Struggle for Social Justice in British Columbia: Helena Gutteridge, the Unknown Reformer

Lin Good, a consultant, was Associate Librarian at Queen’s University.

Vancouver in the 1930s was a meeting place for fascinating people, the
kind who make a great contribution to history but rarely get into the
textbooks. Howard, in this detailed and readable biography, ensures that
at least one of them is recorded for posterity.

Nell Gutteridge was born in 1879 in Chelsea, in the west end of London,
England. Her parents were poor working people, and, in the slums, Nell
saw the contrast between her home and the luxury of Chelsea House,
staffed the year round with 30 servants but occupied by its owner, the
Earl of Cadogan, only for the “season,” May to July each year.
Upper-class Victorians preached that such class differences were the
“will of God”; Young Nell was not convinced. At a local church
school, she learned to read and write, and later qualified as a
“cutter” in a tailor’s shop. Thus liberated from her birthplace,
she began to move into other areas of London, coming under the influence
of some of the radical thinkers and social reformers of the day—Sidney
Webb, George Bernard Shaw, Annie Besant, and the Pankhursts of the
suffragette movement. Their teaching changed her conviction into a
passion for social justice and a different kind of society.

To signal the change in her life, Nell changed her name to Helena and
in 1911 emigrated to Vancouver. With her new name, in a new home, Helena
embarked on a new life, severing her roots so completely that only by
diligent research and luck could Howard reconstruct her origins and
background.

Helena was sure that working-class people, especially women, would
achieve a fair and just society only by their own efforts. She was not
prepared to rely on her “betters” to give it to her. She found
friends and colleagues among the trade unionists and members of the
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which had been founded in Calgary
in 1932. In their meetings and seminars, she became a good debater and a
rousing speaker. On March 30, 1937, she became the first woman to be
elected to Vancouver City Council. In a variety of homes, through
personal relationships, Helena’s crusade continued until her death.

This biography, which presents Gutteridge’s life against a vivid
picture of her times, is important to women’s studies and to the
still-neglected history of the majority of our population—the workers.
It also offers encouragement to those who today continue the struggle
for social justice. And it is a good read.