Marjory Newbold

Marjory Newbold (25 May 1883 – 15 November 1926) was a leading Scottish socialist and communist, prominent in the Independent Labour Party Newbold organised pacifist and Marxist activism in 1917–1920s across the UK, and was one of the first British people to visit Russia after the revolution when she travelled incognito into Russia with delegates including Sylvia Pankhurst, to the Second World Congress of the Comintern (Communist International). Her siblings were Annie (born 1886) and Eliza (born 1889) and brother Alexander (1892–1980), who in January 1917 was imprisoned for refusing to serve By 1891, the family had moved to 14 New Street, Beith, and had a boarder Archibald Flemington, a french polisher.

Newbold studied from 1902 to 1905 at Glasgow University, but did not have sufficient grades to graduate in the arts, perhaps as she became a political activist whilst a student. Newbold went on to teach at Wishaw elementary state school from 1908 to 1916, being a pupil teacher from 1901. an industrial area where she saw the deprivation endured by children of working families and poor and limited facilities for their education. Newbold was said to be 'gifted with intellectual abilities of a high order' and had 'warm human sympathies with the struggles of the poor' and she embraced socialist activism to work to improve opportunities in education, health, welfare and housing for the working class. and married in a civil ceremony in Blythswood, Glasgow on 16 June 1915. Then, as was required for a married woman, Newbold had to resign her job as a teacher. provided lectures and literature for developing solidarity and political education to assist in building the movement for social justice. From 1912 to 1916, Newbold took on responsibilities at the divisional council of the Scottish ILP, and became an election agent, and did so again later for her husband in 1922 and 1923. Whilst she was teaching, Newbold had been actively involved in the Scottish Socialist Teachers Society. and writing in communist press, to encourage donations following resolution of the Conference of the League for Communist Youth (Berlin November 1919) for a memorial circulating collection of the works of Karl Leibknecht, from America, Norway, Sweden, Holland and Italy.

During summer 1920, Newbold travelled incognito to Russia, along with other British delegates such as John S. Clarke, Helen Crawfurd, Williie Gallacher, William McLaine, JT Murphy, Sylvia Pankhurst, Tom Quelch, Dave Ramsay and Jack Tanner and was attending as a voting member to the Second World Congress of the Comintern (Communist International) in Petrograd, Russia.

Newbold herself was not physically strong and her fellow delegate Dora Russell, noted that she was:small, very thin and pale and not unlike the ILP leader James Maxton. Like so many communists I was to meet then and later she was totally convinced and dogmatic and willing to make any sacrifice for the cause. I liked Marjory and her spirit, her courage and her endurance, but her physical strength was not enough.

Division within the woman's international peace movement and the British Communists about the role of women-only groupings, led to Newbold's name and Helen Crawfurd's being removed from the records of the Women's International League, by Ellen Wilkinson.

Illness and death After the International Congress, Newbold's health deteriorated, coming home 'a shadow of her former self' with a 'lingering illness from which she was never to recover' and regretted that her poor health had prevented her assisting Walton Newbold in serving as Wishaw's M.P. Newbold is buried in Beith Cemetery.

Despite her short career, Marjory Newbold had made a 'distinctive contribution to the labour and socialist movement', she was 'known to many in the Labour movement in Wishaw' and news of her sudden death was expected in her obituary to be 'received with keen regret'.