Julia Scurr

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Julia Scurr (born Julia Sullivan; 17 February 1871 – 10 April 1927) was a British politician and suffragette. She was born in Limehouse, London, to Irish parents. In 1900 she married John Scurr, an accountant and trade unionist, and they had three children.

Scurr became a prominent activist for working women in the East End. She organized a large unemployment demonstration in 1905, which helped her meet Prime Minister Arthur Balfour. In 1907 she was elected to the Poplar Board of Guardians for the Labour Party. She joined the East London Federation of Suffragettes with Sylvia Pankhurst and helped push for women's suffrage and social reforms.

In 1914 she was part of a six-woman delegation from the East End that met Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, requesting rights for women over 21 and addressing childcare, schooling and housing. She argued that working women in poverty deserved the vote and better support. The delegation’s visit came as the suffrage campaign intensified.

That same year she helped found the United Suffragists, a group that brought together militant and non-militant suffragists. She served as a vice-president of the organization, which published Votes for Women. After women gained the vote in 1918, the United Suffragists dissolved.

During World War I, Scurr opposed the war but served on a food control committee. In 1919 she was elected to Poplar Borough Council and played a leading role in the Poplar Rates Rebellion of 1921. She served as Mayor of Poplar in 1923–1924.

In 1925 she was elected to the London County Council for Mile End, but resigned early in 1926. Julia Scurr died in April 1927, aged 56.

Her legacy lives on in the Millicent Fawcett statue in Parliament Square (unveiled in 2018), where her name and image appear on its plinth, and in the Julia Scurr garden at John Scurr Primary School in Stepney.