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Tea and Sympathy: A Study of Diversity among Women Activists in the National Federation of Women Workers in Coventry, England, 1907–14

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2007

Cathy Hunt
Cathy Hunt
Affiliation:
Coventry University
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Abstract

This article considers the ways in which three local activists sought to inspire women workers to become active and loyal trade unionists at the start of the twentieth century, at a time when the great majority of female workers in Britain was unorganized. It employs evidence of tactics used by organizers of the all-female trade union, the National Federation of Women Workers in Coventry, in the industrial West Midlands of Britain in the years before the First World War. This in turn encourages consideration of the extent to which the aims and policies advocated by the Federation's national leadership suited the economic and social characteristics in the regions of Britain. It offers an opportunity to look beyond the dominant and charismatic personalities who shaped and dominated the union's national headquarters and instead considers the successes and failures of local women who attempted to establish a regional branch of the Federation.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , Fall 2007 , pp. 173 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The International Labor and Working-Class History Society 2007

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References

NOTES

1. For the purposes of the article, the National Federation of Women Workers will be referred to as the Federation, and the Women's Trade Union League as the League.

2. The Women's Trade Union League was founded in 1874 and was originally called the Women's Protection and Provident League.

3. Boston, Sarah, Women Workers and the Trade Union Movement (London, 1980), 61Google Scholar.

4. Drake, Barbara, Women in Trade Unions (London, 1984, first published 1920Google Scholar. It is difficult to be precise about membership numbers before the War as they fluctuated from year to year. In addition, some women were members of the Insurance section of the Federation, which administered National Insurance after the National Insurance Act of 1911, but were not trade union members. The Women's Trade Union League Annual Report of 1913 states that the Federation had enrolled 22,000 women into its Insurance section but had lost many members because “poorly paid women feel they cannot afford the compulsory State contribution for insurance and the Trade Union contribution as well.”

5. Other women included in the establishment of the Coventry branch include Mrs. Williams, who left the city in 1912 and worked with the Woolwich branch, the Misses Oliver, two sisters of whom little is known, apart from their occupations in dressmaking and confectionery and the involvement of one of them in the Women's Social and Political Union, and some others who so far in my research remain names only.

6. Hannam, June & Hunt, Karen, Socialist Women Britain, 1880s to 1920s (London, 2002), 34Google Scholar.

7. Thom, Deborah, Nice Girls and Rude Girls: Women Workers in World War One, (London, 2000), 113Google Scholar.

8. Thom, Nice Girls, 118.

9. Bornat, Joanna, “Lost Leaders: Women, Trade Unionism and the Case of the General Union of Textile workers 1875–1914” in Unequal Opportunities: Women's Employment in England, 1880–1918, ed. John, Angela V. (Oxford, 1986), 228Google Scholar.

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11. see for example, Rowbotham, Sheila, A Century of Women (London, 1997), 23Google Scholar.

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14. Gertrude Tuckwell Collection, Women, Industry and Trade Unionism 1890–1920 (Brighton, 1981)Google Scholar.

15. Thom, Nice Girls, notes the collection's emphasis on London and South East England, 98.

16. Woman Worker was published between 1907 and 1909, when it became Women Folk. It ceased production after 1910 and Woman Worker was revived by Macarthur in 1916.

17. These include a collection of audiotapes that comprise the Richardson Collection held at Coventry University Library, England. As research for Twentieth Century Coventry (Coventry, 1972) Kenneth Richardson conducted and recorded interviews with men and women who had lived and worked in Coventry in the first half of the twentieth century.

18. I am particularly grateful to Mrs. Enid Trent, daughter of Edith Stringer of the Coventry branch of the National Federation of Women Workers, for meeting me and corresponding with me over several years.

19. Coventry Trades Council Annual Reports, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick MSS.5/4/AN.

20. Rubinstein, David, “Trade Unions, Politicians and Public Opinion” in Trade Unions in British Politics, ed. Pimlott, Ben and Cook, Chris, (New York, 1982), 58Google Scholar.

21. Drake, Women in Trade Unions, Table 1.

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24. Boston, Women Workers, 70.

25. Thom, Nice Girls, 103.

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29. Census of England and Wales, 1911.

30. Tiratsoo, “Coventry's Ribbon Trade.”

31. Yates, John, Pioneers to Power (Coventry, 1950), 20Google Scholar.

32. Coventry Trades Council Annual Report 1904, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick.

33. Ibid.

34. Midland Daily Telegraph, May 28, 1906.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Savage, Michael, Dynamics of Working Class Politics (Cambridge 1987), 153Google Scholar.

38. Ibid.

39. Davies, Sam, Liverpool Labour: Social and Political Influences on the Development of the Labour Party in Liverpool 1900–39 (Keele, 1996), 173Google Scholar.

40. TUC Report 1908, TUC History Online available at: http://www.unionhistory.info/index.php.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Woman Worker, October 1908.

44. Thom, Nice Girls, 108.

45. Midland Daily Telegraph, July 27, 1908.

46. Thom, Nice Girls, 113.

47. Midland Daily Telegraph, July 1, 1918.

48. Midland Daily Telegraph, April 8, 1912.

49. Richardson, Kenneth, Twentieth Century Coventry, (Coventry 1972), 162Google Scholar.

50. Correspondence between author and Enid Trent, 2002.

51. Reckitt, Maurice, A Study in Vocation and Versatility, (London, 1961), 53Google Scholar.

52. Woman Worker, September 1907.

53. Yates, Pioneers, 25.

54. Woman Worker, November 1907.

55. Record, February 1916.

56. Woman Worker, November 1907.

57. Woman Worker, December 1907.

58. Margaret Bondfield, cited in Thom, Nice Girls, 110.

59. Hamilton, Mary, Mary Macarthur—a biographical sketch (London, 1926), 35Google Scholar

60. Woman Worker, May 1908.

61. Ibid.

62. Midland Daily Telegraph, May 19, 1906

63. Sentinel, cuttings 1908–10, Coventry Local Studies Library.

64. Liddington, Jill and Norris, Jill, One Hand Tied Behind Us: the Rise of the Women's Suffrage Movement (London, 1978)Google Scholar.

65. Rose, Sonya O., Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth Century England, (California 1992), 182Google Scholar.

66. Hunt, Cathy “‘A little too nice?’ The National Federation of Women Workers, Coventry 1907–18,” Women's History Magazine 43 (2003): 15–19Google Scholar.

67. No records of the Coventry WSPU survive, but press coverage of events and meetings suggests that those centrally involved were not working women.

68. There were over 3000 male members of the Workers' Union in Coventry; see Carr, Frank, “Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry 1914–39” (PhD. Diss., University of Warwick, 1978), 36Google Scholar. There is no evidence of when a separate women's branch of the Workers' Union was first formed until the Coventry Trades Council Annual Report of 1914.

69. Women's Trade Union League Annual Report 1914, TUC Collection, London Metropolitan University.

70. Coventry Evening Telegraph, December 1, 1952.

71. Strack, B., “Labour Politics in Coventry 1890–1914” (M.A. Thesis, University of Warwick 1990)Google Scholar.

72. Thom, Nice Girls, 113.

73. Woman Worker, August 28, 1908.

74. Edith Mayell, Kenneth Richardson Collection of Audiotapes (Lanchester Collection), Coventry University Library, tape no. 73/4.

75. Ibid. These incidents are also mentioned in Hunt “A little too nice.”

76. Midland Daily Telegraph, February 5, 1908.

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid.

80. Drake, Women in Trade Unions.

81. Midland Daily Telegraph, February 12, 1909.

82. Justice, April 17, 1909.

83. Gordon, Women and the Labour Movement, 235.

84. Ben Tillett of the Dockers' Union, cited in Boston, Women in Trade Unions, 55.

85. Record, July 1914.

86. Richardson Collection, Mayell 73/4.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid.

89. Thom, Nice Girls, 110.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid.

92. Richardson Collection, Mayell 73/4. On her marriage in 1912 Stringer became Edith Mayell. Despite her marriage she continued to work until the birth of her child in 1916.

93. Correspondence between author and Enid Trent, 2002.

94. Richardson Collection, Mayell, 73/4.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid.

97. Drake, Women in Trade Unions, 49.

98. Julia Varley Collection, University of Hull, Bournville Works Magazine, June 1951, DJV/7C.

99. Carr, “Engineering Workers,” 38.

100. Thom, Nice Girls, 94.