Mrs Teresa Billington-Greig

Other sources: http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4769024
https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/activists/teresa-billingtongreig/
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw245349/Teresa-Mary-Billington-Greig?LinkID=mp144816&role=sit&rNo=0
Elizabeth Crawford, The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866?1928 (1999); Teresa Billington-Greig, The Militant Suffrage Movement (1911)

Database linked sources: https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/resource/3229/the-womens-freedom-league
https://www.suffrageresources.org.uk/activity/3203/what-were-the-suffrage-campaigners-fighting-for

Family information: The family were drapers. She married Frederick Greig in 1907.

Additional Information: Teresa joined the WSPU shortly after it was formed in 1903. She had met WSPU leader Emmeline Pankhurst through her work as a teacher with the Education Committee (see Other Activities) and spoke at many Labour meetings, socialist churches and trade unions in Manchester to raise support for women's suffrage. In early 1905, Teresa was asked by Emmeline Pankhurst and Keir Hardie to work as an organiser for the WSPU and the Independent Labour Party (ILP), respectively. Again, she was asked to move to London and work as a WSPU organiser in 1906, where she stayed with Emmeline's daughter Sylvia Pankhurst in Chelsea. In 1906, Teresa led a deputation of women from London's East End to Liberal politician Asquith's house in Cavendish Square, and was arrested in subsequent scuffles. She was sentenced to two months' imprisonment in Holloway but her fine was paid anonymously and so she was quickly released. She was nevertheless the first suffragette prisoner. During a spell organising in Scotland in 1906 (when the WSPU headquarters were moved from Manchester to London), Teresa returned to the city to take part in a deputation at the opening of Parliament and, with others, was arrested and sentenced to two months in Holloway Prison. Teresa was increasingly disillusioned with the dictatorial, rather than democratic, way that the Pankhursts were running the WSPU and she resigned as a WSPU organiser in 1907 (though she still performed honorary duties for them). Together with another disaffected WSPU member, Charlotte Despard, Teresa formed a breakaway society, the Women's Freedom League (WFL), in 1907, becoming its national honorary organising secretary. However, she resigned in 1910, upset by the upturn in militancy, and instead furthered her rational view of the votes for women cause through a series of publications and lectures. The most important of these, 'The Militant Suffrage Movement' (1911), broke many of the myths built up around the WSPU by some of its more fanatical members. She picked up her connections with the WFL once more in 1937, working for its Women's Electoral Commission (which, after the Second World War, became Women of Westminster).

Other Suffrage Activities: Teresa founded the Manchester branch of the Equal Pay League in 1904, acting as its first honorary secretary. It was the first feminist pressure group working within the National Union of Teachers. She later became disillusioned with most reforming organisations, including the Labour Party, for whom she had previously worked. During and after the war, she worked for her husband's billiard-table-making firm, and in the 1920s founded the Women's Billiards Association. She later became an honorary secretary of the Sports Fellowship, which sought to interest underprivileged girls in athletics. She also became involved in the Six Point Group, a feminist society that pushed for changes to the law in Britain in six key areas affecting women.