Frida Stewart

Frida Stewart, the daughter of the Dean of Trinity College, was born in Cambridge on 11th November, 1910. Her mother had been an early student of Newnham College.

She was educated at Perse School but ill-health meant that she spent a lot of time away from school. Later she studied violin at the Royal College of Music.

Frida developed radical political views while working with the unemployed in Manchester. "At first it was difficult to get used to the monotony of the streets, the fog, the soot, the whole murk-ridden atmosphere; it could hardly have been more different from Cambridge.... That grimness, those smokey black gaunt industrial buildings looming out of the mist and the rain above row upon row of small grimy dwellings." However, she admitted that "I well realised though, that for me there was always an escape from the darkness to the green radiance of Cambridge." Frida also taught evening classes in the surrounding rural areas.

In 1936 she joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. This was partly because of the Spanish Civil War and the creation of the International Brigades. "I decided to go the whole hog and join the Communist Party because I knew about the International Brigades and they were the kind of people that I admired."

In 1936 Frida established Aid Spain Committees in Hull and York. The following year she joined the Spanish Medical Aid Committee and drove an ambulance in Spain. She also worked in a children's hospital for refugees in Murcia. She remained in the country until the International Brigades were withdrawn at the end of 1938. Frida then went to France to help in the refugee camps.

Frieda grew increasingly concerned about Adolf Hitler and his government in Nazi Germany. She totally opposed the British government's policy of appeasement and in 1938, her friend, Katharine Stewart-Murray, resigned her seat at Kinross and West Perthshire and sought re-election on this issue. Frieda was one of those who helped her during the campaign: "Her Grace was very calm and dignified under the strain, which must have been considerable; she had never been seriously opposed before in the feudal area, and the challenge was for her as much personal as political. In fact it was not. The challenge was one of principle against a whole party-political machine; and the Tories were determined that they were not going to be put in their place by one dissident individual, whatever her title. The Perthshire Conservatives rallied as never before to the true blue flag, and made sure their labourers and employers did the same. their cars were everywhere, taking farm workers to the polls, with the hidden implication that they must vote the conformist ticket or else." It was therefore not surprising that Stewart-Murray lost by 1,313 votes to the official Conservative Party candidate.

At the start of the Second World War she was still in France helping the refugees. She was arrested by the Gestapo in Paris but after a year in prison she escaped with the help of the French Resistance. Frida worked with the Free French in London and in 1944 married the microbiologist, B. C. Knight. Over the next few years she had four children.

After the war she was active in the peace movement. This included the founding of the Cambridge Cuba Solidarity Campaign. The author of several books, she was working on her memoirs when she died in 1996.

Primary Sources

(1) Freida Stewart, British Women and the Spanish Civil War (2002)

Her Grace was very calm and dignified under the strain, which must have been considerable; she had never been seriously opposed before in the feudal area, and the challenge was for her as much personal as political. In fact it was not. The challenge was one of principle against a whole party-political machine; and the Tories were determined that they were not going to be put in their place by one dissident individual, whatever her title. The Perthshire Conservatives rallied as never before to the true blue flag, and made sure their labourers and employers did the same. their cars were everywhere, taking farm workers to the polls, with the hidden implication that they must vote the conformist ticket or else.