Overview for Margaret Stockman
She lived at 180 Willifield Way
She and her husband were census refusers. She wrote on the form: ‘I refuse all information to a government which governs me without my consent.' and ‘In the absence of the legal occupier, a woman not a person.’
She was prominent in Womens’ Group of the Fabian Society and spoke for them at suffrage rallies, including at the Hyde Park Coronation rally where George Lansbury spoke. She was a graduate; the Barnet Press in April 1910 reports “Mrs Margaret Stockman BA” giving a lecture on Women and Socialism to a meeting of the Independent Labour Party in Barnet. She was probably also a member of the WSPU as ‘Votes for Women’ reports her presiding at the ‘first public At Home meeting of the Barnet branch’ in October 1910.
She is also quoted in the Clarion newspaper. (This was a Socialist newspaper which Cicily Fairfield/Rebecca West wrote for from 1912 which was closely related to the Clarion Fellowship, initially a cycling based group which promoted socialism). She describes the work of the Fellowship as “(1) To convert our neighbours to Socialism and (2) To keep the vans on the road to the best of our ability”. The ‘vans’ were caravans which went out with the cyclists and from which the newspaper was distributed at stops. The article goes onto say that Margaret Stockman is looking to form a Fellowship of Clarionettes in the local area around the Golders Green area.
She is also quoted in 1914 in the Evening Standard in what it describes as ‘a curious and altogether unexpected’ development in the ‘agitation for women's franchise’. She announced that she had altered her Will leaving the whole of her property to her female legatees unless some form of Parliamentary franchise for women was carried before her death. She explained that her daughter was politically handicapped through not having the vote so wanted to make sure that she was not also economically disadvantaged.