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Overview
"Eleanor Rathbone's dedication to the 'refugee question' came towards the end of a lifetime devoted to humanitarian activism. In Rescue the Perishing, Susan Cohen traces Eleanor's background from her Liverpool roots through her time as a pioneering undergraduate at Somerville College, Oxford to her working life as a social and welfare reformer, feminist, suffragist, Justice of the Peace, local councillor, pacifist and Independent MP for the Combined English Universities. She discusses how nature and nurture laid the foundations for her future career, and demonstrates how all Eleanor's campaigning activities were linked by the common theme of humanitarianism." The central aspect of this book is a unique and critical examination of Eleanor's championing of refugees, especially Jews fleeing persecution in Nazi and fascist Europe from 1933. Viewed in historical context, it follows her brave and remarkable path as the so-called 'MP for refugees', studies her concerns about the welfare and rescue of people threatened by Hitler's regime, and highlights the challenges she faced to her proposals and actions, especially from within official circles, as she defied the norms of conventional society by supporting the unpopular cause of Jewish refugees.