Ganley , Caroline Selena , 1879-1966 , co-operative movement activist and politician

Born, 1879, East Stonehouse, Plymouth; attended Plymouth church and national schools, and Ottershaw School, Chertsey; married James William Henry Ganley, a tailor's cutter, July 1901; lived in Westminster before settling in Battersea, raising two sons and a daughter; active in left-wing politics in opposition to the Second South African War, and in response to the poor social conditions of the working-class communities in which she lived; joined the Social Democratic Federation in 1906, campaigned for the suffrage, and was instrumental in setting up a socialist women's circle in Battersea and developing it into a branch of the Women's Labour League (later the Labour Party women's sections); in 1914 she was involved in the British Committee of the International Congress, anti-war suffragists who detached themselves from the more patriotic National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies to work with European women for peace. After the war, she continued to campaign for citizenship rights; joined the Co-operative and Labour parties, and in November 1919 won a seat on Battersea Borough Council; chaired the health committee, and it was mainly through her efforts that a well-equipped maternity home was opened in Battersea in 1921; became one of the first women magistrates in London, 1920, and for twenty years sat in juvenile courts; served as a London County Councillor and as a member of the London County Education Committee; in the 1930s sought nomination as a Co-operative Party candidate; elected Co-operative-Labour MP for Battersea South; defeated in 1951 general election; CBE in 1953; re-elected to Battersea Borough Council, 1953-1965; widely active within the co-operative movement and was an elected director of the West London Society from 1918, and after its merger with the London Society in 1921, of the London Co-operative Society, which position she retained until 1946; became the first woman president of the London Co-operative Society, 1942; belonged to the Lavender Hill branch of the Women's Co-operative Guild and held a number of official positions in the Guild's national committee structure including a place on the south-eastern sectional council; died, Battersea, Aug 1966.