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Daisy Postgate

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British political activist

Daisy Postgate (née Lansbury, 9 December 1892 – 20 April 1971) was a British political activist.

Early life

Born in Bow, London, she was the sixth child of George and Bessie Lansbury. When she was born, the family were living in poverty, but their situation steadily improved, and she attended school until the age of fourteen. She then spent three years assisting her mother with housework and caring for her younger siblings, then studied shorthand and typing, becoming a bookkeeper and typist for her brother Edgar.

Politics and suffrage campaigns

In 1912, Daisy became her father's personal secretary, a position she held until his death in 1940. In this role, she supported the Independent Labour Party. She shared a flat with May O'Callaghan and Nellie and Rose Cohen, and they were active in the East London Federation of Suffragettes and its successors. In 1913, she helped Sylvia Pankhurst to evade police capture by disguising herself as Pankhurst.

Through the National Guilds League, she met Raymond Postgate, and the two married in 1918. The couple had two children: John, who became a microbiologist, and Oliver, who became an animator.

Daisy increasingly worked as a secretary for her husband, it being her main job after her father's death, and she played a leading role in the first years of the Good Food Guide. From the 1960s, her health was increasingly poor, and she died in 1971, a few weeks after Raymond.

References

  1. ^ Margaret Cole, "Postgate, Daisy", Dictionary of Labour Biography, vol.II, pp.303–304
  2. Casey, Maurice J. (2024). Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism's Forgotten Radicals. London: Footnote Press. ISBN 9781804440995.
  3. "The Suffragettes Who Became Communists | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 2024-12-15.
  4. Maurice Casey (speaker) (11 Sep 2017). To Abduct the Mistresses of the Commissars (video). Connolly Mediagroup. Event occurs at 5:17.
  5. Shepherd 2002, p. 121 and p. 354
  6. Pottle, Mark (January 2012). "Postgate, Raymond William". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31564. Retrieved 1 March 2013. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (subscription required)
  7. Hayward, Anthony (2004). "Postgate, (Richard) Oliver". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/100678. ISBN 9780198614111. Retrieved 19 July 2013. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
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