Activists of Our Past

By Florence Boyle

Perhaps you know some of the streets in Whitecrook are named after former councillors.

But what many don’t know is that Lappin Street is named after Clydebank’s first woman councillor.

Isabella, “Bella” Lappin (1880 1961), is a case study in how quickly and completely women can disappear from history.

A contemporary of Mary Barbour, heroine of the Govan Rent Strike, it bears noting that Bella was elected as a councillor before her.

In 1919 a suffragist periodical, estimated that in Scotland around a dozen women, had stood for office in the recent burgh elections.

These were the first elections held after the right to vote had been extended to include (some) women.

The opening paragraph could have been written today.

“Comparatively few women offered themselves for election…”, indeed, so few they could list them by name without taking up too much space.

In the 1919 elections Bella stood under the banner of the Independent Labour Party (the party of the Red Clydesiders) and was elected as councillor for Clydebank’s Fourth ward.

Janet Rae, heroine of the 1911 Singer’s strike, became the more well-known female politician and for whatever reason Bella Lappin’s story has been squeezed out, although her service to the town was more comprehensive and enduring.

Born in 1880 on the southside of Glasgow, Bella Williams, met and married her husband, William in Clydebank in 1909.

Both gave addresses a few doors down from each other in Trafalgar Street, Dalmuir.

Bella worked in the fishmonger, William as a grocer, both for the Co-operative.

Writing in the Clydebank Post in 1984, Finlay Hart legendary local politician and activist, remembered Bella’s service, recalling that in 1936 when she was the only female councillor
“she was very able and had no inhibitions about being the only female in the company of 19 males.”

Hart also expressed the opinion that “women make very good councillors” - a statement which bears repeating when in Scotland today only just over a third of councillors are women.

Bella Lappin was involved in health, education and Labour politics.

She was on the Executive of the Scottish Labour Party, played a leading role in the Women’s Guilds of the Co-operative movement, served on the County Education Committee and became a magistrate.

In the 1920s she was also front and centre in the Clydebank Rent Strike and travelled to Westminster to lobby the government for a reduction in rent.

At that time Clydebank burgh tenants paid the highest average rent in Scotland.

In 1948 400 people gathered in Clydebank Town Hall to celebrate Davie Kirkwood’s 25th anniversary as an MP.

Among the speeches of congratulations, there was a single woman speaker, Bella Lappin, who had been among Kirkwood’s first supporters.

Bella died in 1961.

Her husband and only son predeceased her.

She deserves to be better known and celebrated.

Become a Clydesider member here: Join Clydesider Community Magazine's Membership