Frida Laski

Frida Kerry Laski (6 August 1884 – 31 July 1977) was a British suffragist, birth control advocate, and eugenicist.

Born in Suffolk, England Winifred Mary (Frida) Kerry, the daughter of Francis John Kerry of Acton Hall, Suffolk, a member of the British gentry, met future Labour Party chairman and political science professor Harold Laski in Halesowen, where she was working as a physiotherapist and masseuse and he was recovering from surgery. After a brief courtship, Frida Kerry and Harold Laski, who was Jewish, ignored their family's objections and eloped to Scotland in 1911. She was 8 years older than him.

It was apparently a happy marriage, due in part to the couple shared beliefs in eugenics or the belief that the human race could be improved by improving its genetic qualities through conscious reproduction and socialism. Both were also political activists, with Frida Laski especially active in feminist causes including suffrage and birth control. In 1920, she also converted to Judaism to please her husband's family but she remained an atheist throughout her life. They collaborated on several projects including the English translation of Léon Duguit's Law in the Modern State (1919).

After a stint at Oxford where Harold Laski got his degree, the couple moved to Montreal, where he had a lectureship at McGill University. They had one child, a daughter, Diana (1916-1969). In 1917, the family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harold taught at Harvard. In 1920, the Laskis moved back to London, where Harold Laski taught at the London School of Economics and Frida Laski became active in birth control work. She helped form the Workers' Birth Control Group (WBCG) with Dora Russell, Stella Browne and Dorothy Thirtle in 1924. In 1932 she became active in the Birth Control International Information Centre as a member of its London Council. In 1934 she threw herself into politics, working in Fulham for the Labour Party, and agitating for the adoption of birth control into the Party members' platforms. In 1936 she became one of the founders of the Abortion Law Reform Association.

After spending the autumn of 1938 through the summer of 1939 in the United States, as Harold Laski took a temporary post at the University of Washington, the couple returned to Cambridge, England to which the London School of Economics was evacuated during World War II.

After Harold Laski died in 1950, Frida Laski devoted herself to Third World issues, focusing particularly on hunger. She died in London on July 31, 1977 at age 93.

Sources

  • Frida K. Laski Oral History Interview - JFK #1, 8/5/1966, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
  • Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists. Volume Two: A supplement, 1900-1945 (New York, 1990)
  • Lamb, Peter.Harold Laski: Problems of Democracy, The Sovereign State, and International Society (New York, 2004)
  • Laski, Frida. 'Rewarding Experiment,' The Times (London, England), Aug 06, 1958; pg. 9.
  • Martin, Kingsley. Harold Laski (1893-1950: A Biographical Memoir (New York, 1953)
  • Newman, Michael. 'Laski, Harold Joseph (1893–1950)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 , <accessed May 3, 2013>)
  • Obituary. The Times (London, England), Aug 10, 1977; pg. 16.
  • Papers of Harold and Frida Laski, 1910-1969, Hull History Centre (Hull University Archives)
  • Harold Laski to Roscoe Pound, Dec. 28, 1920, Correspondence 1920, Roscoe Pound Papers, Manuscript Division, Harvard University
  • Rubinstein, David. Frida Laski 1884-1977: feminism, socialism and the developing world (London, 2003).
  • John Saville. "Mrs Frida Laski." Times [London, England] 10 Aug. 1977; pg. 16.
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