Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett GBE was an English political leader, activist, writer and feminist icon. Known as a campaigner for women's suffrage via legislative change, from 1897 until 1919 she led Britain's largest women's rights organisation, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She would write: "I cannot say I became a suffragist. I always was one, from the time I was old enough to think at all about the principles of Representative Government." Fawcett also tried to improve women's chances of higher education, serving as a governor of Bedford College, London, and a co-founder of Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1875. In 2018, 100 years after the passing of the Representation of the People Act, Fawcett became the first woman to be commemorated with a statue in Parliament Square.