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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Royal Mail stamps honour "Women of distinction" but not without courting controversy over the choices.

The new stamps from the Royal Mail hounour 6 modern women of distinction:
1st class - Millicent Garrett Fawcett
Millicent Garrett was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England. As a suffragist, she took a moderate line, but was a tireless campaigner, concentrating much of her energy on the struggle to improve women's opportunities for higher education. In 1871, she co-founded Newnham College, Cambridge. She later became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (the NUWSS), a position she held from 1897 until 1919.

48p - Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, LSA, MD (June 9, 1836 - December 17, 1917), was an English physician and feminist, the first woman to gain a medical qualification in Britain.

50p - Marie Stopes
Marie Stopes (October 15, 1880 - October 2, 1958) was a Scottish author, eugenicist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. Stopes edited the journal Birth Control News which gave anatomically explicit advice, and in addition to her enthusiasm for protests at places of worship this provoked protest from both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. Her sex manual Married Love, which was written while she was still a virgin, was controversial and influential.

56p - Eleanor Rathbone
Eleanor Florence Rathbone (May 12, 1872 - January 2, 1946) was an Independent British Member of Parliament and long-term campaigner for women's rights.

72p - Claudia Jones
Claudia Jones (February 15, 1915-December 24, 1964) was born in Belmont, Port of Spain, Trinidad. She was a feminist, Black Nationalist, political activist, community leader, journalist, and communist in the U.S.. She is also remembered in the UK as 'the mother of Notting Hill Carnival'. As a result of the post-war cocoa price crash in Trinidad, when she was eight years old, she moved to Harlem, New York. She went on to win the Theodore Roosevelt Award for Good Citizenship at her junior high school.

81p - Barbara Castle
Barbara Castle (October 6, 1910 - May 3, 2002) was a British left-wing politician, born in Chesterfield, Derbyshire (and brought up in Pontefract and Bradford, Yorkshire), who adopted her family's politics, joining the Labour Party. Elected to Parliament in 1945, she rose to become one of the most important Labour party politicians of the twentieth century.

but the choice of Marie Stopes has caused some controversy.
Find out more here on the politics of stamps.

What do you think? Are these women deserving of having their heads on stamps or were there better choices available?

Good to see Barbara Castle, always one of my favourite politicians!

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They sound good to me. Not that I'm complaining but why are they all so liberal and left-wing? Marie Stopes is my favourite BTW.
Nah.. I don't approve of Marie Stopes either.
She certainly wasn't an angel.. and was also a member of the Eugenics Society which had very fascistic genetic ideas.. In fact when Stopes died in 1958, she left a substaintial amount to the society and in doing so, cut her son out of the will.. Because he had married a woman who 'wore glasses' and who was therefore genetically deficient!!

The reasoning for the family planning ideas was to stop the 'underling' working classes reproducing too much.. and had nothing.. repeat nowt.. to do with the emancipation of women!!

Therefore she doesn't get my vote..

ediT: Oh I just saw your link... therefore I needn't have written this..
+1 for Barbara Castle. She was great. Blackburn is my home town and we're proud of her.

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