Hitler prompted Neville Chamberlain's government to try to silence her.
Frustrated, Kitty quit her seat to fight a by-election as an independent and unleashed the full Tory machine against her.
Landowners threatened tenants, posters were refused display, and one Liberal supporter told her plainly: 'You have been deserted by your ain class.'
A telegram, almost certainly a prank, arrived from "Stalin," praising 'Katherine the even Greater.'
Kitty lost her seat but would not be hushed.
She had already travelled widely in Europe, and had contacts across Romania, Czechoslavakia, Yugoslavia and Poland.
As the war progressed, she became increasingly worried about the Soviet Union's post-war ambitions.
Having campaigned in 1943 for aid to Stalingrad and championed the knitting of winter clothes for Russia, realised ahead of most of her contemporaries that Stalin was outmanoeuvring the West in shaping the post-war settlement.
Prime Minister of Great Britain Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) makes his VE Day Broadcast to the world. (Image: Getty Images)
She penned countless warning letters to senior politicians including long term family friend Churchill, much to the annoyance of Downing Street staff.
It would lead to one of her most intriguing roles.
Elma Dangerfield was the widow of a naval officer who had been working for the intelligence service, MI9.
She saw Kitty as a valuable potential figurehead for a new organisation, the British League for European Freedom, which on the surface sought to highlight the plight of those behind the Iron Curtain.
Soon a sister organisation, the Scottish League for European Freedom (SLEF), was launched with charismatic former spy John Finlay Stewart, a long-time friend of the Atholls, at its helm.
Again, Kitty became its highest profile supporter.
The SLEF appeared to be an organisation driven mainly by genteel ladies of leafy Morningside and Edinburgh's New Town. Amid tea and scones, they raised money for Ukraine's poor and homeless and brought refugees to safety.
Read more by Sandra Dick:
It would only emerge many years later that it was really a front for a shadowy M16 operation, which hand-picked 'refugees' to train as covert operators against the USSR.
Kitty, unwitting or not, had lent the operation a veneer of respectability.
Soon her health was failing. Kitty died in 1960, her final years clouded by dementia.
Too outspoken for comfort, she was often written out by political opponents who preferred to tell their own story of achievement.
Duchess of Atholl, at the Barnardo's Homes Festival, a benefit for the Barnardo's children's charity, at the Royal Albert Hall, London, January 1929 (Image: Topical Press Agency/)
Still, Kitty Stewart-Murray, fuelled by personal sorrow and dedicated to public service, left a lasting imprint.
'She was incredibly shy – surprising, for a woman who did what she did,' Gray adds.
'Her inability to have children was a big turning point.
'As a duchess her first duty was to produce the next duke, and she failed in that.
'The sadness that she couldn't be a mother never left her, but it also opened her life up to being different,' adds Gray.
'When we look at the causes she chose… I think that she is finding substitute children.'
Red Duchess: Kitty Atholl, A Rebel in Westminster by Amy Gray is published by The History Press on 18 September.