Oral history project – launch of publication

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 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, and mothers who contributed interviews.

A joint project of Crossroads Women and The Remembering Eleanor Rathbone Group.

Funded by the Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Trust and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Until 19:30 – register online at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/remembering-eleanor-rathbone-mother-of-child-benefit-tickets-194952888337

November 10, 2021