History of the League
The British League of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women (Women's
League) was founded on June 11th 1908 and sprang from the enthusiasm of Helen
Brooke Herford. Time spent in America during her formative years when her father
ministered in Chicago and Boston added to her education and experience and in
1892 when the family returned to Hampstead she began her committee work, helping
her mother with the Women's Union.
In 1902 she was elected to the Executive Committee of the British and Foreign
Unitarian Association, which led in 1907 to her visit to Boston to attend the
meeting of the International Council of Unitarian and other Liberal Christian
People. The committee were struck by the good work being done by the Alliance of
Unitarian Women for the American Churches and the idea for a similar
organisation in our British Unitarian Churches was born. A report of their visit
was discussed by the British and Foreign Unitarian Association at their autumnal
meeting and it was decided to form a Women's League of Unitarians in England.
All congregations in the Essex Hall Year Book were circularised. A committee was
formed and the first meeting of this committee was on July 8th 1908. It is most
interesting to note that the total capital with which the ladies proposed start
the League was £5 8 shillings, but Miss Herford had good friends who provided
money for her many missionary journeys.
Helen Brooke Herford worked as Secretary from the League's inception in 1908
until 1929 and much had been accomplished due to her tireless effort and
enthusiasm - the setting up of the Correspondence Bureau during the First World
War, the publication of pamphlets, the setting up of District Leagues,
establishing the Monthly Letter and the League Annual Meeting and much more. 171
Branches, 11 District Leagues, and 2 Neighbourhood Leagues were in existence and
the Executive Committee had become the Central Committee.
Members were encouraged to keep in touch with voting women who left home to
take up work, firstly in this country, and then isolated women overseas. Work
developed in many directions, including the issuing of a monthly newsletter.
With the advent of World War I branches rose to the special needs of the time,
including necessary articles made and distributed, serving men welcomed into
homes or visited in hospital.
Growth continued during the two wars with overseas fellowship becoming an
integral part of branch work. Publications became more important, and a Lending
Library was set up in London.
In the early 1930s the League became interested in the Unitarians of the
Khasi Hills in Assam (see further details in the section on Margaret Barr). In
this period also, annual Rallies began to be shared between the Districts, and
the recent Triennial Conference was an offshoot of these.
Into World War II and more war work was undertaken. Gifts were also sent to
Britain from fellow League members overseas.
Today publications continue, as does support for various needs, and the
churches on their part are glad to include the League branch as part of their
Fellowship. We continue to build on the foundations so well and truly laid over
nearly a century.
Margaret Barr
One of the Unitarians' most outstanding women
ministers - who became a legend in her own lifetime - was Margaret Barr. A
Yorkshirewoman of Methodist parentage, she joined the Cambridge Unitarian Church
while a student at Girton. After training at Manchester College, Oxford,
followed by a six-year pastorate at Rotherham, she decided to go to India. In
1932, hearing that a minister was needed to serve the little group of Unitarian
churches in the Khasi Hills of Assam in north-east India, she wrote to the
Committee responsible for making the appointment: 'Here I am: send me.'
However the committee refused to send a woman to such a lonely post. So Margaret
got herself a teaching job in Calcutta and began to pay unofficial visits to the
Khasi Hills. Eventually, through sheer determination, she won: in 1936 she was
given official charge of the churches there. The women in the churches here in
Britain (mainly the Women's League branches) decided to raise enough money to
pay her salary for the next three years, this gave her the confirmation and
confidence to go ahead. That offer by the Women's Leagues was renewed year by
year until 1964 but many of our branches, districts and individual members still
make annual donations to continue the work there and two major projects by them
has further boosted their funds (the latest one being in 2000 when we raised
over £7,500.)
There she remained, apart from brief visits to Britain and America for 37
years until her death in 1973. For more than 10 years her base was at Shillong,
the capital of Assam, where she devoted her energies to the care of the churches
and founded two schools which, by the late 1940s were well-enough established to
be handed over to others. She determined to leave the town and settle in a
remote village, Kharang, a place that could be reached only after a 25 kilometre
walk along a rough and stony track. Here she established her Rural Centre, with
a residential school attended by children from the surrounding countryside. She
was not just a teacher but by turns nurse, midwife, counsellor, sustainer and
friend to a great company of people. Meanwhile she continued to act as
superintendent minister of the Unitarian Union of the Khasi and Jaintia Hills.
She loved it. Under her care the Rural Centre flourished and became famous
throughout the region. Here she lived until she died, still in harness, in 1973.
She was in her seventy-fifth year.
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