Abstract
In 1948, after having been ‘again and again asked for an account of [her] life’, the socialist former MP Margaret Bondfield completed the preface to her autobiography. In it she explained how she intended the book to be:
an account of the life of the first woman who became a member of His Majesty’s Privy Council, and a Minister and a member of the Cabinet. How and when and why this came about are matters worthy of some record....for...the younger generation...who will not remember even the more recent of the events here recorded. ...It may be useful for them to read of the kind of path trodden by one who is now in her seventies. ...If, occasionally, it is difficult to separate my personal adventure from the history of the Labour Party, that is perfectly in harmony with the facts. I have been so identified with the Movement that it is not always possible to say where one ends and the other begins.2
In writing these words, Bondfield was following a long-established tradition in Western politics. Political autobiographies and memoirs comprise one of the oldest forms of life writing. The urge amongst those at the centre of the events that challenged and shaped their nations during their lifetimes to leave accounts of their part in these for future generations ‘has scarcely abated since the rise of literacy in human civilisation’.3
I would like to thank Amy Culley for her suggestions on an early draft of this chapter.
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Notes
Margaret Bondfield, A Life (London, 1948), p. 9.
George Egerton, ‘Politics and Autobiography: Political Memoir as Polygenre’. Biography, 15, 3, Summer 1992, pp. 221–42, p. 242.
Sidonie Smith, ‘Autobiographical Discourse in the Theaters of Politics’. Biography, 33, 1 (Winter 2010) pp. v-xxvi, p. v. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York, 2003); Barrack Obama, Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (New York, 1995, repr. 2004); John McCain and Mark Salter, Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir (New York, 1999); Sarah Palin, Going Rogue: An American Life (New York, 2009).
George Egerton, ‘The Politics of Memory: Form and Function in the History of the Political Memoir from Antiquity to Modernity’ in Egerton (ed.), Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London, 1994), pp. 1–27, p. 16.
P. Kaihovaara ‘A Good Comrade, A Good Cadre: Autobiographies and Evaluation Reports as Part of Cadre Policy in the Finnish Communist Party during the 1940s and 1950s’ in K. Morgan, G. Cohen and A. Flinn (eds), Agents of the Revolution: New Biographical Approaches to the History of International Communism in the Ageof Lenin and Stalin (Oxford, 2005), pp. 245–64, p. 250. See also Claude Pennetier and Bernard Pudal ‘Communist Prosopography in France: Research in Progress based on French Institutional Communist Autobiographies’ in Morgan, Cohen and Flinn (eds.) pp. 21–36; D. P. Koenker, ‘Scripting the Revolutionary Worker Autobiography: Archetypes, Models, Inventions and Markets’. International Review of Social Histoly, 49 3 (2010), pp. 371–400.
J. Barrett, ‘Was the Personal Political? Reading the Autobiography of American Communism’. International Review of Social History, 53 (2008), pp. 394–423, pp. 403–4.
UrsulaMasson, ‘Introduction’ to E. Andrews, A Woman’s Work Is Never Done (South Glamorgan, 2006), p. xxiv.
T. Coslett, C. Lury and P. Summerfield (eds), Feminism and Autobiography: Texts, Theories, Methods (Routledge, 2000), p. 2.
D. Stanton, The Female Autograph: Theory and Practice ofAutobiography summarised by L. Stanley, The Autobiographical ‘I’, p. 92.
For an overview see Siodnie Smith and Julia Watson, ‘Introduction’ in Smith and Watson (eds.), Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader (London, 1998), pp. 3–56.
Hilda Kean, ‘Searching for the Past in Present Defeat: The Construction of Historical and Political Identity in British Feminism in the 1920s and 1930s’. Women’s History Review, 3, 1(1994), pp. 57–80, here pp. 60–1.
For example by Cheryl Law, Suffrage and Power (London, 1997).
The works considered here, in order of the author’s election, are: Katherine, Duchess of Athol, Working Partnership (London, 1958); Margaret Bondfield, A Life’s Work (London, 1948); Jennie Lee, This Great Journey: A Volume of Autobiography, 1904–45 (London, 1963); Edith Picton-Turbervill, Life Is Good (London, 1939); Mary Agnes Hamilton Remembering My Good Friends (London, 1944); Up-hill All The Way (London, 1953); Thelma Cazalet-Keir, From the Wings (London, 1967); Leah Manning, A Life for Education: An Autobiography (London, 1970); Edith Summerskill, Letters to my Daughter (London, 1957); A Woman’s World (London, 1967); Bessie Braddock and Jack Braddock, The Braddocks (London, 1963); Barbara Castle, Fighting All The Way (London, 1993); Jean Mann, Woman in Parliament (London, 1962); Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London, 1993); The Path to Power (London, 1995); Shirley Williams, Climbing the Bookshelves (London: 2009). The autobiography of Margaret Mackay, Generation in Revolt (written as Margaret McCarthy, London, 1953) was written and published before her election, so is not included.
Pamela Brookes, Women at Westminster (London, 1967); Harrison,’ Women in a Men’s House’; ‘Elizabeth Vallance, Women in the House (London, 1979).
See, for example, Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (eds.), Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives pp. 3–4; Laura Marcus, Autobiographical Discourses: Criticism, Theory and Practice (Manchester, 1994) p. 3.
Regina Gagnier, Subjectivities (Oxford, 1991), p. 160.
Neal Blewett ‘The Personal Writings of Politicians’ in Tracy Arklay, John Raymond Nethercote and John Wanna, (eds.), Australian Political Lives: Chronicling Political Careers and Administrative Histories (Canberra, 2006), pp. 91–7, p. 91.
Harrison, ‘Women in a Men’s House’, p. 634. Valance and Brookes also touch on this theme throughout their work. See Elizabeth Valiance, Women in the House: A Study of Women MPs (London, 1979); Pamela Brookes, Women at Westminster (London, 1967).
Ray Strachey, The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain (London, 1988 [19281), p. 367.
Susan Stanford Friedman, ‘Women’s Autobiographical Selves: Theory and Practice’ in Shari Benstock (ed.), The Private Self Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writing’ (London, 1988), p. 44.
Carol Millar, “‘Geneva - The Key to Equality”: Inter-war Feminists and the League of Nations’, Women’s History Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1994, pp. 219–45 See also Bondfield, Life’s Work, pp. 347–8; Hamilton, Remembering, pp. 184–92.
Patricia Meyer Spacks, ‘Selves in Hiding’, cited by Marysa Navarro, ‘Of Sparrows and Condors: The Autobiography of Eva PerOn’, in Donna C. Stanton (ed.), The Female Autograph (London, 1987), p. 185.
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Cowman, K. (2013). The Political Autobiographies of Early Women MPs, c.1918–1964. In: Gottlieb, J.V., Toye, R. (eds) The Aftermath of Suffrage. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137333001_12
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