After the 1919 Congress, the British Section organised educational meetings on such aspects of foreign policy as British imperialism, the blockade of Russia, the rights of India and of Ireland, German reparations, and disarmament. In 1920 they organised the first of a long series of WILPF International Summer Schools.
In 1924 and 1929 Helena Swanwick, Chair of the British Section, was a member of the British Government’s delegation to the League of Nations. WILPF was the first, and remains the only, international women’s organisation accredited as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) with the League of Nations and today with the United Nations.
In the 1920s and 1930s, activity centred around a number of campaigning initiatives the Women’s Peace Pilgrimage of 1926; the Peace Crusade of 1928 for a “Parliament of Peacemakers”; the World Disarmament Petition of 1931-2; the League of Nations’ Peace Ballot 1934 -35 and the WILPF Peace Mandate.
The impressive 1926 Peace Pilgrimage was initiated by WILPF and involved twenty-eight women’s and peace organisations. Under the banner of ‘Law not War’ its objectives were twofold: to press for a World Disarmament Conference; and to urge the British Government to sign the Optional Clause of the International Court of Justice.
The Peace Pilgrimage had seven main routes to London from the north of Scotland to Land’s End, from East Anglia to South Wales. A thousand meetings were held in towns and villages on the way. On 19 June 1926 the whole pilgrimage assembled at Hyde Park with a pageant, and from twenty-two platforms speakers supported the aims of the demonstration.
During the 1930’s the focus of the WILPF activities was on collecting signatures for the Disarmament Petition to urge the member states of the League of Nations to put some of their words into practice. Of the millions of signatures from men and women around the world presented at the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932, eight million signatures were collected by women’s organisations, of which six million came from the WILPF. The Conference ended in 1933 with Germany not only withdrawing from the Conference but also from the League of Nations, foreshadowing all the horrors that were to follow.
