organisations showed their support towards the Kellogg-Briand Pact. 201 public meetings
were held across North Wales, showing their support for these nations turning their back on
war as a solution of international disputes. 8 This is one way in which Welsh women
interacted with international organisations through activism in local areas. However, we
also saw Welsh women directly interact with the League, as seen when in 1922 Winifred
Coombe Tennant was selected as a delegate for the Third Assembly of the League of
Nations. She became the first woman to represent Britain, and she developed a public
discourse of women’s diplomacy. Her vocal standpoint on women’s involvement in politics
normalised women’s contributions within the public sphere. Coombe Tennant viewed the
Wilsonian ideals which were central to the League through a gendered lens, and
emphasised the diverse ways in which gender operated within international politics and
how this was essential to achieve peace.
Coombe Tennant’s speech calling for the League of Nations to become ‘the League
of Mothers – for it is from the mothers of the world that it will receive a dynamic power, a
driving force, which is essential to it if it is to accomplish successfully a task which has
hitherto baffled all ages and all races – the task of establishing an enduring peace’ . 9 These
views were supported by those of Julie V Gottlieb who argued that women were journalists
for wider audiences after they had acted as ‘theorists and practitioners’ in the interwar
years. 10 These women are reflections of how they took these post-war years as an
opportunity to contribute to international discussions and work to achieve lasting peace.
8 Annie Williams, ‘Women and the Peace movement in North Wales 1926 - 1945’ in The Appeal ed. by Jenny Mathers and Mererid Hopwood (Talybont: Y Lolfa, 2023), p. 191. 9 Robert Laker, ‘Gendering International Affairs: Winifred Coombe Tennant and the League of Nations Assembly 1922’ on Women’s History Network (23 rd of August 2021) <Gendering International Affairs: Winifred Coombe Tennant and the League of Nations Assembly, 1922, by Robert Laker – Women's History Network (womenshistorynetwork.org)> [accessed on 12/11/2023]. 10 Stöckmann, p. 219.
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