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Lady Agnes Johnston Dollan (née Moir) (16 August 1887 - 16 July 1966) was a Scottish suffragette and political activist. A leader of the Glasgow Rent Strikes, she was the first female Labour candidate to stand for election to Glasgow City Council.

Early life
Dollan was born on Springburn Road in Springburn, Glasgow on 16 August 1887 to Anne Wilkinson and Henry Moir, a blacksmith in the locomotive works. She was one of eleven children. She attended school until the age of eleven and left to work in a factory. She later became a Post Office telephone operator and joined the Women's Labour League, assisting Mary Reid Macarthur in creating a women's post office trade union. She joined the Women's Social and Political Union, an organisation to secure the vote for women.

She met Patrick Dollan, a journalist and member of the Independent Labour Party, via the Clarion Scouts and a year later they were married on 20 September 1912. Their only child, James was born in 1913 and was exempted from religious instruction at school. He became a journalist.

Rent strikes and Red Clydeside
Agnes Dollan became politically active during the Red Clydeside period of Glasgow's history as an organiser of the 1915 Glasgow Rent Strikes alongside Mary Barbour and Helen Crawfurd. She worked to link the rent strikes movement with peace campaigns, and as Treasurer of Glasgow Women's Housing Association led the campaign against Glasgow City Council's rent increases. Dollan was jailed briefly in 1917 for protesting against high rents.

She became a prominent figure in Glasgow politics and spoke at the 1917 May Day demo in Glasgow Green.

She was a member of the Women's Social and Political Union and the Women's Labour League.

Political career
After joining the Independent Labour Party around 1915, Agnes Dollan became the first female Labour candidate to stand for election to Glasgow City Council in January 1919.

After being elected to represent Springburn ward in a by-election on 13 December 1921 she held the post until 1928.

She served on the Labour Party National Executive from 1922 until 1928, and resumed her seat in the 1930s after a period of illness prevented her from participating in political activities. She fought against the removal of the ILP from the Labour Party, however following the split she was appointed the first president of the Scottish Socialist Party's women's council in 1933.

Anti war activism
Alongside Helen Crawfurd and others she established both the Women's Peace Crusade in 1916 and the Glasgow branch of the Women's International League in 1915. Both noted speakers, Dollan and Crawfurd traveled around Scotland spreading the word about the League.

Dollan later rejected her anti-war stance in response to World War II, stating that ‘It was all very well to theorise under normal conditions but we were not living under such conditions today - we were facing a crisis which might mean general mobilisation’.

She became a member of the Moral Re-Armament Movement and her war efforts were rewarded with an MBE in 1946.

Death
Dollan died of heart failure on 16 July 1966 in Glasgow's Victoria Infirmary.

Wealth at death
£8148 18s. 4d.: confirmation, 25 Aug 1966, NA Scot., SC 36/48/1042/258

- Born in an 'Orange' household

- "became a free-thinker in early life"

- converted to Catholicism in the 1950s (ref Oxford too)

Other

- Appointed to royal commission on Scottish affairs 1953 - 1954 (Oxford)

- Helped organise Scottish contribution to 1951 Festival of Britain

- Governor of Hutcheson Grammar School 1948 - 1955

- Stood for Parliament in 1924 (Dumfriesshire - ref Scotsman 31 October 1924

- MPhil Thesis http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5640/1/2014CarriganMPhil.pdf

- As the Glasgow Council Minutes show, following Agnes losing the Springburn Labour nomination in 1925 to George Smith, she later unsuccessfully fought council seats in Whiteinch (twice), Cowlairs, and Kinning Park as well as Govan. (ref. MPhil thesis)