Spartacus Blog

100 Greatest Britons

In 2002 BBC television carried out a poll to discover whom the United Kingdom public considered the 100 Greatest Britons in history. When the result was published it included only 13 women. Three of the women were current members of the royal family. It also included two other strange choices, the actress Julie Andrews (59th) and the author J. K. Rowling (83rd).

Emmeline Pankhurst did make the top 100 but there was no place for other more important figures in the struggle for women's suffrage such as Millicent Fawcett, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Lydia Becker, Charlotte Despard and Teresa Billington-Greig. One wonders if this is a class issue. Mrs. Pankhurst gave up the struggle after middle-class women over 30 got the vote with the passing of the Qualification of Women Act. Why was Eleanor Rathbone not on the list? She was the leader of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC) who carried on the fight for getting the vote for women on the same terms as men.

The 87 men on the list were helped by the emphasis placed on certain areas such as military leaders (12) and politicians (10). In an area where women tend to do well, social reformers, there were only two women named, Florence Nightingale (52nd) and Marie Stopes (100th). Other great social reformers such as Dorothea Beale, Annie Besant, Catherine Booth, Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Fry, Emily Hobhouse, Sophia Jex-Blake and Caroline Norton, are all missing.

It is not only women who suffer if they are considered to be social reformers. Apart from Tom Paine (34th) those who struggled to win the vote for men are also ignored. This includes Jeremy Bentham, William Blake, Lord Byron, Richard Carlile, William Cobbett, Erasmus Darwin, William Hazlitt, Henry Hetherington, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Priestley, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Richard Sheridan, who also achieved great things in other areas such as philosophy, science and the arts.

The Conservative politician, William Wilberforce (28th) is on the list to represent those who campaigned against the slave-trade. However, those women who opposed slavery such as Elizabeth Heyrick, Anne Knight, Mary Lloyd, Hannah More, Sophia Sturge, Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Pease, Mary Anne Rawson, Jane Smeal, Lucy Townsend and Annabella Byron, are not there. Those men who were more important than Wilberforce in the struggle to end the trade, for example, Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp, do not appear.

Entrepreneurs also do badly. Only Richard Branson (85th) appears on the list. None of those early businessmen who were at the forefront of the industrial revolution are included. What is more, most of those who should have been included, were also social reformers. This includes Matthew Boulton, John Fielden, Robert Owen, Titus Salt, Josiah Wedgwood and John Wilkinson.

Over the next few months I will be compiling an alternative 100 Greatest Britons. The list will be made up of 50 men and 50 women. My main objective will be to select people who made an important contribution to making life better for the majority of our citizens. I have collected together the names of 100 women that I will be choosing from.