Abstract
In 1913, writing in the Bristol and Clifton Social World, Councillor Margaret Ashton from Manchester wrote that ‘it is the linking up of public administration with the daily life of the people that women councillors can most effectively help the community … the joint effort of men and women working together in public as in private that obtains the best result’.1 These words would have struck a chord with women who were active in the socialist movement in the early twentieth century. Their motivations for engaging in socialist politics were varied, but nearly all emphasised the importance of doing something to improve the lives of working people, in particular women and children — Lucy Cox, for example, who joined the Bristol Independent Labour Party in 1916, claimed in an interview later in life that the hardships endured by her parents to give their children an education, and the loss of young men from her village during World War One, had made her determined to enter politics to ‘make the world a better place … These were the two things that made me join the Labour Party — poverty and war.’2 Socialist women joined a mixed-sex party because they hoped to work alongside men to make a better world for both sexes. At the same time, both in their theory and in their practice, they highlighted the specific difficulties faced by women in the workplace and in the home and drew a link between socialism and women’s emancipation.
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Notes
J. Hannam and K. Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain, 1880s to 1920s (London: Routledge, 2002), chapter 3.
see P. Bartley, Emmeline Pankhurst (London: Routledge, 2002)
and J. Purvis, Emmeline Pankhurst: a Biography (London: Routledge, 2003).
A. Rosen, Rise Up Women! The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).
The most detailed account of the development of the alliance can be found in S. Holton, Feminism and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986);
see also J. Vellacott, From Liberal to Labour with Women’s Suffrage: the Story of Catherine Marshall (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993).
see K. Hunt, Equivocal Feminists: the Social Democratic Federation and the Woman Question, 1884–1911 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)
and J. Hannam, ‘Women and the ILP, 1890–1914’, in T. James, T. Jowitt and K. Laybourn (eds), The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party (Halifax: Ryburn, 1992).
For example, see J. Hannam, Isabella Ford, 1855–1924 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989);
S. Fletcher, Maude Royden: a Life (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989);
J. Liddington, The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper, 1864–1946 (London: Virago, 1986);
D. Nield Chew (ed.), Ada Nield Chew: the Life and Writings of a Working Woman (London: Virago, 1982).
A key text for understanding working women’s involvement in the suffrage movement at a local level remains the pioneering study by J. Liddington and J. Norris, One Hand Tied Behind Us: the Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Virago, 1978).
For an overview of local suffrage activities, see J. Hannam, ‘“I had not been to London”. Women’s Suffrage — a View from the Regions’, in J. Purvis and S.S. Holton (eds), Votes for Women (London: Routledge, 2000);
L. Leneman, ‘A Truly National Movement: the View from Outside London’, in M. Joannou and J. Purvis (eds), The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998).
K. Cowman, ‘Mrs Brown is a Man and a Brother’: Women in Merseyside’s Political Organizations, 1890–1920 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004).
E. Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement in Scotland, 1850–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
M. Worley (ed.), Labour’s Grass Roots: Essays on the Activities of Local Labour Parties and Members, 1918–1945 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
P. Thane, ‘Labour and Local Politics: Radicalism, Democracy and Social Reform, 1880–1914’, in F. Biagini and A. Reid (eds), Currents of Radicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 259–60.
S. Bryher, An Account of the Labour and Socialist Movement in Bristol (Bristol, 1929), Part 3, p. 7.
W. H. Ayles, ‘ILP in the South West’, Labour Leader, 17 October 1912.
W. H. Ayles, ‘ILP in the South West’, Labour Leader, 17 October 1912.
see J. Hannam, ‘“An Enlarged Sphere of Usefulness”: the Bristol Women’s Movement, c.1860–1914’, in M. Dresser and P. Ollerenshaw (eds), The Making of Modern Bristol (Tiverton: Redcliffe Press, 1996);
E. Malos, ‘Bristol Women in Action’, in I. Bild (ed.), Bristol’s Other History (Bristol: Bristol Broadsides, 1983).
Emily Blathwayt, Diaries, Gloucester Record Office, 1908.
For the WLL see C. Collette, For Labour and For Women: the Women’s Labour League, 1906–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989).
Women’s Labour League, Annual Report, 1911, 1912.
S. Bryher, An Account of the Labour and Socialist Movement in Bristol (Bristol: Bristol Labour Weekly, 1929), Part 3, p. 3.
Women’s Labour League, Annual Report, 1911, 1912.
See, for example, D. Tanner, ‘Labour and its Membership’, in D. Tanner, N. Tiratsoo and P. Thane (eds), Labour’s First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 250.
Women’s Labour League, Annual Report, 1912.
Walter Ayles, ‘What Labour is Achieving in Bristol’, Labour Leader, 23 July 1914.
Women’s Labour League, Annual Report, 1914.
WLL, Annual Conference Report, 1916.
D. Parker, ‘A Proper Joiner. Marge Evans — memories of the Bristol Labour Movement’, in Placards and Pin Money (Bristol: Bristol Broadsides, 1986).
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© 2007 June Hannam
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Hannam, J. (2007). ‘To make the world a better place’: Socialist Women and Women’s Suffrage in Bristol, 1910–1920. In: Boussahba-Bravard, M. (eds) Suffrage Outside Suffragism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230801318_7
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