Shena Simon became a Manchester citizen in 1912 aged twenty-eight after meeting and marrying Ernest Simon that same year. Shena’s friend and colleague, the Labour politician and local councillor Mabel Tylecote, noted that when she arrived in the city Shena ‘was beautiful and highly intelligent, already deeply committed to economic studies and social work and had a wide acquaintance among the social and political thinkers of her day’.¹ This commitment to public service ensured Shena became one of the most high-profile members of the Simon family and one of the most influential women to contribute to local government in the early and mid-twentieth century. Shena has largely been remembered for her valuable contributions to education, particularly as the first woman to chair the Manchester Education Committee in 1932, as well as her involvement in developing the Wythenshawe housing estate. Yet, Shena’s commitment to reforming local taxation, and especially through her opposition to the rates system, placed her at the forefront of debates around the design, function and financing of municipal government. Although Shena was unsuccessful in her own lifetime in achieving the repeal of the rates, its replacement by the Poll tax and, subsequently, by Council tax, and ongoing discussions around fiscal devolution, illustrates Shena’s innovative approach and expert understanding of local government.

Born in Croydon to an affluent family, Shena was educated at home before studying economics at Newnham College, Cambridge, from 1904 to 1907. After striking up correspondence with Beatrice Webb, Shena began research on the Labour party at the London School of Economics in 1907. This project remained unfinished, however, as she became drawn into work investigating the sweated industries, visited Australia and New Zealand to study their use of wage boards, and campaigned with the social reformer Margaret MacDonald. She first visited Manchester to stay with her friend, the feminist and family planning campaigner Eva Hubback, in 1912. Eva was friends with Ernest’s cousin, Edith Eckhard, who introduced Shena to Ernest. Shena and Ernest married in November 1912, having only met each other seven times before their engagement. Making their home in Didsbury, Manchester, their first child, Roger, was born in October 1913 and their second son, Brian, was born in 1915. Their daughter Antonia was born in 1917 but sadly died aged twelve. Beatrice Webb captured something of their devastation about the tragic loss of Antonia when she recounted a visit from the Simons to her home: ‘E.D. Simon and his wife here for weekend. Broken hearted about the death of a dearly loved child after three or four years slowly developing cancer of the face and hand – eating away the eye and then affecting the brain. But about this they did not speak.’² In light of this unimaginable personal tragedy, Shena’s achievements are only more impressive. She was the Liberal councillor for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy ward from 1924 until 1933 and in 1932 became the first woman chairman of the Manchester Education Committee. She also became chairman of the Rating and Valuation Association in 1955, received the Freedom of Manchester in 1964, and finally retired from the Manchester Education Committee in 1970, just two years before her death.

7.1 Shena in 1912. Source: SSP M14/4/3.

Shena’s success and influence helps to challenge two important gaps in historical scholarship. Firstly, although women were involved in local politics from the late nineteenth century and could stand for elections to borough and county councils from 1907, we know little about their role as municipal politicians. In contrast, there is a broad body of research on the campaign for women’s enfranchisement and on national women’s movements.³ However, scholarship addressing women’s political involvement following their national enfranchisement has centred on women MPs or on forms of activism outside of formal power structures.⁴ The important work of Patricia Hollis remains the only comprehensive account of women’s involvement in local politics and focuses on the pre-1914 period to situate women’s contribution to local government within the wider path to universal suffrage. Hollis argues that women were drawn to local government ‘not only as a place of political power in its own right but as a stepping-stone to national power’.⁵ Shena was known to support women’s suffrage and championed women’s rights more generally; however, her priority was to improve living standards by delivering comprehensive public services that were financially secure. Hollis also suggests that local government provided a more straightforward space for women than national politics as it offered ‘more women’s content’ and ‘they occupied, and clearly felt comfortable in, a semi-detached space of their own’.⁶ Shena’s career and contributions to local politics in Manchester complicates this narrative. Although her work in education and housing could be considered a reflection of women’s domestic role and responsibilities, it was underpinned by her understanding of municipal financial infrastructure. Shena’s largely overlooked contributions in shaping new ideas about local taxation show that women’s contributions in finance and policy need greater acknowledgement.

Secondly, Shena’s career and accomplishments challenge the notion of decline in the strength and role of local government in Britain during the early and mid-twentieth century. Along with the work of her husband, Ernest, Shena’s achievements undermine the assumptions that the contributions of local elites to large municipal projects decreased. Urban historians, such as Simon Gunn and Robert Morris, have emphasised the retreat of the upper middle classes from urban spaces from the early twentieth century and as the working classes increasingly occupied centre stage.⁷ Shena’s focus on housing and education supports more recent research which not only illuminates the strength of civic patriotism and the continued investment of urban elites, but also shows how municipal projects emphasised the importance of local citizenship after 1918. For example, Tom Hulme argues local government’s interwar investment in education was used to foster greater civic duty and suggests the emphasis on teaching ‘civics’ reinforced ‘the relationship between local state, the city, liberty and active citizenship’.⁸ In her own 1938 publication, A Century of City Government, Shena suggested that a ‘serious handicap to good government is the lack of local interest in municipal affairs’. For Shena, citizenship needed to be reciprocal, and she lamented that ‘too many citizens feel they have done all that is required of them when they have paid their rates’.⁹ Hulme’s approach helps to understand Shena’s investment in education as part of a broader civic project to strengthen municipal culture and engender civic patriotism within inhabitants. Similarly, my own research has situated the Wythenshawe housing estate, a project Shena was closely connected to, within a broader period of flourishing civic pride and emphasised its portrayal as a break with the city’s Victorian past and its associations with stark inequalities.¹⁰ Taken together, we can see that Shena’s commitment to local government, public services and tax reform was reflective of her commitment to the strength and autonomy of municipal government and civic citizenship. Although her achievements and the scale of her work were exceptional, Shena was part of a broader movement of civic patriots who contributed to the vitality of municipal culture in the face of increasing centralisation and intervention from central government in mid-twentieth century Britain.¹¹

This chapter therefore examines the career and contributions made by Shena in local government. It draws on the archival collection of Shena’s papers, press coverage (which was almost entirely favourable in the Manchester Guardian, owing to her links with the Scott family) and from biographical studies, such as that written by her daughter-in-law Joan Simon in 1986.¹² It analyses her key achievements and beliefs in relation to housing, education, women’s rights and maternity care and taxation. This assessment of her career, her ideas and the strategies she deployed within these areas, shows historians need to understand more about the contributions of women in local government and illustrates the ongoing commitment to cultures of civic pride by the local elite. However, it also reveals that Shena deserves greater recognition for shaping approaches to public services and their funding. Perhaps by illuminating her achievements we can more comprehensively recognise the role women played to ensure the vitality of local government throughout the twentieth century.

Politics and women’s rights

Shena’s interest in women’s rights was well established by the time she arrived in Manchester. Shena supported female suffrage but did not participate in any militancy herself, owing to her parents’ opposition.¹³ During her postgraduate studies, Shena had been honorary secretary of the Legislation Committee of the National Union of Women Workers when Margaret MacDonald was chairman. Shena also assisted Margaret on a Committee for Safeguarding Women’s Interests in relation to the 1911 National Insurance Act, which Shena criticised for not doing enough for women or for female, casualised, low-paid workers. Yet, when Shena first engaged in Manchester’s public life, ‘she appeared ready to take up an active role in the women’s movement, but adopted a more cautious approach to women’s rights’.¹⁴ In 1913, Shena acknowledged the need to engage with women municipal voters in Didsbury and Withington along nonparty lines as a way to bring about reform on social issues, particularly those impacting women and children. Subsequently, in 1914, she helped to establish the Manchester and Salford Women Citizens Association (WCA). Its purpose focused on ‘“interesting women in the good government of the city” for its sake and theirs’. By 1916, there were twelve branches averaging seventy members, five of which were composed of almost entirely working women, and the association was starting to spread to other cities.¹⁵ It aimed to remain apolitical and their work hoped to ensure that ‘women voters shall realise how much they can do for women and children by pressing for better housing, more efficient cleansing, and more open spaces’ and to encourage women to stand as candidates for the Board of Guardians and the Council.¹⁶ The association was successful and engaged significant numbers of women and, in 1930, 2,000 women attended a gathering for the association at the Town Hall hosted by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Manchester. The Lord Mayor praised the association for ‘doing splendid work in developing the interest of women in civic life and work’.¹⁷

Despite her initial caution, Shena was thrown further into civic and political life in Manchester once Ernest became Lord Mayor in 1921. Shena later recalled that she had found the position of Lady Mayoress surprisingly empowering because it had enabled her ‘to stimulate and encourage those activities’ that she believed ‘to be in the best interest of the city’.¹⁸ She caused significant outcry in December 1921 when she refused to give out the Christmas presents to children at St Mary’s hospital in the city because of its lack of women on the management and staff. The women’s group of the Fabian Society subsequently passed a motion in support of Shena, asserting that it was ‘only through publicity of this nature that women will be able to be helped in their struggle for professional justice’.¹⁹ Shena used her platform as Lady Mayoress to encourage women to contribute to municipal government more fully and to promote the work of the WCA. She argued women’s involvement was key because the rates ‘come out of the family budget, and everyone knew it was the woman who arranged that budget’.²⁰ Shena campaigned successfully with the WCA to improve maternity care and convinced Manchester Corporation to introduce municipal maternity centres. Shena worked with Ernest, who was on the Sanitary Committee, and its chairman, Alderman William Turner Jackson, to establish these centres in 1914–15, with financial support via a grant from central government. Ernest acknowledged the ‘urgent need’ to improve child and maternal health, noting that in 1913 around 2,500 children in Manchester had died before reaching their first birthday.²¹ Shena explained that the centres were ‘the only way to ensure a comprehensive, efficient and permanent scheme’ and ‘because work of such importance to the nation should be paid for out of public funds and administered by councillors responsible to the ratepayers’.²² This approach was part of a broader, gradual shift towards greater state involvement in welfare, facilitated by the Liberal government social reforms.²³ As Manchester Corporation acknowledged, intervention had become more pressing in the context of the death and destruction caused by the First World War.²⁴ The scheme also reflected Shena’s foresight in understanding the need for the local state to invest in local infrastructure to alleviate hardship. It set up a comprehensive system of support starting during pregnancy and ensured ‘the interest of the child will be safeguarded before it is born and right through its infancy and school days’.²⁵ These centres were very successful and, in 1926, Ernest wrote that ‘the scheme has worked excellently’, as infant deaths under the age of one year old had fallen from 173 per thousand between 1901–05, to 96 per thousand for the period, 1920–24.²⁶ Shena also ensured the WCA became a kind of informal pressure group for the treatment of women in hospitals. In 1934, it was represented at the inquiry of a woman who had died shortly after her baby had been born at St Mary’s hospital. The association sent a woman counsel who explained that its members – at that time numbering between 3,000 and 4,000 – ‘had found that public confidence had been disturbed’ by the case and wanted the hospital to provide an explanation ‘so that the confidence of the women of the city should be restored. Confidence was an essential condition to the reduction of maternal mortality.’²⁷ As an example, it provides some sense of Shena’s conception of civic citizenship that was both gendered and also linked to broader kinds of activism and the contribution made by women’s voluntary organisations to the women’s movement more generally after the First World War.²⁸

Shena also conceived of civic citizenship as a way for married women to make positive contributions to society. At a Manchester high school speech day, she said that marriage alone was not enough to be a worthy and productive citizen: ‘any woman who is not doing a full day’s work is a parasite to the community’.²⁹ When Shena was made Freeman of Manchester in 1964, she used her speech to complain about the ‘wastage in not developing the country’s resources of women power’. She stressed that girls who received a grant for training ‘were not entitled morally to throw up their vocation for marriage’, particularly those who were qualified teachers.³⁰ Shena understood the barriers that married women faced in trying to contribute to the public sphere, particularly when they were mothers. Consequently, when asked what her greatest achievement was later in life, she stated that it was her 1928 victory in getting women teachers in Manchester permission to continue working after having children.³¹ The decision was widely celebrated within feminist circles, such as in the periodical the Woman’s Leader and the Common Cause, published by the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship. It praised the work of Shena and her colleague and ally Wright Robinson, for having ‘fought a most excellent fight for the liberties, status, and opportunities of women’.³² Her awareness of women’s roles outside the home also motivated and shaped Shena’s interest in the provision of nursery schools. In 1921, Shena and Ernest provided the use of the house and grounds known as Kirklees in Didsbury for the Education Department to use as a day nursery and she became increasingly committed to the provision of educational spaces for the under-fives.³³

7.2 A news clipping about Shena’s protest at the lack of women managers at St Mary’s hospital. From Daily Sketch (26 November 1921). Source: M14/6/7.

Shena certainly sought to live by her own beliefs. She first stood for local election in Chorlton in 1923. It was a challenging ward to contest, both because of the popularity of the incumbent Conservative candidate and because it was the largest ward in the city with 17,500 voters. Shena ‘fought a hard campaign … and held more meetings than any other candidate in the city’.³⁴ The Manchester Guardian reported Shena’s campaign positively and suggested that ‘bred in a high tradition of social service, a student of local government, a ready, incisive speaker, she would speedily become a distinguished figure in the City Council’.³⁵ Shena lost by just over two hundred votes, a remarkable achievement both in light of the significant challenges of contesting the Chorlton ward and because of the lack of support women candidates generally received, including from the political parties they sought to represent, as ‘women found it hard to be selected for council seats and even harder to win them’.³⁶ The following year, Shena ‘won Chorlton-cum-Hardy brilliantly, with an impressive majority of 579’.³⁷ By 1930, Shena’s majority was over 5,000 and reflected her popularity as a councillor and her visible public presence in municipal politics.³⁸ The main focus of her work within the council was for the Sanitary Committee and the Education Committee and she also became interested in housing. Her biographer and daughter-in-law, Joan Simon, speculated that Shena’s involvement in these three large areas of council business reduced the time she could spend with her constituents, which contributed to her losing her seat in 1933.³⁹

7.3 Shena and Ernest visiting a babies’ hospital (1922). Source: M14/6/7.

7.4 Shena’s campaign pamphlet for the 1924 local elections. Source: SSP M14/6/9.

Despite this long commitment to public service, Shena’s upper-class lifestyle drew criticisms and she and Ernest were often seen as out of touch. Tylecote suggested that the comfort of their surroundings shielded them from the harsh realities of life in interwar Manchester:

Consequently, the privileges afforded by her upper-class life and the sheer scale of her achievements meant Shena was not universally popular and had a reputation for being intimidating and exacting. Tylecote also recalled that ‘there is no doubt that she inspired fear in the hearts of many people, that her criticism could be sharp and her questioning relentless. Inefficiency and indecision annoyed her greatly and she could be persistently argumentative in committee and authoritative in manner.’⁴¹ Yet such anecdotes only help to understand how Shena was able to achieve so much in difficult circumstances. Beatrice Webb described Shena and Ernest as ‘handsome, intellectual and public spirited … This admirable couple have indeed only one defect – they are a little too “superior”; and regard most of their fellows with kindly contempt – especially the wife in her attitude towards her fellow town councillors in general and towards the labour men in particular.’⁴² However, this insight provides some sense of how Shena may have coped with and responded to the inevitable hostility she experienced as one of the few women in local government, particularly one that challenged the views and ideas of so many of the men councillors that she encountered. As Hollis has shown, women found it particularly difficult to win seats on the councils of large city councils such as Manchester, and notes that ‘many people were unpersuaded that council work was suitable work for women’.⁴³ It is difficult to comprehend the kinds of hostility women in the sphere of local politics endured and this makes the scale of Shena’s successes even more notable.

Housing and education

Despite her electoral disappointments, Shena made significant progress in addressing the housing problem. Improving housing was a key aim of the work of the WCA and the Salford branch authored a report into housing in the St Matthias Ward in 1931. Shena moved the adoption on the report at their annual meeting and ‘said that she hoped the Association would continue to agitate about housing until the slum problem of both cities was solved’.⁴⁴ Its annual meeting of 1933 continued this campaign work and Shena’s speech encouraged members to push councillors on the need to build more family houses in Manchester: ‘You will not get people rehoused unless you make a great deal more fuss about it than you do at present.’⁴⁵ Perhaps one of the greatest symbols of interwar civic pride was Ernest and Shena’s purchase of land at Wythenshawe that they donated to Manchester Corporation to help address the shortage of working-class housing. Shena was a member of Wythenshawe Estate Special Committee from its creation in 1926 and its chairman 1931–33. For Shena, the investment in housing was crucial in her approach towards public services; explaining that Wythenshawe was central in ‘my endeavour … [which] has always been to provide the municipal service necessary to ensure eventually the goal of equal opportunity for every child in the city’.⁴⁶ Shena has been accused of disliking the houses built on the Wythenshawe estate, but Andrzej Olechnowicz argues this is unfair because the aesthetics of the homes were crucial for the success of the development. ‘A concern with the appearance of houses was sensible when Manchester Conservatives and others were looking for any excuse to attack the development’, suggests Olechnowicz, and he notes that Shena wanted appealing houses that would draw in middle-class residents, as well as the working classes.⁴⁷ Shena also understood the problems relating to community for new residents of the estate and she remained connected to Wythenshawe, receiving many invitations to participate in events by residents and letters for assistance.⁴⁸

Shena’s achievements in education were arguably more impressive and her name became synonymous with new measures to tackle the impact of social inequalities on education. The resolution providing Shena with the Freedom of Manchester explained that:

Her reforms focused on the development of a single Code of Regulations for schools, the removal of fees for secondary schools and championing the comprehensive education system. Jane Martin, in her and Joyce Goodman’s history of women and education, argues that for Shena Simon, ‘the injunction to promote the common good was not just an intellectual matter, but also a moral priority’. Martin stresses that Shena’s approach to education was part of a broader endeavour by middle-class social reformers who emphasised the value of service. She explains that Shena saw schools as having the potential to be ‘agencies of social change to reduce social inequalities’.⁵⁰ This ideology about the role of education manifested itself explicitly in her opposition to the eleven plus and she was known to be very pleased about Manchester’s adoption of the comprehensive system of schooling in 1967.⁵¹ Despite losing her council seat in 1933, Shena served as a co-opted member of the Manchester Education Committee between 1936 and 1970. This service was described in her obituary in the Guardian, which noted that Shena spent forty-three years on the education committee supporting motions ‘consistently in favour of working-class education’.⁵² Shena was ‘committed to a belief in the educability of all children and the principle of everyone of secondary school age going to schools designed for all abilities. She was optimistic that the common school could create social cohesion and provide the arena in which a really democratic community could be attained.’⁵³ Like housing, therefore, Shena understood education as a crucial provision within a suite of public services that would nurture and sustain a democratic society in which all would prosper.

In developing her ethos towards educational reform, Shena was notably influenced by the work of Richard H. Tawney, the economic historian and campaigner for adult education.⁵⁴ Shena was also very close to Spurley Hey, director of education in Manchester from 1914 until his sudden death in 1930. In 1928, he wrote to Shena to ‘pay tribute to the work you have accomplished on behalf of education. I have never known a better member of an education committee.’⁵⁵ Hsiao-Yuh Ku highlights the importance of Shena’s trip to visit the Soviet Union in 1936, during which she examined their methods of education provision. Ku concludes that Shena’s ‘ideal of “equality of educational opportunity”, acted constantly as a solid foundation for all her reform proposals’.⁵⁶ Shena’s commitment to education was the catalyst for joining the Labour Party in 1935, in response to ‘the government’s treatment of education, which I feel to be the most fundamental of all social questions’.⁵⁷ Shena did not limit her contribution to education to schools, however, and both she and Ernest served on the council of Manchester University, where research fellowships still bear their name. The university named a teaching building after them in the 1960s, and included a café originally named Potters in honour of Shena’s maiden name. The Shena Simon campus, originally a sixth form college formed in 1982 and now part of the Manchester College in Manchester city centre, reflects the ongoing legacy of Shena’s work and the city’s acknowledgement of her contributions to supporting and improving educational provision for the city’s youth.

Shena’s previous electoral success and her significant contribution to municipal politics made her loss in 1933 to the Conservative Party particularly striking. The election was the first occasion when Shena faced candidates from both the Conservative and Labour parties, which made it especially difficult for her to defend her seat.⁵⁸ Shena had suffered from rumours that she was financially profiting from the Wythenshawe estate, with various untrue accusations circulating claiming that she and Ernest had sold land to the council; that Shena received £10,000 from ground rents at Wythenshawe; and that she received £5 from every house built on the new estate. Her allies were confident that ‘these rumours did Lady Simon considerable harm in the election’.⁵⁹ Allegedly having received 700 personal requests to stand in Wythenshawe the following year, she did so as an independent. The Manchester Guardian wrote on her candidature, that she:

Shena lost to the returning Conservative candidate by just 150 votes, having suffered from ill health throughout the campaign. Shena tried again, for the last time, and stood as a Labour candidate for Moston in 1936, but was unsuccessful. Despite this disappointment, however, Shena was able to maintain significant influence in municipal government, especially through her lobbying and campaign work on municipal taxation.

7.5 Shena’s campaign leaflet to voters in Wythenshawe (1934). Source: SSP M14/6/10.

Taxation

Perhaps Shena’s least well-known, but no less impressive and influential, work was on the issue of local taxation. She joined local government amid a period of crisis in municipal funding due to rising costs, particularly for welfare. ‘As a result,’ argues Martin Daunton, ‘local government did not have access to any buoyant or responsive tax, and increasingly came to rely on subventions from the central government.’ However, central government was keen to limit local authority spending because of their own financial pressures and responded by moving to a block, or fixed, grant system, and tried to remove power from those local governments that were seen as too extravagant.⁶¹ Shena recognised these attempts by national government to shift greater costs onto local government, particularly on local ratepayers. Part of Shena’s contribution to local government, therefore, should be seen as challenging this policy and by maintaining the autonomy and independence of Manchester Corporation, complaining in 1928 that ‘Parliament is continually putting fresh burdens upon the municipalities’.⁶² This conflict persisted throughout the twentieth century and beyond, reflected in ongoing discussions around the responsibilities and powers of local government, including around fiscal devolution.⁶³ Shena started what became a lifelong challenge against the rates following an increase in Manchester in 1926 and amid the recommendations of the Rating and Valuation Act 1925 which made valuation the responsibility of the council. Writing to the Manchester Guardian, Shena described the increase as ‘a serious matter and one that is rightly rousing considerable interest among the ratepayers of the city’. Shena also complained that criticism was levied towards the local councillors, rather than central government, and argued that it was ‘the duty of every citizen, whilst keeping a vigilant watch on the expenditure of the City Council and Board of Guardians, to protest to his member of Parliament against the false economy and unfair discrimination of taking burdens from the taxpayer and thrusting them upon the shoulder of the ratepayer’.⁶⁴

The problem of the rates system of taxation was acute after the First World War ended. Structural issues, including the housing shortage and price increases, caused a significant rise in rents, whilst the rateable value of dwellings was acknowledged to be variable and inaccurate.⁶⁵ Shena identified the burden this placed on poorer families, reflecting the sustained influence of Shena’s education at the LSE and especially from Tawney’s research undertaken before the First World War that highlighted the disproportionate impact of indirect taxes on the poor. As Daunton explains, ‘the main beneficiaries of the Liberal fiscal reforms were middle-class men with families; taxes on the poor were not reduced, and on the rich were increased by the super-tax and differentiation’.⁶⁶ The rise in rates, as Shena understood, would exacerbate this situation for the poorest householders. In ‘Rates and the Householder’ read at the Liberal Summer School in 1928, she used the example of families living in Manchester’s Hulme, ‘one of our most congested slum areas’, where she examined twenty-one families with an income of under £3.5.0 a week. She claimed that the percentage of rates as a proportion of weekly income varied between 4 and 9 per cent, but, if they lived in better housing, it would be 7 and 17 percent and an average of nearly 11 per cent.⁶⁷ In 1943, she used figures from municipal housing estates situated within London County Council and Manchester Corporation that had identified that rent and rates accounted for 21–23 per cent of chief earners’ income where the average wage was below three pounds. Shena noted that since ‘73.5% of all families are those in which the chief wage-earner earns £4 and under, the meaning of these heavy percentages, for a prime necessity of life, can be appreciated.’⁶⁸

For Shena, this issue presented an additional problem beyond that of immediate hardship that she would return to often – that of the lack of incentive for families to try and move out of slum housing. She wrote:

This argument underpinned belief that sustainable and affordable models of funding were crucial to ensure the success of investment programmes, beyond that of standalone prestige projects. In 1943, Shena discussed the significant inconsistencies in the rates costs of houses following the interwar crisis in valuation. She cited ‘Williams’, a workman living in a two-up, two-down urban house with his family who had been offered a Corporation home and who was willing to pay more rent ‘because the house is much better than the one I am living in, and although my wages will not go up I can manage it if I cut down my beer and smokes, But why should I pay more in rates when I shall be in the same city?’ For Shena, this problem threatened the broader programmes of investment in working-class living standards that she and Ernest had been so committed to, as Williams asked, ‘I thought I should be doing the right thing in moving the family to this new estate, where they can get more fresh air and more room in the house than they can in our present place. If I am doing the right thing, why should the City Council make me pay more rates? Lots of chaps I know are sticking in the slums and keeping their children there … Why are they allowed to pay lower rates than I shall have to pay?’⁷⁰ In sum, Shena’s work on rating reform highlighted the need for comprehensive restructuring and emphasised that affordability was a crucial step in achieving successful housing reform. But it also reveals Shena’s knowledge and understanding in the role and function of local government more generally and the importance of local finance in maintaining municipal autonomy and effectiveness.

The rates were not the only problematic aspect of municipal finances and Shena worked to challenge central government’s use of block grants over percentage grants. The Treasury’s position was ‘to maintain a high level of taxation and to increase the sum available for debt redemption through cuts in expenditure’.⁷¹ Shena argued against the policy of block grants because she claimed it gave local government little financial security and reduced the amount of funding they actually received. Shena took issue with the claims of those who opposed percentage grants, who ‘talk of encouraging local extravagance’. Using the example of the 1915 Maternity and Child Welfare Scheme, which received a 50 per cent grant from central government, Shena suggested this funding was ‘a direct encouragement to local authorities’ to invest in these kinds of crucial reforms.⁷² Shena was concerned that block grants would not reflect the needs of each locale and risked stripping away the important role and influence of local voluntary societies who delivered extensive public services without payment.⁷³ Instead, Shena argued that the use of percentage grants ‘affords the best stimulus without undue interference with local freedom and initiative’.⁷⁴ Shena’s financial model emphasised sustainability for municipal governments, in terms both of monetary income and of independence and power, and Shena understood that successful funding models were crucial to maintain the agency and authority of local governments in the face of increased intervention from central government.

7.6 The cover of Shena’s pamphlet, Local Rates and Post-War Housing. Source: SSP M14/3/2/1, Shena D. Simon, Local Rates and Post-War Housing (Letchworth: J.M Dent and Sons, LTD., 1943).

Shena valued the enduring vitality and independence of local government because she knew that pressures on the provision of local services would not decrease: ‘I cannot honestly say that I think there will be any substantial reduction in the expenditure of the city in the future’ and identified the ‘only hope for easing the burden upon the ratepayer … lies in either discovering new sources of income’, such as a local income tax or extending government percentage grants to other municipal services.⁷⁵ Shena dealt with particularly difficult circumstances as a councillor as finances were increasingly squeezed by the impact of economic depression. In 1930, Shena campaigned against Manchester Corporation’s decision to raise the rates by ninepence, arguing that current ratepayers should not shoulder the entire financial burden. Shena recommended Manchester borrow more money and spread the repayments across the rates in future years, as it was ‘not the time to be generous to future ratepayers at the expense of the present ones’.⁷⁶ Yet Shena was defeated in her attempts to reverse the introduction of a new policy of levying threepence on the rates to meet items of capital expenditure.⁷⁷ Later that same year, as she sought re-election, Shena emphasised the attempts of the Liberal Party to save money by opposing the Labour Party’s threepence rise and stated that ‘she did not think there had ever been a time when trade had been worse in Manchester than at present, and the Liberals in the City Council felt that this was the time to make every effort to keep rates as low as possible consistent with giving the ratepayers efficient services’. Shena again emphasised that it ‘was certainly not a time for putting extra burdens on the ratepayers of today in order to save the ratepayers of tomorrow.’⁷⁸ Shena won with a majority of more than 5,000, but achieving a cut in the rates proved to be an impossible task. Pressures on public spending caused the corporation to limit their expenditure but, still, the cost of the rates rose again in 1932 to fifteen shillings and sixpence.⁷⁹ Meeting with her Chorlton constituents in 1932, she outlined the difficulties the city faced when, for the first time, the rateable value of Manchester was falling, and the ‘serious position had therefore been reached that, on the one hand, the city’s expenditure was rising and, on the other, the source from which it got the money for the expenditure was declining’.⁸⁰

Knowing the hardship that the rates caused to poor families and understanding the limited funding that large corporations like Manchester faced, Shena sought to develop an alternative model of municipal finance. ‘No one who has any first-hand knowledge of our rating system can think it is good,’ she declared in 1941, ‘it is not only complicated to administer, but impossible to explain satisfactorily to the ratepayer.’ Shena objected to the way that the rates bore no relation to the ability to pay and suggested that using houses as the basis for taxation was ‘fundamentally unsound’.⁸¹ Shena was invited to contribute to the departmental committee on valuation for rates in 1939, but refused to endorse the recommendations of the committee’s 1944 report to the Minister of Health. Instead, Shena’s minority report argued that the focus on housing for tax was unfair in light of interwar housing reform, which, she claimed, ‘has caused all except those tenants who are still living in pre-war controlled houses, to pay a larger proportion of their income in rent or house purchase payments and rates, than they did before’. Shena suggested that in many family homes, a third of the income had to be spent in rent and rates.⁸² This problem would get even worse after the war, Shena argued, when the return to municipal activities would ‘raise the question of the burden of rates in a much more acute form’.⁸³ Similarly, in 1945, she told the Manchester Fabian Society that the local rates system was the ‘greatest stumbling-block to social reform’ and were ‘so unfair and put such a burden on the poor’. Shena also emphasised that the re-evaluation of houses was a disaster in waiting and warned ‘we were all going to be faced with a serious problem’.⁸⁴ The recommendations of the 1938 report were eventually shelved and re-evaluation finally took place in the 1960s. As Joan Simon argued, it included ‘substantial modifications in favour of domestic ratepayers’, which represented ‘ample justification of Shena Simon’s stand in the 1930s’.⁸⁵ This success reflected Shena’s persistence against the disproportionate burden the rates placed on the poor and particularly her recognition that housing reform could exacerbate the already challenging circumstances of poorer householders. Shena also criticised the rates system because the more affluent area outside of Manchester in Cheshire and Derbyshire had become ‘a dormitory of Manchester’. She complained that richer commuters could still use the city’s services, paid for by its poorer inhabitants: ‘if they want to have the best of both worlds, then they should be prepared to pay for both worlds’.⁸⁶ It is not far-fetched to presume that Shena would have approved of the Manchester City Visitor Charge, introduced in 2023 to improve the city’s tourism industry.⁸⁷ This form of targeted tax that operated on a municipal level was precisely the kind of fiscal innovation that Shena had envisioned for Manchester.

Keen to explore new methods of public funding, Shena travelled around Sweden and Denmark in 1938 to examine their model of a local income tax.⁸⁸ She noted that nowhere had copied the English tax system because ‘it was fundamentally bad and unfair, as it was not based on ability to pay’. Rather, she recommended the local income tax system in Stockholm, where the average rate was 6.3 per cent overall, but varied between 2 and 40 per cent.⁸⁹ This model became Shena’s preferred idea for municipal funding and formed the basis of her campaigns throughout the 1940s. In 1945, she explained it would mean that ‘local taxation would be equitably distributed according to people’s ability to pay and we should avoid a severe tax on the first necessity of life, the people’s houses’.⁹⁰ She returned to this model of finance in the postwar years when Manchester’s finances were looking more positive. In 1959, she responded to the Manchester Finance Committee’s report on rates that calculated the increase required to maintain public services:

In 1964, Shena wrote to The Times in response to the re-evaluation of the rateable value of housing and complained that ‘it highlighted that unlike income tax, rates are assessed irrespective of the individual’s ability to pay’. Shena reiterated her calls for a local income tax as ‘not a complete substitute for rates, but a supplement to them’, adding that ‘it would also have the advantage of bringing into the picture the men or women who now are completely exempt because, living with families or as a lodger, they neither own nor rent a house’.⁹² Although unsuccessful in achieving the reform that she wanted, her ideas for taxation and for the funding of public services need to be analysed more thoroughly in the context of the abolition of the rating system, which became the focus of clashes between local and national government in the late 1970s and 1980s. Shena had foreseen the problem of the rates and since the wholesale reform she recommended was not adopted, local government and its financial structures experienced disastrous problems and continued upheaval.

Conclusion

When Shena was made Freeman of the City of Manchester in 1964 (the third woman to receive the honour), she recalled that Ernest often claimed that on their marriage, she fell in love with Manchester and the children of the city. ‘It is easy enough to understand the children,’ she conceded,

Ernest had died in 1960, and she explained she had decided against returning to London after his death: ‘I will not join the drift from the North to the South. Although I may not live to see the drift back to the North, I feel sure that it will take place, once we have cleaned up the scars of the first industrial revolution.’⁹⁴ Understandably, the city mourned her death in 1972, with Brian Jackson, a fellow educationist, writing in the Guardian that ‘her death ends a special age in Manchester’s history’. He noted that thousands of children and their parents ‘will recall the frail, stick-leaning lady’ visiting classrooms.⁹⁵ The article alludes to the area that Shena has been mostly remembered for – that of education – but, as we have seen here, her work and contributions were much more varied and reflect both the strength of local government and the opportunities for women to contribute to civic culture and the strength of municipal cultures in mid-twentieth century Britain.

7.7 Shena receiving the Freedom of the City of Manchester. Source: SSP M14/4/3.

The extent of Shena’s work both in Manchester and in municipal government more generally has perhaps been overshadowed in light of the sweeping reforms of the post-Second World War welfare state and increased centralisation of government. Yet, by using her contributions and achievements as a prism through which to explore local government more generally, we can see that Shena’s life epitomised a flourishing and committed elite for whom the challenges of post-1918 Britain only cemented their dedication to improving the lives and opportunities of the urban communities they served. Nevertheless, this interpretation should not undermine or downplay Shena’s individual achievements: the range of her activities and longstanding commitment to Manchester were remarkable. It suggests both that we need to understand more about women’s contributions to local government and that, in doing so, we can revise assumptions about he perceived demise of civic pride and the role of local elites in municipal government. Finally, although Shena’s contribution to education and housing have been well known, this chapter has particularly drawn attention to her work in tax reform and especially in relation to addressing the rates system. In doing so, it demonstrates that Shena’s approach was comprehensive, as she saw all areas she focused her energy on – housing, education, child and maternity welfare, finance – as crucial parts of a universal system of public services. It was this philosophy, and the emphasis on public services as a way to achieve a successful democratic community, that was perhaps Shena’s most important and valuable contribution to twentieth-century society and it remains relevant amid ongoing discussions about the role of the state in addressing social inequalities. Shena’s understanding of the role of local government, therefore, still has much to contribute and highlighting her contributions to the concept of public service itself can only add to how local politicians may respond to the ongoing challenges they face.