Margaret Haig Mackworth, 2nd Viscountess Rhondda (née Thomas; 12 June 1883 – 20 July 1958) was a Welsh peeress, businesswoman, magazine proprietor, and suffragette.

Despite her tutors providing positive feedback on her academic progress, she returned to Llanwern to live with her family after two terms, then ‘came out’ to society as a debutante.

[1] Working for her father at the Consolidated Cambrian company headquarters in Cardiff Docks, she earned a salary of £1,000, which was a significant sum at that time.

This activity saw her attend protest marches with the Pankhurst family, address the Liberal Club in Merthyr Tydfil with Annie Kenney,[1] and endure an attack from a crowd after she attempted to stop the prime minister's car.

After she tried to ignite a Royal Mail letter-box with a chemical bomb,[4] she was arrested and sentenced to a period of imprisonment, ended by her going on hunger strike.

[5] Despite her imprisonment, Thomas remained committed to the women's suffrage movement, considering it a draught of fresh air in what she described as her "padded, stifled life.

Her father and his secretary made it onto a lifeboat since they had been blown overboard, but she spent a long period in clinging to a piece of board before she was rescued by the Irish trawler "Bluebell", as recalled in her 1933 autobiography, This Was My World.

[2] After her father's death, Lady Rhondda subsequently tried to take his seat in the House of Lords by citing the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 which allowed women to exercise "any public office".

Most of her business interests were in coal, steel and shipping via Consolidated Cambrian Ltd. She was passionate about increasing the number of women in the corporate world, and was one of the best-known businesswoman in Britain.

[15][2] In 1918, Rhondda lobbied for the government's proposed Ministry of Health to have women properly represented by an all-woman advisory council, and she formed a Watching Group to monitor progress.

[2] In 1920, Rhondda took advantage of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 to become one of the first four women justices of the peace in the County of Monmouth though she did not sit often.

As such, in 1929 she led a deputation to the Home Secretary asking him to repeal the Factory and Workshop Act 1901 which prevented women taking well-paid jobs in mining and other industries.

She knew that most weekly reviews lost money, but accepted this as the price of getting at the "keystone people", the inner group in society who influenced the general public.

[2] In 1928, Rhondda gave the journal an enhanced literary focus, publishing more book reviews and work by modern women novelists including Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Rebecca West.

[18] The group's manifesto of equal rights for women within the workplace and for mothers and children sought the following: These were issues which had not been covered by the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and which Rhondda believed to be easily understandable and attainable.

In 1926 Rhondda focussed the Six Point Group on equal rights and led it in a new campaign to complete the enfranchisement of women, starting with a mass demonstration in Hyde Park.

Further demonstrations, meetings and lobbying followed until the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act 1928 finally gave women over twenty-one the vote on the same terms as men.

[15] Her name and picture (and those of 58 other women's suffrage supporters) are on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, unveiled in 2018.