Overview

In February 1900 a group of men representing trade unionists, socialists, Fabians and Marxists gathered in London to make another attempt at establishing an organisation capable of getting working-class men elected to Parliament. The body they set up was the Labour Representation Committee; six years later when 29 of its candidates were elected to the House of Commons it changed its name to the Labour Party. No women took part in that first meeting, but several watched from the public gallery. Amongst them was Isabella Ford, an active socialist and trade unionist who would have been familiar to most of the men assembled below. She had been asked by her friend, Millicent Fawcett, to attend and report back on what happened. Millicent was the President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and Isabella had been involved with the suffrage movement for a long time. A few years later she would become the first woman to speak at a Labour Party conference, moving a resolution on votes for women but, at the Party’s inception in 1900, she and every other woman in the hall was silent. Throughout Labour’s history, even in its earliest years, women were present in the room, but they were not always recorded or remembered. They came from many different backgrounds and they worked for the causes they believed in as organisers, campaigners, negotiators, polemicists, public speakers and leaders. They took on the vested interests of their time; sometimes they won. Yet the vast majority of them have been forgotten by the Labour movement that they helped to found. Even Margaret Bondfield, who became Britain’s first woman cabinet minister, often barely merits a footnote. Women made real and substantial contributions to Labour’s earliest years and had a significant impact on the Party’s ability to attract and maintain women’s votes after World War I. In addition to Margaret and Isabella, in many of the rooms in which the Labour Party found its feet, remarkable women wait to be rediscovered. This book tells their story.

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9781788312233

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`An absorbing insight into the role of women in British political history. Remarkable women across the Labour movement were busy influencing policy long before they could vote - fighting for pay, working conditions, childcare, healthcare and social justice - yet there is little trace of their existence. This highly readable, compelling book finally tells the story of these important hidden figures.' Ayesha Hazarika, political commentator and comedian, `In the immediate pre-war years the suffrage movement and the early Labour movement were inter-twined. Yet this is little-known. Great, influential women who shaped 20th century politics and drove forward the campaign for the vote, rights at work, the early welfare state and much more have to date been largely airbrushed out of history. The Women in the Room sets the record straight.' Sam Smethers, Chief Executive, The Fawcett Society, `Nan Sloane's engaging book rebalances Labour Party history, putting women front and centre- coincidentally where they've always been, but often overlooked or erased. It is a refreshing and necessary change from the male dominated history we tend to learn and is essential reading for everyone who values a full and equal perspective of the history of the Labour Party.' Amy Lame, Writer, broadcaster and activist, `All too often the achievements of working class women have been excluded from the history books. Yet it was these women who often fought the hardest and had the most to lose. It is up to us to bring to life the hidden history of working class women and their great achievements. In this book, Nan Sloane takes up that challenge. She unearths the stories of women who, long before the campaign for women's suffrage, fought for workers' rights and played a key role in the birth of the Labour Party. In doing so Nan rightfully honours those women who helped to lay the foundations for other working class women to succeed.' Dawn Butler MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Women & Equalities

`An absorbing insight into the role of women in British political history. Remarkable women across the Labour movement were busy influencing policy long before they could vote - fighting for pay, working conditions, childcare, healthcare and social justice - yet there is little trace of their existence. This highly readable, compelling book finally tells the story of these important hidden figures.' Ayesha Hazarika, political commentator and comedian, `In the immediate pre-war years the suffrage movement and the early Labour movement were inter-twined. Yet this is little-known. Great, influential women who shaped 20th century politics and drove forward the campaign for the vote, rights at work, the early welfare state and much more have to date been largely airbrushed out of history. The Women in the Room sets the record straight.' Sam Smethers, Chief Executive, The Fawcett Society, `Nan Sloane's engaging book rebalances Labour Party history, putting women front and centre- coincidentally where they've always been, but often overlooked or erased. It is a refreshing and necessary change from the male dominated history we tend to learn and is essential reading for everyone who values a full and equal perspective of the history of the Labour Party.' Amy Lame, Writer, broadcaster and activist, `All too often the achievements of working class women have been excluded from the history books. Yet it was these women who often fought the hardest and had the most to lose. It is up to us to bring to life the hidden history of working class women and their great achievements. In this book, Nan Sloane takes up that challenge. She unearths the stories of women who, long before the campaign for women's suffrage, fought for workers' rights and played a key role in the birth of the Labour Party. In doing so Nan rightfully honours those women who helped to lay the foundations for other working class women to succeed.' Dawn Butler MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Women & Equalities, `Finally we can see some of the hidden history of our women. Working class women and their role in politics has been and still is ignored. This book is the start of redressing this balance, and everyone should read it. We have got to stop forgetting the women from the past in the future!' - Jess Phillips MP

Author Information

Nan Sloane is the Director of the Centre for Women and Democracy. She is Training Coordinator of the Labour Women’s Network, a former Labour councillor and Regional Director of the Labour Party. She is currently a member of Fawcett Society’s ‘Does Local Government work for women’ Commission. She is the author In Our Own Words: A Dictionary of Women’s Political Quotations; A Great Act of Justice: The Flapper Election and After and lead author of Sex & Power 2014: Who Runs Britain?

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