Hilda Selwyn-Clarke was active in the Independent Labour Party in the 1930s. She stood for the ILP in the Clapham constituency in the 1931 General Election, achieving second place. In 1935 she abandoned her political career to marry Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke. Their daughter Mary was born in September of the next year.
She came to Hong Kong in 1938 when her husband was appointed Director of Medical Services and soon became one of the most prominent members of the Colony's small group of far left activists, whose focus was on improving the position of the Chinese majority, especially its poorer members, and supporting China in its war with Japan.
She was active in the Hong Kong Eugenics League, which sought to better the lives of the poor through birth control. In June 1938 Soong Ching Ling (Madame Sun Yat-sen) founded the China Defence League to provide aid for China in its war with Japan, and Hilda Selwyn-Clarke became its Honorary Secretary.
She avoided being sent away as part of the evacuation of women and children in 1940. During the hostilities she worked as a dispenser at the War Memorial Hospital and during the Japanese occupation she took part in her husband's campaign of humanitarian relief. She was sent to Stanley soon after his arrest on May 2, 1943. On December 6, 1944 she and her daughter were moved to Mau Ta-wai Camp; her husband joined them two days later, and they spent the rest of the war there.
After the war she was active in the decolonisation movement and became a Labour Party member on the London County Council, representing Fulham East.
She died, after some years of disability, in late 1967.
In 1947 James Bertram, who'd worked with her in the China Defence League, wrote:
(S)he was the only Englishwoman in Hong Kong to use her social position all the way in behalf of the struggle of the Chinese people. And position alone would have meant very little without her own individual gifts of energy and organization.
Sources:
ILP, marriage, giving birth, wartime experiences, death: Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, Footprints, 1975, 52-3; 71; 93; 144-145
Eugenics: Paul Gillingham, At The Peak, 1983, 82
China Defence League: http://www.cwi.org.cn/zfh/node51/node1074/node1076/node1112/u1a3277251.html
(includes photo)
Wartime dispenser: James Bertram, Beneath The Shadow, 1947, 73
Fulham East: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_London_County_Council_1949%E2%80%931965
Bertram: James Bertram, Beneath The Shadow, 1947, 62-63
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Comments
There's an intriguing item in
There's an intriguing item in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle for January 2 (p. 5), 1942 that tells us a little more about Hilda Selwyn-Clarke.
It's headed 'Woman Stays On in Hong Kong' and it tells us that the politician Fenner Brockway has released a statement saying that she had declined to leave Hong Kong for the second time. The first time was when she (controversially) dodged evacuation in the summer of 1940 by slipping over to Canton, but this must refer to a previously unknown offer to get her (probably with her daughter Mary and perhaps with her husband Selwyn) out of Hong Kong during the hostilities. But when and how? In the first days after the attack CNAC flew some distinguished Chinese people out of the Colony, but seats were so hard to come by that even an (American) relative of a senior CNAC executive was left behind. She obviously wouldn't have been a candidate for 'the Great Evasion' - the Christmas Day break-out led by Admiral Chan Chak. So presumably some other arrangement was offered and declined, and somehow news of this was sent out of Hong Kong and back to the UK.
The article also tells us that she was at one time a school teacher in Manchester, and that she was better known by her maiden than by her married name.
Fenner Brockway was the former boss of Hilda Browning (as she then was) when she was involved in British politics. He was a very distinguished figure on the left of the Labour Party and later M.P. for Slough, and finally Baron Brockway. It's interesting that she was still in touch with him.
The first 90 seconds of this video features Hilda in action during the Clapham election campaign of 1931, when she stood for the Independent Labour Party, a grouping to the left of the Labour Party with which Fenner Brockway was also involved (she walks in front of the accordion player and then delivers a speech standing on a chair:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rarGiQB07Z
This photo was taken on October 16, 1931, which might be the same date as the video:
http://portal.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/2024904/photography_Provide…
Lady Hilda Selwyn-Clarke Picture 1952
The National Portrait Gallery has two pictures of Lady Hilda -