Description
Book SynopsisIn 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. 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.
Through
Trade Review
A truly worthy, long-overdue and brilliantly written tribute to the women who helped drive the rise of British socialism. * New Statesman *
[W]hen Sloane can muster sufficient detail to weld the personal to the political, her story is fascinating. ... Heartening as such stories may be, Sloane is also an unsparing chronicler who never glorifies her campaigners as a seamless sisterhood. * The Telegraph *
[...] Sloane succeeds throughout in offering a fresh and engaging account of the complex of organizations, debates and initiatives that contributed to Labour politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. * TLS Reviews *
[A] detailed history ... By 1918 some of the women who had worked with untiring commitment had died, others lived on to occupy high profile positions in the labour movement. Sloane’s account successfully repositions their efforts and achievements. * Socialist History *
Table of Contents
Introduction Acknowledgements One: Trade Unionists Two: Socialists Three: Foundations Four: ‘The Men’s Party’ Five: Women’s Work Six: Breakthrough Seven: Suffrage and Sweating Eight: Changes Nine: The Great Unrest Ten: War and Peace Epilogue Timeline The Women in the Room Organisations and Acronyms Bibliography Notes Index
