Showing 11 results

Authority record
Elizabeth Anderson
BA/1 · Person · 1901 - ?

Elizabeth Anderson was born 12th October 1901 in Clydebank and worked as a crane operator throughout much of her life. From 1922 to 1932, she worked at Babcock and Wilcox, and later served as a crane driver during World War 2 at John Brown’s shipyard. The shipyard, at the time, was internationally renowned, and produced many famous ships. Whilst driving the biggest gantry crane on site one shift, she misjudged a load and blew a fuse, resulting in a whole area of the yard losing electricity, though she continued to work there. She remained single throughout her life due to the death of her fiancé during the war. She was a devoted Methodist, and a member of the temperance and social welfare department of the church.

Cathy McCormack
GB 1534 CM · Person · 1952-2022

Cathy McCormack (July 5th 1952 – present), is a Scottish grassroots activist based in EasterHouse, Glasgow, prominent for her involvement in local and international anti-poverty campaigns. Becoming part of the EastHall Residents Association (ERA) in 1982, McCormack began her activism through a Glasgow-wide Anti-Damp campaign, helping to tackle a chronic damp housing problem experienced in EasterHouse and other post-war housing schemes. McCormack’s continued campaigning in the 1990s led to her involvement in setting up the Scottish Public Health Alliance in 1992, her attendance as a Scottish representative at the United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development in 1994, and two study trips to Nicaragua and South Africa in 1992 and 1998. Today, McCormack still resides in Easterhouse Glasgow and is the author of a 2009 autobiography, ‘The Wee Yellow Butterfly’.

GB 1534 IM1 · Person · 27th Dec 1948-5 Dec 2008

Ingrid McClements (Dec 27th 1948 – Dec 5th 2008) was a women’s and racial rights activist who spent her life campaigning for equality in both London and Glasgow. She studied in Leeds before moving to London in 1974, where she worked for Brent Council and was involved in many political events and campaigns, including equal pay, trade union right, setting up the first women’s centre in Brent, was heavily involved in the Working Women’s Charter Campaign. She was also a member of the International Marxist Group. She continued her activism through the 70s and 80s, eventually moving to Glasgow in 1993. There, she worked with the Glasgow Council promoting equality issues and capacity building for voluntary sector organisations. She was also involved in Gara, the Glasgow Anti Racist Alliance, which was established to tackle the social exclusion of young people caused by racism in Glasgow. She continued her activism even after being diagnosed with breast cancer, working tirelessly until her death in December 2008.

Isobel Ramsay, NAAFI worker
GB 1534 IR1 · Person · Unknown

The letters of Isobel Ramsay were written from 1939 to 1946 and detail her work in the Middle East while serving in the N.A.A.F.I.(British Armed Forces) as part of the war effort. All are addressed to her father. Ramsay left for Cairo in April 1939 and spent four years attending to the soldiers, in the midst of which she met Tony Marks, a fellow N.A.A.F.I. member, and married him in August 1940. They moved to Jerusalem in 1943, where Ramsay joined the Auxialiary Territorial Service (A.T.S) . Ramsay and Marks later had a son in 1944, and returned home to Scotland in June 1946.

GB 1534 JC1 · Person · 1891-1961

Janet Crawford (1891-1961) was a political activist. Born to Marion Dowie and William Benson, the latter of which’s brother (George Benson) is known for his military exploits in Sudan and death in the Boer War. Crawford was opposed to the family’s involvement in the colonial wars, growing up to become a socialist, then eventually a communist. She was also a writer and photographer, having written at least one book of poetry, and some of her pre-war photographs were published as postcards for sale in Mull. She attended St Andrews University, and met her husband, William, in 1913, though it did not last to be a happy one. They had three children together during the 1920s, but Crawford’s lesbian sexuality put strain on the relationship, and an affair in the 1930s with a German diplomat in Edinburgh effectively separated them completely. Crawford continued her political activism, campaigning against the Nazification of Germany and, throughout the 1950s in London, was involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

GB 1534 LA1 · Person · 1919-2006

Lucilla Andrews (1919 – 2006) was a romance writer who published thirty-five novels throughout her lifetime and is known as having set the standard for romance novels within the genre’s writing community. She was born November 20 1919 in Suez, Egypt, attended boarding school in England, and worked as a military nurse from 1937-1939. During the Second World, she continued working for the British Red Cross, and eventually drew on this wartime experience as inspiration for her writing career. Her first short story was published in 1952, and her first novel was published in 1954, the same year her husband died. After, she continued writing in order to support her daughter. She moved to Edinburgh in 1969 where she continued to live for the rest of her life. She was a founding member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, for which she was honoured with a lifetime achievement award shortly before her death on October 3rd 2006.

GB 1534 ML1 · Person · Unknown

Mary Lonsdale was a judicial officer and general secretary of the Scottish Co-operative Women’s Guild. She was appointed as one of His Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the County of Lanark in 1933. Throughout her life she was a part of many organisations: she joined the Lanark County Advisory committee in 1942, and was later appointed to the Lower Ward Advisory Committee in 1948, then again in 1960. She was given the position of General Secretary for the Co-operative Guild in 1950. She also spent time on the Herring Industry Advisory Council from the late sixties through to the seventies, as well as the Scottish Council of Industrial Design. In 1986 she was offered an honorary membership for the Scottish Co-operative Guild.

GB1534 BM1 · Person · c.1920s-2010s

Barbara Robertson MacKinnon was born on the Isle of Skye. Her first language was Gaelic. She trained at the Royal Infirmary in Greenock in 1943 and worked there until 1947. She then worked at the Bellshill Maternity Hospital from October 1948 to November 1949. She was a district nurse from January 1953 to May 1953 and then became a Staff Nurse at the Infirmary in Greenock from October 1947 to October 1948. After this, she worked at a number of hospitals and as a district nurse in several areas in Scotland, including hospitals in Inverness, Moray and Nairn, John Martin Hospital on the Isle of Skye, Argyll and Bute, Dr Grays Hopsital in Moray, and the Orkney Islands. She finished her career by working at the Nursing Offices in Orkney until 1981.

JM 1 · Person · 1936 - present

Jessie McKirdy (1936 - present) is a peace activist who was born in Scotland and has lived in the USA since 1997. She was a member of the Glasgow Women for Peace in Glasgow in the 1980’s protesting against nuclear armaments being deployed in Scotland. As part of this, she attended the Greenham Commons Women’s Peace Camp on December 12th, 1982. Following the closure of the camp in 2000 to make way for the memorial site, McKirdy put together the papers she had kept on the Greenham Commons camp, including photographs and newspaper clippings.

KC1 · Person · 1950 -

Kate Charlesworth is a cartoonist and artist who has regularly contributed to LGBT and equality campaigns with her art. In 1988, when Clause 28 of the Local Government Act was pushing to ban the promotion of and education about homosexuality, she and three other local cartoonists produced a series of postcards to campaign against it. Her work has appeared in LGBT publications such as “The Pink Paper”, “Gay News”, “Strip AIDS”, and “Dyke’s Delight”, as well as “The Guardian”, “The Independent” and “New Internationalist”. She has also illustrated multiple books, including The Cartoon History of Time (2013), All That – the Other Half of History (1986), and Sally Heathcote: Suffragette (2014). Further, she has done work for the National Association of Local Government Officers (NALGO), a union which merged with two others to form UNISON in 1993. Her work has appeared in several exhibitions, including Rainbow City in 2006, and sh[OUT] in 2009. Her autobiography, Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide, was published in 2019, and explores the evolution of LGBT experiences and perceptions in society from the 1950s to present day. She is openly lesbian, and currently lives with her partner in Scotland.