Clarice Shaw
| Clarice Shaw | |
|---|---|
| Member of Parliament for Kilmarnock |
|
|
In office 5 July 1945 – 5 December 1946 |
|
| Prime Minister | Clement Attlee |
| Preceded by | Kenneth Lindsay |
| Succeeded by | William Ross |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Clarice Marion McNab 22 October 1883 Leith, near Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 27 October 1946 (aged 63) Troon, Scotland |
| Political party | Labour |
Clarice Marion Shaw (née McNab; 22 October 1883 – 27 October 1946) was a Labour Party politician and Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom.
She was born at 10 Morton Street, Leith, near Edinburgh, Scotland, on 22 October 1883, the eldest daughter of Thomas Charles McNab, a wire-cloth weaver, and his wife, Mary Deas Fraser. Her father was a high-profile figure in local politics, including being a director of Leith's co-operative association, and played a large part in moulding Clarice's radical and political beliefs in Labour politics.
Clarice combined an interest in education and socialism from an early stage. Inspired by Keir Hardie's published views on religious education, she was a founder member of the Glasgow Socialist Sunday School in the 1890s. After training as a music teacher, at about the age of twenty she began teaching in an elementary school in Leith and became an advocate of the state provision for improved medical and welfare services for schoolchildren. Her election to the Leith school board in April 1922 indicated her ambitions in local government, which were enhanced by her activities in the Women's Labour League—an organisation focusing on the employment and pay of female workers. Her radical approach towards women's rights, which included campaigning for the extension of job opportunities for girls after school, broadened into urging the abolition of children's employment and raising the school leaving age to sixteen. Unlike many of her peers Clarice displayed clear political ambitions.
By 1913 she had joined the Labour Party, partly out of support for socialist principles, but also as a route into local politics. In November 1913 she was elected to Leith Town Council, giving her the distinction of being the first Labour woman member of a town council in Scotland. As a councillor she took a personal interest in medical and child welfare issues. In 1916 she was appointed as the Women's Labour League representative to attend meetings of the Scottish Executive Committee of the Labour Party. There she met, worked with, and eventually married in Edinburgh in July 1918, Benjamin Howard Shaw, first Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party. The couple complemented each other in terms of political ideas and tastes, teetotalism, and temperance reform. Both she and Ben Shaw were also closely associated with the Glasgow Socialist Sunday School, of which Clarice was the national president for twenty-five years. The marriage did not produce any children. In 1921 they moved to Troon. She was subsequently a member of Troon Town Council and Ayrshire County Council, and during the next twenty years she fulfilled a number of roles in civic administration, continuing her educational campaign and serving as a JP. She was appointed a member of the Scottish Food Council, the price regulation committee for Scotland, and the 1928 Royal Commission on Educational Endowments in Scotland. Twice—in 1929 and 1931—she unsuccessfully fought Ayr Burghs at the general election.
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