The League seeks to defend the UK's independence and constitution, to promote Christian values, and to discourage excessive state control.
Crisp was subject of a patronising article referring to her as "the buxom, brown-eyed, voluble little woman", by Gordon Beckles,[3][4] published in the 12 July 1947 issue of Leader Magazine[5] under the title of "Housewife of England!".
[7] After the Attlee government the League declined in numbers but continued, opposing the European Economic Community and the permissive society while supporting apartheid-era South Africa.
[8] At its peak the League claimed over 100,000 members,[9] and their collective voice was felt in many rallies against post war bread rationing.
Meat, bacon, butter, sugar, eggs, tea, cheese, milk, sweets, clothes, petrol were all still restricted.
As one woman expressed it, ‘the last election was lost mainly in the queue at the butcher's or the grocer's'[11] During the spring and summer of 1946 intense opposition to bread rationing was led by the Conservative Party, which doubted that the policy was really necessary and that substantial savings in wheat could be made.
The landslide election victory of the Labour (Attlee) Government in 1945, led the private sector into a series of propaganda campaigns about the threat of nationalisation.
People flocked to the cinema to watch newsreels with the latest information or for feature films which allowed them to escape the oppression and austerity of the war for a few hours.
As a number of newsreels from Pathé News illustrate, many women felt empowered to protest at the continued government restrictions and hardship that existed in the immediate post-war years.
In July 1946, the newsreel featured a demonstration against bread rationing organised by the British Housewives' League in Trafalgar Square, London.
Mrs Hilda Davis, is named as leading a group setting up a petition against the rationing, calling on an "army of indignant housewives".
The film then shows the Food Minister, John Strachey speaking about improved prospects for North American crops, on his return from the US.
"Vicar's wife and food crusader" Mrs Lovelock is then seen addressing a group of women at a meeting of the British Housewives' League.
Struggling against the driving rain, only one succeeded; Mrs Beatrice Palmer, of Sidcup, tucked her National Registration Identity Card in a coffee tin and lit it.
The British Housewives' League still existed in 2000[19] and attempted to show that excessive control by the state is not in the interest of a free and happy home-life, or the development of personality in accordance with Christian tradition.