Quaker Socialist Ada Salter Awarded a Blue Plaque by English Heritage

by Graham Taylor.

There has been a campaign waged over the last decade, since the unveiling of the statue to Ada Salter in 2014, if not a little before, for more plaques, statues and memorials to women. In London there were about 300 statues celebrating named men compared to 15 celebrating named women (campaigners say “named” to exclude the endless naked nymphs) and the rest of the country was not much better than London. At one time Quakers were disapproving of statues because they were put up “in honour” of some celebrity (often a general, an admiral or some wealthy man). The whole business was offensive to Quakers’ egalitarian and pacifist principles. The modern conception of memorials is, however, quite different. Instead of “honouring” a Great Rich Man, statues are now erected to “celebrate” an inspiring person. Many people (rich and poor, black and white, women and men) have the capacity to be an inspiration to those around them, and are, so this conception is far more democratic.

Ada Salter is inspiring because instead of just dispensing charity (though that has its place) she gave up her comfortable middle-class life in rural Raunds to live in the depths of the London slums; because she was a pioneering environmentalist who campaigned against air pollution so early on, and planted 9,000 trees; because she was a pioneer in model housing and the Green Belt; because she was one of the first women councillors, and the first woman mayor in London. She was not a pioneer in terms of vision or ideas – several others had the same ideas before her – but she was a pioneer in actually implementing all these things along with her husband, Dr Alfred Salter, who was himself an inspiration for what he achieved in health and medical care.

English Heritage mounted the blue plaque on the wall of 149 Lower Road, Rotherhithe, in March 2023, after some years of investigating the merits of the case. Their blue plaques are installed only on the walls of original buildings and, because Bermondsey and Rotherhithe in London were devastated by bombing in the 1939 war, this was one of the few Victorian buildings left standing. The picture shows the plaque before mounting, being held by Sheila Taylor, who organised the Salter Centenary in 2022, and Judi Dench, the Quaker actress, who is well known as a champion of trees and tree planting in the Ada Salter tradition.