ABSTRACT
This introduction asks why Clara Dorothea Rackham née Tabor (1895–1976), once, a towering figure in the labour movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the labour movement, the co-operative movement, local government, and in the worlds of adult education and penal reform is little-known today? A key problem has hitherto been the absence of primary sources. The biography makes use of the unpublished family papers of the extended Tabor and Rackham families to which the author has had access, of local archives, particularly media coverage of her activities as a long-serving councillor and magistrate in Cambridge, and Rackham’s own unpublished writings, diaries, letters, and personal papers.
