Anna Munro


Anna Gillies Macdonald Munro was an active campaigner for Temperance and the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom. Munro organised and was the secretary of the Women's Freedom League campaigning in Scotland. She settled in Thatcham after the first world war.

Life and work

Anna was born in Glasgow, on 4 October 1881, to Margaret Ann MacVean, and Evan Macdonald Munro, a school master; following her mother's death in 1892 she moved to Dunfermline where she was cared for by an uncle and aunt. She became involved with the Wesleyan Methodist Sisters of the People in London working with the poor. She then joined the Women's Social and Political Union and founded a branch in Dunfermline in 1906,. and won support from socialist leaders and Labour's Keir Hardie. In 1907 a row between the membership and the Pankhursts led to a split in the WSPU and as a result the more democratic Women's Freedom League was formed and Munro was elected to be the Secretary of the WFL Scottish Council. She was briefly imprisoned in 1908 for her protesting, and participated in the protests around the 1911 Census, which the suffragettes boycotted.
She married Sidney Ashman in 1913, and though she legally took the surname Munro-Ashman she was still known as Anna Munro in her work, and she continued to be active working for women's rights throughout her life. She was also a socialist and temperance campaigner. The Munro-Ashman's lived in Reading, but them moved to Thatcham where Anna was one of the first parish councillors in 1919 and they raised a family at Park Farm.

Death and legacy

On 11 September 1962, she died in Padworth, Berkshire. Homes in Thatcham are to be named Munro because she was one of the first two women Parish councillors in Thatcham. In 2018 the Glasgow Women's Library commissioned Lucie Hearn to create a short film about Anna Munro to celebrate 100 years since some women got the vote.