The National Federation of Women Workers, 1906-1921

Cathy Hunt

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137033543
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book is the first full length history of the all-female National Federation of Women Workers (1906-21) led by the gifted and charismatic Mary Macarthur. Its focus is on the people who made up this pioneering union - the organisers, activists and members who built branches and struggled to improve the lives of Britain's working women.

1

Beginnings

The Federation was established under the guidance of the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) and this chapter starts with a description of the latter, from its inception in 1874 to the working relationship it set in place to support the Federation. The links between the two were vital to the Federation’s survival, but there were essential differences between them. The WTUL was a pressure group to which trade unions and labour organisations were invited to affiliate. It was, like its later counterpart in the USA (established in 1903), a largely middle class-led organisation, encouraging cross-class working in attempts to improve the working lives of industrial women through a combination of workplace organisation and protective legislation. In contrast, the Federation was a trade union, entirely managed, as Mary Macarthur was fond of explaining, by working women, uniting ‘the fifty corset workers’ or the pickle fillers in one town with the ‘thousand ammunition workers’ in another.¹ Her description of a union striving to organise women from a wide range of industries in all parts of the country represented something that no other general union in Britain attempted to do on such an ambitious scale before the First World War.

The Women’s Trade Union League

In 1919 Mary Macarthur told the NWTUL of America that she was ‘not quite sure whether the WTUL of England is your grandmother or your granddaughter. It was founded by a printing woman because of her visit to America and later your League was the outcome of our League’.² The ‘printing woman’ was Emma Paterson, a middle class British woman whose family circumstances caused her to seek varied employment; she served a brief bookbinding apprenticeship, and then worked as a governess and as secretary of the Women’s Suffrage Association.³ The Webbs’ history of trade unions refers to Paterson as ‘the real pioneer of modern women’s trade unions’ (although as historian Sally Alexander notices, clearly not a pioneer deserving any more attention than a footnote in their history of trade unionism).⁴ Acknowledging that she was not the first to organise women, they credit her with the first sustained effort to promote trade unionism amongst working women across the industrial field. On a visit to the USA in 1873, Paterson was inspired by the ‘success and force’ of the women of the Female Umbrella Makers’ Union in New York.⁵ Returning to Britain, she wrote an article in the Labour News, in which she emphasised the importance of women workers acting to improve their pay and conditions by organising into trade unions rather than relying on protective factory legislation on which they were not consulted.⁶

A conference held in 1874 resulted in the formation of the Women’s Protective and Provident League (WPPL). Kali Israel, in her study of Emilia Dilke, describes its original but rejected name – the National Protective and Benefit Union of Working Women – as too ‘incendiary’ to gain support among the largely middle class men and women (described by Sally Alexander as ‘Christians, feminists and philanthropists’) sympathetic to the aims of the new venture.⁷ Emilia Dilke, who became involved in the WPPL from the 1880s, recalled that in the unenlightened 1870s, ‘none dared speak bravely of trades unionism; it was something which meant, to the common ear, deeds of violence, of darkness, and the use of illegal or even criminal methods, synonymous with the destruction of property and life, whilst to the more educated it was an irremissible sin against the inspired ordinances of “political economy”’.⁸ By 1889 the WPPL was brave enough to try a new name, WTUL, although in 1900 an article by socialist campaigner and trade unionist Isabella Ford explained why a widely perceived antithesis between women and trade unionism was still very much in existence:

All the orthodox religious world, broadly speaking, is against Trade Unionism for women (except theoretically), because Trade Unionism means rebellion, and the orthodox teaching for women is submission in this world in order to gain happiness in the next world. Besides, on all social questions the teaching of those orthodox bodies (from the days of slavery downwards) is on the side of caution rather than on that of progress.⁹

Emma Paterson’s initial intention was to establish a general union for women to provide both providence, in the form of sickness and out of work benefits, and protection against low wages and long hours. She held up Joseph Arch’s recently established National Agricultural Labourers’ Union as a model on which the women’s organisation might be usefully modelled. In contrast to other general unions for semi-skilled and unskilled workers of various trades, established under the banner of (or influenced by) New Unionism from the late 1880s, Paterson’s vision was that once a general organisation had been established, with simple rules ‘to accustom women to the idea of union’, it ‘might ultimately be divided up into societies of different trades.¹⁰ She used her experience in the bookbinding industry to concentrate organising efforts on women in skilled trades where wages were above average.¹¹ Her idea for a general union did not last long; Teresa Olcott’s study of women and trade unionism in London shows that the first societies supported by the WPPL were, partly as a result of the influence of skilled men, formed in the image of the male craft or skilled unions. Despite entrance fees and weekly dues that were considerably lower than those paid by men, few other economic concessions were made to the specific features of women’s working lives. There were, for example, no marriage dowries, maternity benefits or arrangements for women to rejoin the union if they returned to work after child rearing.¹²

Nevertheless, the WPPL’s first Annual Report in 1875 stated that its intention was to ‘obviate the special difficulties which have hitherto prevented working women from combining for mutual protection and benefit by undertaking the work of organisation and the preliminary expenses of printing bills, advertising and hiring rooms for meetings’.¹³ Although the WPPL sought to encourage self-reliance and the independent growth of the societies it helped to form, it saw itself, in the meantime, as both guide and protector. Militancy was frowned upon:

[N]o tendency has yet been shown towards any rash or mistaken action on the part of the members, but if this should at any time be perceived, the intervention of an independent body composed of persons who are neither employers or employed might do much in moderating it.¹⁴

By declaring the working woman’s right to determine her own future and work in any trade she wanted to, with freedom achieved through organisation rather than factory legislation, Emma Paterson emphasised both the WPPL’s liberal feminist belief in gender equality and its self-help ideology, rooted firmly in the 19th century philanthropic tradition.¹⁵ Its rejection of state protection was utterly incomprehensible to those who saw only that women workers were exploited by employers and, worse, were used to undercut male workers and undermine the family wage. Researchers Barbara Hutchins and A. Harrison, writing just over 30 years after the establishment of the WPPL, also condemned the perceived mistake of feminists ‘in transferring their own grievance to a class whose troubles are little known to them and in supposing that while they pined to spend themselves in some “intolerable toil of thought”, Mary Brown or Jane Smith should also pine to spend herself in 14 hours a day washing or tailoring’.¹⁶ The middle class activists of the WPPL were undoubtedly removed from the world inhabited by those they sought to organise. There was certainly a tendency, as Gerry Holloway suggests, for some of them to place themselves in the role of big sisters to working class women, who they assumed were dependent upon them; but on the other hand, their distance, along with their time and (for some) financial resources, provided them with an opportunity to advance the cause of women’s trade unionism within influential political circles and to introduce it to women who could not risk the exposure of initiating organisation.¹⁷

Over time, the WPPL leadership shifted from its liberal roots towards an outlook influenced by socialism. Its belief that change could come purely from trade union organisation moved towards one that demanded the involvement of the state and recognised the need for protective employment legislation. Vigilant in maintaining a dialogue between organisers and workers to ensure that new legislative changes were not circumvented by employers, it was under no illusions that laws would be carefully upheld. After Paterson’s death in 1886, the WPPL’s policy also began to reflect her eventual conclusion that for women to successfully improve their industrial position, both sexes should work in cooperation, in mixed unions wherever possible.¹⁸ Although it remained reliant on financial donations from benefactors, the policy of charging affiliating unions two shillings and six pence per 250 women members ensured the involvement of the labour movement; any affiliated union with a female membership could call on the (now) WTUL for organising assistance and was, in return, entitled to at least an annual visit from one of the League’s organisers.¹⁹ Those unions which had no women in their ranks were also urged to offer financial help because, ‘the work of organising the women workers of the country properly belongs to the already organised workers’.²⁰ It made regular appeals for help, and support from local labour movements was often forthcoming – as in Nottingham where, in 1890, the Trades Council (TC) threw itself into preparation for a public meeting at which Emilia Dilke was to speak. It proposed the formation of an organising committee, the production of posters and handbills to be circulated amongst women workers and the invitation to the meeting of some prominent local citizens. After hearing Dilke’s address, the TC pledged to establish trade unions for women in all Nottingham industries employing female labour.²¹ By 1904, 60 societies in different parts of the country were affiliated to the WTUL, with a membership of around 50,000.²²

Men sometimes needed encouragement to offer help and the WTUL recognised the importance of playing on male fears of the perceived risks posed to the security of their pay and future employment by a mass of unorganised women. A funding appeal in 1907 stated that:

I am sure you will agree with me that it is the duty of Trade Unionists to assist us in our work, and it is a duty which they owe not only to the women but to themselves. The present tendency to replace men’s labour by women’s, at lower wages, is becoming more and more marked, and a striking example of this is the recent determination of the Tube Railways in London to replace men booking-clerks by girls. The Women’s Trade Union League always stands for equal work, but of course, this cannot be enforced without organisation.²³

The WTUL’s legal advice department dealt with industrial complaints, many of which involved employers who paid scant regard to the health and well-being of their workers. It worked closely with the first women factory inspectors, from 1893 onwards, publishing their prosecutions in its quarterly journal. The WTUL conducted fact-finding missions into working conditions, such as that carried out by Gertrude Tuckwell in the Staffordshire Potteries in the early 1890s, which was aimed at raising public awareness of the dangers of lead in glaze, exacerbated by dust in poorly ventilated workshops. Tuckwell concluded that ‘while women were so poverty stricken and powerless, they would have to get by legislation what men had achieved by organisation’, demonstrating the WTUL’s shift from Paterson’s emphasis on self-help towards a belief in state protection.²⁴

Under Emilia Dilke’s leadership from 1886, the WPPL remained a middle class-led organisation, making extensive use of parliamentary acquaintances to raise the profile of its campaigning and organising work. Much of its work was carried out from Dilke’s prestigious London home in Sloane Street, shared with her husband, Sir Charles Dilke, the radical Liberal MP. Here she gathered around her a group of talented young middle class women to advance the organisation’s work,²⁵ whilst also recognising the value of enlisting the help of working women in the provinces, acknowledging that ‘although interest is awakened and is growing in the class which the [WTUL] desires to reach, confidence is slow to come’.²⁶ When, therefore, working class women with organising ability, such as Annie Marland-Brodie, Ada Nield Chew, Helen Silcock and Sarah Reddish came to her attention, they were swiftly employed and sent off on campaigning tours around Britain. Their presence, however, was never quite enough to dispel perceptions of the WTUL as an organisation of ‘Lady Bountifuls’, separated by class from the women they desired to help.²⁷ The cl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Beginnings
• 2 Building a Union, 1906–14
• 3 The First World War
• 4 The Final Phase, 1918–21
• 5 Organisers and Activists
• 6 Coventry: a Case Study
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Federation Officials and Organisers
• Appendix 2: Federation Branches
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index