Reform Leadership

Abstract

From its inception women were active in the British anti-drink movement but, as we have already seen, in a very limited role.¹ They laboured either quietly and without official positions in the mixed societies, or organized into special female auxiliaries charged with working only among women and children. Particularly in the various juvenile temperance groups were women active in the local groups. It was a woman, Anne Jane Carlile who together with a Baptist minister, Jabez Tunnicliffe, founded the Band of Hope, the largest of the juvenile groups, and it was women who were the backbone of this movement. One prominent male temperance advocate asserted that the bands ‘never fail if women are involved’.² The Band of Hope was a truly British contribution to the temperance reform and, conforming to standard British practises, men filled its official positions at all levels: city, county and national. In other juvenile organizations, too, women were the workers in the field, not the leaders.