Alice Morrissey

Mary Alice Connolly Morrissey (c. 1868 – 1912) was a British Roman Catholic socialist leader and suffragette activist from Liverpool, who was imprisoned in the campaign for women's right to vote.

Life Born into a Catholic family, Mary Alice Connolly's brother became a priest. In 1891, Connolly married John Wolfe Tone Morrissey, who was elected as Liverpool's first socialist councillor. They both had a public political profile and worked together, locally and nationally until her sudden death in 1912. Morrissey was also, in her own right, a branch convenor for political organisations in Merseyside, as well as a Poor Law Guardian. She co-founded the Liverpool Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) branch and was imprisoned twice for suffragette activism. a devout and active Catholic and also joined the movement for votes for women, firstly in the Liverpool Women's Suffrage Society (a branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), the suffragists) in 1904. Morrissey quickly left that society, along with Dr Alice Ker, as Morrissey saw it as undemocratic and class led. Morrissey went onto become a militant suffragette leader in starting up, alongside Mabel Labouchere (who was branch secretary until 1907), the Liverpool branch of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) the suffragettes. His successor, Cardinal Vaughan, was more open to change and was reported as saying "I believe that the extension of the Parliamentary Franchise to women upon the same conditions as it is held by men would be a just and beneficial measure, tending to raise rather than to lower the course of national legislation." Morrissey was among the Catholic community who agreed with the more liberal approach,

Morrissey and fellow Catholic WSPU leader, Patricia Woodlock, were imprisoned in March 1907, for suffragette activism. Bertha Quinn a clothing worker of Leeds, And the same publication printed Morrissey's prison-letter in an article "Votes for Women", on 26 April 1907 reporting Morrissey as writing that no nation was free while its women lived in "political silence," and adding "history teaches us that it is only by some people making sacrifices, that we will be freed."

In 1907, the three leaders set the focus and agenda for the Liverpool WSPU branch, homed in premises accessible to all at 6 Colquitt Street. As two had socialist backgrounds, they aimed to educate working women, holding street meetings in working class areas, factory gate meetings at lunch time, inviting former mill worker suffragette Annie Kenney to take a week of campaigning in the city. When Mary Gawthorpe led the Lancashire branches of WPSU there was support for these methods across the industrial north west. By 1908 the numbers attending had grown and in one case estimated as over a thousand. Under the branch leadership of Alice Davies, Morrissey was mentioned for organising Emmeline Pankhurst's visit to the Hardman Hall in 1912.