1. For an overview of the literature, see Francis, Martin, “Labour and Gender,” in Labour's First Century, eds. Tanner, Duncan, Thane, Pat, and Tiratsoo, Nick (Cambridge, 2000)Google Scholar. See also Graves, Pamela, Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics, 1918–1939 (Cambridge, 1994)Google Scholar; Francis, Martin, Ideas and Politics under Labour, 1945–51. Building a New Britain (Manchester, 1997)Google Scholar, chap. 8; Buhle, Mari Jo, Women and American Socialism, 1870–1920 (Urbana, 1981)Google Scholar; Gruber, Helmut and Graves, Pamela, eds., Women and Socialism. Socialism and Women. Europe between the Two Wars (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar.

2. Graves, Labour Women, chap. 3.

3. Pugh, Martin, “Domesticity and the Decline of Feminism,” British Feminism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Smith, Harold L. (Aldershot, 1990), 156–7Google Scholar, claims that women labour leaders were “orthodox party loyalists … who put party and class above sex.”

4. For example, see Graves, Labour Women, chap 4; Pamela Graves, “An Experiment in Women-Centred Socialism: Labour Women in Britain,” in Women and Socialism, eds. Gruber and Graves; Smith, Harold L., “Sex vs. Class: British Feminists and the Labour Movement, 1919–29,” Historian 47 (1984)Google Scholar; Phillips, Anne, Divided Loyalties: Dilemmas of Sex and Class (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

5. Black, Amy and Brooke, Stephen, “The Labour Party, Women and the Problems of Gender,” Journal of British Studies 36 (1997)Google Scholar; Hannam, June and Hunt, Karen, Socialist Women. Britain, 1880s to 1920s (London, 2002)Google Scholar. See also an earlier attempt to consider the complexity of labor women's identities: Claire Collins, “Women and Labour Politics in Britain 1893–1932” (Ph.D. diss., LSE, 1991), 261.

6. Dorothy Sue Cobble makes this point for the United States: Cobble, Dorothy Sue, The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America (Princeton, 2004), 7Google Scholar.

7. Pat Thane, “The Women of the British Labour Party and Feminism, 1906–1945,” in British Feminism, ed. Smith, 141; Alberti, for example, claimed that leading Labour Party women were “strongly influenced by their male colleagues,” Alberti, Johanna, Beyond Suffrage: Feminists in War and Peace, 1914–28 (Houndmills, 1989), 180–181CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Thane, “The Women of the British Labour Party,” 124.

9. See, for example, Cobble, The Other Women's Movement, 7; Smith, ed. British Feminism in the Twentieth Century; Offen, Karen, European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History (Stanford, 2000)Google Scholar; Daley, Caroline and Nolan, Melanie, eds., Suffrage and Beyond: International Feminist Perspectives (Auckland, 1994)Google Scholar.

10. Worley, Matthew, ed., Labour's Grass Roots: Essays on the Activities of Local Labour Parties and Members, 1918–45 (Aldershot, 2005)Google Scholar; Evans, Neil and Jones, Dot, “‘Help Forward the Great Work of Humanity’: Women in the Labour Party in Wales,” in The Labour Party in Wales, 1900–2000, eds. Tanner, Duncan, Williams, Chris, and Hopkin, Deian (Cardiff, 2000)Google Scholar; Savage, Michael, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics: The Labour Movement in Preston, 1880–1940 (Cambridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

11. Karen Hunt, “Making Politics in Local Communities: Labour Women in Interwar Manchester,” in Worley, ed., Labour's Grass Roots.

12. Andrews, Elizabeth, A Woman's Work is Never Done (Dinas Powys, 2006 [1957])Google Scholar; Roberts, Marian Goronwy, A Woman of Vision: A Life of Marion Phillips, MP (Wrexham, 2000)Google Scholar. There are brief biographies of the chief women officers and Elizabeth Andrews, Margaret Gibb, and Agnes Hardie. Kingston, Beverley, “Phillips, Marion (1881–1932),” in Dictionary of Labour Biography, eds. Bellamy, Joyce and Saville, John, Vol. V (Basingstoke, 1979)Google Scholar; Margaret Espinasse, “Sutherland, Mary Elizabeth (1895–1972),” in Ibid., Vol. VI (Basingstoke, 1982); Maureen Callcott, “Gibb, Margaret Hunter (1892–1984),” in Ibid., Vol. VIII (Houndmills, 1987). Masson, Ursula and Newman, Lori, “Andrews, Elizabeth (1882–1960),” in Dictionary of Labour Biography, eds. Geldart, Keith, Howell, David, and Kirk, Neville, Vol. XI (Houndmills, 2003)Google Scholar; Thane, Pat, “Mary Elizabeth Sutherland, 1895–1972,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Knox, William W., “Hardie, Agnes Agnew, 1874–1951,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Harrison, Brian, “Marion Phillips, 1881–1932,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Jones, Dot, “Andrews, Elizabeth, 1882–1960,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar.

13. Cowman, Krista, Women of the Right Spirit: Paid Organisers of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) 1904–18 (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar.

14. Feminist comrade is used to indicate the militant outlook of members of the Women's Co-operative Guild: Scott, Gillian, “As a War Horse to the Beat of Drums: Representations of Working-class Femininity in the Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War,” in Radical Femininity: Women's Self Representation in the Public Sphere, ed. Yeo, Eileen J. (Manchester, 1998), 210Google Scholar.

15. Cobble, The Other Women's Movement, 3.

16. For a further discussion of this issue, see Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 8–11.

17. These official sources are revealing in that they indicate how the organizers wanted to present their work to rank-and-file members, and there are occasional glimpses of the difficulties they encountered with local officials, but the sources give few insights into the tensions the organizers must have experienced with the leadership of the party.

18. For example, see Adelheid Von Saldern, “Modernization as Challenge: Perceptions and Reactions of German Social Democratic Women”; Ulla Jansz, “Gender and Democratic Socialism in the Netherlands”; Ida Blom, “A Double Responsibility: Women, Men and Socialism in Norway”; Hilda Romer Christensen, “Socialist Feminists and Feminist Socialists in Denmark, 1920–1940”; Renee Franguer, “Social Democrats and the Woman Question in Sweden,” in Women and Socialism, eds. Gruber and Graves; Jallinoja, Riitta, “The Women's Liberation Movement in Finland,” Scandinavian Journal of History 5 (1980), 44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. For an account of the Women's Labour League, see Collette, Christine, For Labour and For Women: The Women's Labour League, 1906–1918 (Manchester, 1989)Google Scholar.

20. Thane, “The Women of the British Labour Party,” 125; this compares well with other countries, although many men were members of the Labour Party through the affiliation of their trade unions. In Germany, for example, women comprised 15.8 percent of the SPD in 1924 and 23 percent in 1930. In the Netherlands the share of women in party membership increased from twenty percent in 1920 to thirty-three percent in 1938: Saldern, “Modernization as Challenge,” 217, and Jansz, “Gender and Democratic Socialism in the Netherlands,” 217.

21. Caruth, Florence, “Women's Work in the Party: VI Labour Women's Advisory Councils,” Labour Woman, October 1937Google Scholar. Membership did fluctuate, however, declining in the early 1930s with the collapse of the Labour government and then recovering by the end of the decade.

22. Hannam and Hunt, Socialist Women, 89–91; Honeycutt, Karen, “Clara Zetkin: a Socialist Approach to the Problem of Women's Oppression,” in European Women on the Left, eds. Slaughter, Jane and Kern, Robert (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; Boxer, Marilyn J. and Quataert, Jean H., eds., Socialist Women: European Social Feminism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; Quataert, Jean H., Reluctant Feminists in German Social Democracy, 1885–1917 (Princeton, 1979)Google Scholar.

23. Christensen, “Socialist Feminists”; Blom, “A Double Responsibility”; Renee Franguer, “Social Democrats and the Woman Question.”

24. Annie Townley makes these points about the rural South West, Labour Woman, March 1951; for further examples of opposition, see Somers, Annie, “Labour Women in London,” Labour Woman, October 1937Google Scholar; Sutherland, Mary, “Some Aspects of Women's Organisation,” Labour Woman, October 1936Google Scholar.

25. Sutherland, “Some Aspects of Women's Organisation.”

26. Quoted in Thane, Mary “Elizabeth Sunderland,” 2. She made the same point in private correspondence with Marjorie Mann, “a driving force behind the Ontario Women's Committee” of the “Canadian Cooperative Commonwealth Committee,” 1947 (see Sangster, Joan, “Political Tourism, Writing, and Communication: Transnational Connections of Women on the Left, 1920s–1940s,” in Crossing Boundaries: Women's Organising in Europe and the Americas, 1880–1940s, eds. Jonsson, Pernilla, Neunsinger, Silke, and Sangster, Joan (Uppsala, 2007), 112Google Scholar.

27. Thane, Pat, “Women in the British Labour Party and the Construction of State Welfare, 1906–1939,” in Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, eds. Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya (London, 1993), 94Google Scholar. See also Mrs. Lowe, chairman's address, Annual Conference Report, Women's Labour League, 1918, 38.

28. See the debates at the 1918 WLL conference, Annual Conference Report, Women's Labour League, 1918.

29. Phillips, Marion, “Introduction,” in Women and the Labour Party, ed. Phillips, Marion (London, 1918), 10–11Google Scholar.

30. Sutherland, “Some Aspects of Women's Organisation.”

31. Howell, David, MacDonald's Party. Labour Identities and Crisis, 1922–31 (Oxford, 2002), 377CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Graves, “An Experiment,” 185.

33. Editorial in Labour Woman, September 1922, quoted in Thane, “Women in the British Labour Party and the Construction of State Welfare,” 350.

34. Elizabeth Andrews to Mary Sutherland, November 23 and February 15, 1937, quoted in Tanner, “Gender, Civic Culture and Politics,” 177.

35. Labour Woman, August 1926.

36. Noted in Scott, Gillian, “‘A Trade Union for Married Women’: The Women's Co-operative Guild, 1914–1920,” in This Working-Day World: Women's Lives and Culture(s) in Britain, 1914–1945, ed. Oldfield, Sybil (London, 1994), 18Google Scholar; Scott, “As a War Horse to the Beat of Drums,” 210.

37. Frank, Dana, “Housewives, Socialists and the Politics of Food: The 1917 New York Cost of Living Protests,” Feminist Studies 11, 2 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaplan, Temma, “Female Consciousness and Collective Action: The Case of Barcelona,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smart, Judith, “Feminists, Food and the Fair Price: The Cost of Living Demonstrations in Melbourne, August–September 1917,” Labour History 50 (1986)Google Scholar.

38. Hilton, Matthew, “The Female Consumer and the Politics of Consumption in Twentieth Century Britain,” Historical Journal 45 (2002), 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a stimulating discussion of the potential for creating a politics of consumption, see Hunt, Karen, “Negotiating the Boundaries of the Domestic: British Socialist Women and the Politics of Consumption,” Women's History Review 9 (2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Karen Hunt, “The Politics of Food and Women's Neighborhood Activism in First World War Britain,” current volume.

39. Young, Wilfred, “Gertrude Francis,” Labour Woman, May 1962, 15Google Scholar.

40. They were Elizabeth Andrews (Wales); Lilian Anderson Fenn (North East); Annie Townley (South West); Gertrude Francis (Eastern); Mamie Anderson (North West); Grace Tavener (Southern)

41. Thane, “Mary Elizabeth Sutherland.”

42. Phillips, Marion, “In Memory of Harriet Fawcett, 1882–1930,” Labour Woman, March 1930, 39Google Scholar; MES, “Elizabeth Andrews, OBE,” Labour Woman, March 1960.

43. Andrews, Elizabeth, “New Age in the Mining Valleys: Women Who Helped to Make It,” Labour Woman, December 1953Google Scholar.

44. “Harriet Fawcett,” Labour Woman, April 1920, 57.

45. Andrews, A Woman's Work, 9–11.

46. Ursula Masson, “Introduction,” in Andrews, A Woman's Work, xviii, xxiii makes this point about Elizabeth Andrews and also notes that she had no children.

47. “Appointment of New Organiser: Mrs Gibb for the North East,” Labour Woman, April 1930, 55.

48. Labour Woman, June 1928. This issue is discussed in Collins, “Women and Labour Politics,” 342–343.

49. Letter from Lilian Anderson Fenn to Jim Middleton, June 16, 1929, Middleton Papers, Ruskin College, Oxford, 231.

50. Beatrice Webb, Diary, 3, 302, May 1918, quoted in Harrison, “Marion Phillips,” 2.

51. Goronwy-Roberts, A Woman of Vision, 96; Middleton, Lucy, “We Are Her Memorial,” Labour Woman, January 1969, 7Google Scholar.

52. Letter November 8, 1979, quoted in Espinasse, M., “Sutherland, Mary Elizabeth (1895–1972): Labour Party organiser,” in Scottish Labour Leaders, 1918–1939, ed. Knox, William (Edinburgh, 1984), 261Google Scholar. Gibb also described Sutherland as “kind and understanding,” Gibb, Margaret, “They Were Grand Years,” Labour Woman, October 1957, 153Google Scholar.

53. Tanner, Duncan, Political Change and the Labour Party, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, 1990) 441CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54. This point is made in Collins, “Women and Labour Politics,” 147.

55. Lilian Anderson Fenn to Jim Middleton, June 16, 1929.

56. See, for example, letters from Lilian Anderson Fenn, January 6, 1935, MID 47/29; Annie Townley, November 29, 1934, MID 48/56; Elizabeth Andrews, 1934, MID 48/57, Middleton Collection. Jim Middleton was very positive about women's contribution to labor politics.

57. Masson and Newman, “Andrews,” 9.

58. Tavener, Grace, “Women's Work in Southern Region,” Labor Woman, March 1951, 52Google Scholar; see also Gibb, “They Were Grand Years,” 152.

59. Annie Somers to Jim Middleton, December 14, 1944, MID 56/58, Middleton Collection.

60. Goodwin, Jeff, Jasper, James, and Polletta, Francesca, “Introduction,” in Passionate Politics, Emotions and Social Movements, eds. Goodwin, Jeff, Jasper, James, and Polletta, Francesca (Chicago, 2001), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clarke, Simon, Hoggett, Paul, and Thompson, Simon, eds. Emotions, Politics and Society (Houndmills, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. This point is made by Harrison, “Marion Phillips,” 2.

62. Gibb, “They Were Grand Years,” 153.

63. Sangster, “Political Tourism,” 112.

64. Glenys Kinnock, “Preface,” in Andrews, A Woman's Work, xii.

65. Andrews, A Woman's Work.

66. Fenn, Lilian Anderson, “I Liked My Job,” Labour Woman, January 1954Google Scholar.

67. Andrews, Elizabeth, “Wales—Then and Now, 1919–1947,” Labour Woman, February 1948Google Scholar.

68. St. George West Ward Women's Section Minutes, Bristol Record Office; Francis, Gertrude, “I Liked My Job,” Labour Woman, February 1954, 37Google Scholar.

69. For example, see Gibb, Margaret, “Lilian Fenn,” Labour Woman, March 1955Google Scholar; Gibb, “They Were Grand Years”; Andrews, “Wales—Then and Now.”

70. Phillips, Marion, “A Call to Labour Women,” Labour Woman, March 1920, 40Google Scholar.

71. Gibb, Margaret, “Labour Women in the North East,” Labour Woman, January 1937Google Scholar; on her retirement Gertrude Francis was praised by Mary Sutherland for helping to train many of those who were now known for their work as magistrates and councillors; MES, “Mrs Fenn and Miss Francis,” Labour Woman, December 1953, 237.

72. Andrews, Elizabeth, “The Section's Programme,” Labour Woman, June 1933Google Scholar.

73. Anderson, Mamie, “A Searchlight on the Maternity Hospitals,” Labour Woman, January 1935Google Scholar; Hunt, “Making Politics in Local Communities,” 96.

74. Jones, “Andrews, Elizabeth.”

75. MES, “Mrs Andrews Retires,” Labour Woman, March 1948, 53; Andrews, A Woman's Work, chap. 4.

76. Jones, “Andrews, Elizabeth”; MES, “Elizabeth Andrews OBE,” Labour Woman, March 1960.

77. Masson, “Introduction,” xxxi.

78. Andrews, Elizabeth, “Fear,” Labour Woman, August 1932Google Scholar.

79. Andrews, A Woman's Work, chap. 9.

80. Andrews, Elizabeth, “Nursery Schools under the Education Act 1918,” Labour Woman, September 1919Google Scholar; “The Need for a National Campaign for Nursery Schools,” Labour Woman, January 1928.

81. Duncan Tanner, “Gender, Civic Culture and Politics in South Wales: Explaining Labour Municipal Policy, 1918–39,” in Labour's Grass Roots, ed. Worley, 170–193.

82. Thane, “Women of the British Labour Party and Feminism,” 129.

83. A.D. Sanderson Furniss, “The Working Woman's House,” in Women and the Labour Party, ed. Phillips, 74. See also Thane, “Women in the British Labour Party,” 365–366 for Labour women's involvement in housing campaigns.

84. Glasier, Katherine Bruce, Baths at the Pithead (London, 1913)Google Scholar. For a detailed discussion of the campaign for pit head baths, see Evans, Neil and Jones, Dot, “‘A Blessing for the Miner's Wife’: The Campaign for Pithead Baths in the South Wales Coalfield, 1908–1950,” LLafur, 6 (1994), 5–28Google Scholar.

85. Katherine Bruce Glasier, “The Labour Women's Battle with Dirt,” in Women and the Labour Party, ed. Phillips. The racialized phrase “black slavery” gave added weight to the usual socialist notion of wage slavery and would have evoked powerful images of lack of freedom, drudgery, and, in the case of women, vulnerability to sexual as well as other abuse.

86. Ibid., 88.

87. Mrs. Lowe, Annual Conference Report of Women's Labour League, 1918, 38.

88. Evans and Jones, “A Blessing for the Miner's Wife,” 15.

89. Andrews, A Woman's Work.

90. Andrews, Elizabeth, “Pit Head Baths,” Labour Woman, April 1919Google Scholar.

91. “Pit Head Baths,” Colliery Workers' Magazine, September 1923, in Andrews, A Woman's Work, 66. See also Masson and Newman, “Andrews,” 4–5.

92. Andrews, Elizabeth, “Pit Head Baths,” The Colliery Workers' Magazine, September 1923Google Scholar, in Andrews, A Woman's Work, 65.

93. Letter from Katharine Bruce Glasier to Jim Middleton, April 18, 1929, MID 23/12, Middleton Collection. She was trying to persuade Middleton to take an article on “The Disposal of Waste” for Labour Magazine.

94. Masson, “Introduction,” xxvi, xxvii; see Graves, Labour Women, 98–108 for a discussion of the complex views on the subject from men and women in the party.

95. For the debates in different European countries see Gruber and Graves, Women and Socialism. For North America see Cobble, The Other Women's Movement, 124–127.

96. Pedersen, Susan, Family Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge, 1993)Google Scholar.

97. For a discussion of the debates in Britain, see Graves, Labour Women, 99–109; Howell, MacDonald's Party, 356–365; Pedersen, Family Dependence, chap. 4.

98. The ILP included family allowances in its Living Wage campaign in 1926.

99. Graves, Labour Women, 109.

100. Knox, “Hardie.”

101. Collins, “Women and Labour Politics,” 232.

102. Masson, “Introduction,” xxvi–xxvii.

103. Howell, MacDonald's Party, 377.

104. Interview with Mary Sutherland on her retirement, Labour Woman, January 1962.

105. Middleton, Lucy, “Women in Labour Politics,” in Women and the Labour Movement, ed. Middleton, Lucy (London, 1977), 35Google Scholar.