Nancy Astor Facts & Worksheets

• Another slogan she used was, ‘If you want a party hack, do not elect me.’ Between the two world wars, the halo effect of women assuming their husband’s parliamentary office resulted in the election of ten women MPs, or nearly one-third of the women elected to Parliament. Astor was the first woman to be elected through this process. The majority of individuals believe that the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which was associated with the partial female vote, granted women the right to become MPs. It did not. One of the shortest acts in British parliamentary history, which contained only 28 words, was passed months later, enabling women to become full members of the polity.
• The most public phase of Astor’s existence was her parliamentary career. She attracted attention as a woman and as an individual who defied convention, a characteristic that was frequently attributed to her American upbringing. She was summoned to order for conversing with a fellow House member on her first day in the House of Commons, unaware that she was the one who was causing the disturbance. She acquired the ability to dress more modestly and circumvented the bars and smoking rooms that the males frequented.
• During the initial months of her first tenure, MP Horatio Bottomley was determined to dominate the soldier’s friend issue and, perceiving her as an impediment, attempted to undermine her political career. He exploited her opposition to divorce reform and her efforts to preserve wartime alcohol restrictions. Bottomley depicted her as a hypocrite due to her divorce. He stated that the reform measure she opposed would enable women to obtain the same type of divorce as she had in the United States. Later, Bottomley was incarcerated for fraud, a circumstance that Astor exploited in subsequent campaigns.
• Astor’s contributions to the House of Commons were relatively insignificant. Although she defended her seat in five consecutive elections during the 1920s, she never held a position of significant influence or a ministerial position, despite the fact that she was in the Commons during the tenure of four Conservative Prime Ministers. Before Lady Astor, the Duchess of Atholl (who was elected to Parliament in 1923, four years after Lady Astor) achieved greater prominence within the Conservative Party. Astor believed that exercising her right to critique her party’s governance would be diminished if she were granted a more prominent position within the party.
• Astor delivered her inaugural speech on 24 February 1920 in front of a crowd of more than 500 male MPs, the majority of whom were hostile. The necessity for restrictions on the sale of alcohol was a subject that was significant to her. Her speech underscored the economic burden on the nation and the harm it inflicted on women and children.
• In 1923, she introduced the Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Persons under Eighteen) Bill, which was the first Private Member’s Bill passed and enacted as an Act of Parliament by a woman. The objective of the Bill was to increase the legal drinking age in public establishments from 14 to 18. The Bill was frequently referred to as Lady Astor’s Bill. It was given this appellation in order to be employed as an electoral strategy against her. To this day, alcohol is not sold to individuals under the age of 18. 
• Lady Astor experienced personal and professional challenges during the 1930s. She secured a razor-thin victory over the Labour candidate in 1929. Bobby Shaw, her son from her first marriage, was apprehended in 1931 for homosexual offences. Astor’s friend Kerr, who is currently the 11th Marquess of Lothian, suggested that the arrest might catalyse her son to alter his behaviour, as he had previously demonstrated a proclivity for alcoholism and instability. However, Kerr was mistaken.
• Astor delivered a disastrous speech in which he claimed that the Australian national cricket team had vanquished England’s national cricket team due to alcohol consumption. The statement was met with objections from both the English and Australian representatives. Almost until the conclusion of her career, Astor was unaware of her increasing unpopularity.
• Although his nonconformity caused friction between them, Astor’s friendship with George Bernard Shaw assisted her in overcoming some of her challenges. Their temperaments were markedly different, and they maintained opposing political perspectives. Nevertheless, her political career was impeded by his propensity to make controversial statements or place her in embarrassing situations. 
• Following Bobby Shaw’s detention, Gertrude Ely, a Pennsylvania Railroad heiress from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, extended an invitation to Lady Astor and Bobby to participate in a guided tour of Moscow. Her political career was adversely affected by public statements made by her and her son during this period. Astor frequently disparaged the Soviet Union due to her disapproval of Communism, despite the fact that her son made numerous flattering statements about the country. During a meeting, she explicitly enquired of Joseph Stalin as to why he had killed so many Russians. However, her criticisms were generally interpreted as less challenging statements.

ASTOR DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

• Astor was an opponent of socialism and, later in the Cold War, an outspoken critic of communism. She was also an opponent of fascism. She declined to meet with Adolf Hitler despite the fact that she had the opportunity to do so. Waldorf Astor was persuaded that Hitler was insane after meeting with him to discuss the treatment of Christian Scientists.
• The Astors, despite their opposition to fascism and the Nazis, advocated for economic appeasement of Germany, which involved the removal of economic sanctions against Hitler’s regime.
• Astor’s morale-boosting visits to her constituents, particularly during German bombing missions, were particularly noteworthy during the Second World War. She narrowly avoided being struck once. Additionally, she unofficially acted as a hostess to American personnel stationed at Plymouth in the lead-up to the Normandy invasion.

LATER YEARS, DEATH AND LEGACY OF NANCY ASTOR

• Astor was of the opinion that her spouse and her political party precipitated her retirement in 1945. Her husband declared that the family would not endorse her if she ran for office again, as the Conservatives perceived her as a political liability during the final years of the Second World War. According to contemporary accounts, she conceded, but she was also irritated and furious about her circumstances. 
• She remained a witty and keen critic of social and political trends when she disapproved, including of both communism and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunts in the United States. Astor experienced an increase in her isolation following 1956. She was awarded the Freedom of the City of Plymouth in 1959. She was not well-acclimatised to widowhood by this time, as she had lost all of her sisters and siblings, her colleague Red Ellen Wilkinson in 1947 and George Bernard Shaw in 1950. After Waldorf Astor died in 1952, she mainly withdrew from public life. On 2 May 1964, Nancy Astor passed away.
• Astor’s tenure in Parliament was not marked by significant accomplishments or significant influence; she did not hold any government positions or achieve any legislative accomplishments during her tenure. However, the fact that she was the first woman to serve in that legislative body had a significant impact.