Women's Labour League
The Women's Labour League was a pressure organisation, founded in London in 1906, to promote the political representation of women in parliament and local bodies.[1] The idea was first suggested by Mary Macpherson, a linguist and journalist who had connections with the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants,[2] and was taken up by several notable socialist women, including Margaret MacDonald, Marion Phillips and Margaret Bondfield.[3][4] The League's inaugural conference was held in Leicester, with representatives of branches in London, Leicester, Preston and Hull. It was affiliated to the Labour Party.[3] Margaret MacDonald acted as the League's president,[5] while both Margaret Bondfield and Marion Phillips served at times as its organising secretary.[6]
Much of the League's campaigning effort was devoted to the issue of women's suffrage. When the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave a partial women's franchise, the League decided to disband as an independent organisation. It became the women's section of the Labour Party, which had reorganised under a new constitution that year.[3]
The Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People's History Museum in Manchester holds the records of the Women's Labour League in their collection.[7]
Members of the Executive
The following were members of the executive of the Women's Labour League:[8]
- Bertha Ayles[9]
- Jennie Baker [10]
- Miss Bell
- Miss Bellamy
- Ethel Bentham
- Margaret Bondfield
- Katharine Bruce Glasier
- Marion Curran
- Charlotte Despard
- Louise Donaldson
- Mary Gawthorpe
- Florence Harrison Bell
- Mabel Hope
- F. James
- Edith Kerrison
- Mary Longman
- Eveline Lowe
- Mary Macarthur
- Margaret MacDonald
- Miss McKenzie
- Clarice McNab
- Mary Macpherson
- Edith Macrosty
- Mary Middleton
- Mary Muir
- Minnie Nodin
- Marion Phillips
- Edith Rigby
- Ada Salter
- Grace Scholefield
- Lisbeth Simm
- Margaret Smith
- Maud Ward
Notable members
See also
References
- "Women, the Vote and Labour 1906-1918". National Co-operative Archive. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
- Collette, Christine (1989). For Labour and for Women: The Women's Labour League 1906–18. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 31. ISBN 0-7190-2591-5.
- "Labour History Archive and Study Centre". Archives hub. Retrieved 7 September 2014.
- Williamson, Philip. "Bondfield, Margaret Grace". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition. Retrieved 21 August 2014. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- June, Hannam. "MacDonald, Margaret Ethel Gladstone". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition. Retrieved 23 August 2014. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- Collette, Christine (1989). For Labour and for Women: The Women's Labour League 1906–18. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 132–34. ISBN 0-7190-2591-5.
- Collection Catalogues and Descriptions, Labour History Archive and Study Centre
- Christine Collette, For Labour and for Women: The Women's Labour League, 1906-1918, p.54
- appears in the 1911 census at 12 Station Road, Ashley Down, Bristol no occupation shown aged 34 living with her husband Walter Ayles.
- appears in the 1901 Census at 24 Victoria Avenue Stockon on Tees shown as a Socialist Health Lecturer aged 36 with her husband a trade union organiser