Gertrude Isabella Morton Horton

Gertrude Isabella Morton Horton, born Gertrude Isabella Morton Robertson (26 August 1901 – 19 May 1978) was a British feminist who ran the Townswomen's Guild for over 25 years and then took a leading role in the Fawcett Society. She led a campaign for equal pay for women which led to parliamentary agreement for all public workers by 1955.

Life Horton was born in Chelsea. Her parents were the miniaturist Jane Faulkner (born Walters) and the painter Charles Kay Robertson. She was good at science and attended the North London Collegiate School before taking a degree at London University. She was active in the National Union of Students and she would have liked to have become a teacher but she had married a research chemist named Harold Vivian Horton and women teachers had to be single. It was expected that women would be supported by their husbands but Horton was determined to be independent.

In 1932 the organisation had 146 guilds and it became the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds and Horton became its National Secretary. Alice Franklin became the honorary (i.e. unpaid) secretary in 1933. Horton would lobby member's of parliament. She and Franklin published a national handbook from the central offices in Cromwell Place in London in 1938. The handbook included rules, regulations and advice on finance and democracy and how to organise a meeting. By 1939 she was the national secretary to 544 guilds with 54,000 members. Franklin resigned after a dispute over who would chair committees. Horton refused to resign in protest and she was forced out in 1949. That year Hugh Gaitskell said that equal pay for women would drive up prices. Horton realised this “distressing statement” required a reaction and she wrote to Irene Ward, Barbara Castle and Liberal politician Jo Grimond asking that they raise this in parliament. Irene Ward raised the matter on 2 August pointing out that Gaitskell had "caused great resentment and bitterness" with his "unfair and inaccurate” claims. Labour MP Charles Pannell called on the government to make a definite decision on equal pay and Horton as EPCC called for a petition with a target of a million signatures.

By 1956 the Equal Pay Campaign Committee disbanded having achieved agreement to the introduction, in stages, of equal pay in the public sector. Full Equal Pay by law did not happen until it was introduced Barbara Castle the Equal Pay Act in 1970. Horton talks about the operations of the NUSEC and NUTG, and about a number of prominent figures in the women's movement, including Alice Franklin, Pippa Strachey and Ethel Watts.