Helen Crawfurd (née Jack, later Anderson; 9 November 1877 – 18 April 1954) was a Scottish suffragette, rent strike organiser, Communist activist and politician.

[8] George Anderson died on 2 February 1952 and Crawfurd two years later at Mahson Cottage, Kilbride Avenue, Dunoon, Argyll, aged 76.

[13] In 1912, Crawfurd smashed the windows of Jack Pease, Minister for Education, and received a one-month prison sentence.

[14] But after one further arrest, Crawfurd left the WSPU in protest at its support of the First World War and in 1914 she joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP).

Both women travelled the length and breadth of Scotland to inform the public that fighting in the war was not the exciting adventure their sons, husbands and fathers had been sold; they were, as Dollan describes, being ‘consumed as common fodder.’[22]  The emotional nature of their speeches convinced women to become members of the WPC and, in turn, learn about the wider Clydeside movement.

Open-air and public hall meetings frequented almost every town and village and they drew in large audiences; up to 5000 women demonstrated in Glasgow Green for anti-war and anti-conscription rallies.

[25] Klasko also recalls her attendance at the WPC demonstrations, she states that she was anti-war and anti-conscription and participated in the discussions at a young age.

She remembers candidly some older demonstrators quieting the crowd to ‘let the wee lassie speak.’[26] It is recollections such as these that truly highlight the collective effervescence of the movement.

In 1918, Crawfurd was elected as vice-chair of the Scottish division of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and was said to be a convincing speaker when she spoke in the Market Place at the branch meeting in Loftus.

Crawford went to Moscow in 1920, with Marjory Newbold, Sylvia Pankhurst, Willie Gallacher and others for the Congress of the Third Communist International and interviewed Lenin.

[6][34] Helen Crawfurd (by then Mrs Anderson) died in 1954 at Mahson Cottage, Kilbride Avenue, Dunoon, Argyll, aged 76.