British Isles
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The British Isles are a group of islands off the North-West coast of Europe. The largest island is that of Great Britain, the second largest is Ireland. Politically, Great Britain (together with its own offshore islands) consists of three territories: Scotland to the north, England to the south, and Wales to the west. Ireland is divided politically between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Great Britain (with its offshore islands) and Northern Ireland together form the United Kingdom.
Also part of the British Isles in a geographical sense is the separate territory of the Isle of Man, which lies between Great Britain and Ireland. However, the Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey and others), which lie off the coast of France, are not geographically part of the British Isles. Culturally, however, they should be viewed as British.
It is now known that a woman who became a Bahá'í in the United States returned to her native Liverpool in the 1890s, but was unable to maintain her Faith by herself. Generally, the year 1898 is regarded as the year of introduction of the Faith to Britain, when Mrs Mary Thornburgh-Cropper, an American Bahá'í, lived in London. In 1899 Ethel Jenner Rosenberg became a Bahá'í, and is usually regarded as the first English Bahá'í. The first person of Irish birth to become a Bahá'í was Lady Blomfield, in 1907. The first Scottish Bahá'í was Mrs. Jane Whyte, who enrolled at about the same time. In Northern Ireland, Stella Cairns lived in Ballymena in the 1930s. The first Bahá'í to live in Wales was Mrs Rose Jones, in 1942.[1]
On 13 October 1923, the National Spiritual Assembly of England came into being. In 1930 this became the National Spiritual Assembly of the British Isles.[2] However, Shoghi Effendi always listed the National Spiritual Assembly of the British Isles as being in existence from 1923, as in principle the Bahá’ís in London would have seen themselves as responsible for all these territories. In 1972, when a separate National Spiritual Assembly for the Republic of Ireland was established, there became two National Assemblies instead of one: one for the Republic of Ireland and one for the United Kingdom.
