Alison Roberta Noble Neilans was a Suffragette, a member of the executive committee of the Women's Freedom League, a member of the Church League for Women's Suffrage and the left-wing East London Federation of Suffragettes, where she worked with Sylvia Pankhurst. She was also a member of the board of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.
Neilans was born in Camberwell. She joined the Women's Freedom League as finance secretary in 1908. By 1910 she was a member of the executive committee of the Women’s Freedom League.
She was imprisoned on three occasions for her Suffragette activities, including pouring corrosive liquid into the ballot boxes used in the1909 Bermondsey by-election, in an attempt to spoil the ballot papers. At her trial, it was alledged that the presiding officer for the polling station, George Thorley, had been splashed in the eye with the liquid, and might have his eyesight damaged for life.
Neilans went on hunger strike and was forcibly fed while in prison. The treatment of Alison and her fellow ballot-spoiler, Alice Chapin, was protested in publications by the Women's Freedom League, including 'Is Political Agitation a Crime?' which called for them to be made first-division 'political' prisoners.
After her release, Alison appeared in the series of 'Suffragettes at Home' postcards published by the Women's Freedom League. This series was produced in response to the accusation, by anti-suffragists, that Suffragettes were 'unwomanly' and neglectful of their domestic duties as wives and mothers.
In 1915 Alison worked with the East London Federation of Suffragettes headed by Sylvia Pankhurst. In 1917 she became Secretary of the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene, which campaigned for the repeal of laws against street prostitution, and editor of its journal. She fought against compulsory testing for venereal disease and the establishment of official military brothels in France, seeing this as yet more male oppression of women.