The labour party, women, and the problem of gender, 1951-1966

Journal of British Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 419-452

  Black, Amy ^a   Brooke, Stephen ^b  

^a DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

^b UNIVERSITY OF KING S COLLEGE   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61949191513     PISSN: 00219371     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/386144     Document Type: Article

References (157)

1. Labour Party, Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Party Organisation (London, 1968), p. 9
2. See Beatrix Campbell, Iron Ladies (London, 1987)
3. Nicky Hart, "Gender and the Rise and Fall of Class Politics," New Left Review 175 (May-June 1989): 19-47
4. and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, "Explaining the Gender Gap: The Conservative Party and the Women's Vote, 1945-64," in The Conservatives and British Society, ed. Martin Francis and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Cardiff, 1996)
5. Calculations are based on figures in B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 14-18
6. See, e.g., LPA, Home Policy Committee, RD. 35, "Notes on the General Election," March 1960
7. See the critique in Janet Siltanen and Michelle Stanworth, eds., Women and the Public Sphere (London, 1984), esp. pt. 2
8. David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain (London, 1969), 70 ff
9. See Penny Summerfield, Women Workers in the Second World War: Production and Patriarchy in Conflict (London, 1989)
10. See Antonia Lant, Blackout: Reinventing Women for British Wartime Cinema (Princeton, NJ., 1991)
11. See James Hinton, "Militant Housewives: The British Housewives' League and the Attlee Government," History Workshop Journal 38 (1994): 129-56
12. Women and the Labour Vote, 1945-50, Labour History Review 57 (1992): 59-66
13. Ina ZweinigerBargielowska, Bread Rationing in Britain, July 1946-1948, Twentieth-Century British History 4 (1993): 79-85
14. Rationing, Austerity and the Conservative Party Recovery after 1945, Historical Journal 37 (1994): 173-98
15. "John Taylor, "We Have the Lead in Leadership Increase It," Labour Woman 39, no. 4 (April 1951): 82
16. Conservative Party, Home Truths (London, February 1951)
17. See Harold L. Smith, "The Politics of Conservative Reform: The Equal Pay for Equal Work Issue, 1945-55," Historícal Journal 35 (1992): 410-15
18. See Zweiniger-Bargielowska, "Explaining the Gender Gap."
19. See, e.g., Martin Pugh, "Popular Conservatism in Britain: Continuity and Change, 1880-1987," Journal of British Studies 27 (1988): 254-82
20. Jon Lawrence, "Class and Gender in the Making of Urban Toryism, 1884-1914," English Historical Review 108 (1993): 629-52
21. David Jarvis, "Mrs Maggs and Betty: The Conservative Appeal to Women Voters in the 1920s," Twentieth-Century British History 5 (1994): 129-52
22. The Conservative Party and the Politics of Gender, 1900-39, in Francis and Zweiniger Bargielowska, eds., The Conservatives and British Society
23. Joan W. Scott, "Women in History: The Modem Period," Past and Present, no. 101 (1983), p. 156
24. see also Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis, American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053-75
25. Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988)
26. Joni Lovenduski, "Sex, Gender and British Politics," Parliamentary Affairs 49 (1996): 12
27. See Christine Collette, For Labour and Women: The Women's Labour League, 1900-18 (Manchester, 1989)
28. Pamela Graves, Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics (Cambridge, 1994)
29. Michael Savage, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics: The Labour Movement in Preston, 1880-1940 (Cambridge, 1987)
30. "See George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (1937; reprint, New York, 1958); Margery Spring Rice, Working-Class Wives (1939; reprint, London, 1981)
31. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London, 1957)
32. See Harold Smith, "Sex vs. Class: British Feminists and the Labour Movement, 1919-29," Historian 47 (1984): 19-37
33. Susan Pedersen, Family Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State (Cambridge, 1993)
34. and Pat Thane, "The Women of the British Labour Party and Feminism, 1906-45," in British Feminism in the Twentieth Century, ed. Harold Smith (Amherst, Mass., 1990), pp. 124-43
35. Brian Harrison, "Class Politics: Margaret Bondfield, Susan Lawrence, and Ellen Wilkinson," in his Prudent Revolutionaries (Oxford, 1987), pp. 125-50
36. Sheila Rowbotham, Woman's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 12
37. See Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism: The Social Bases for the Campaign against Nuclear Disarmament (Manchester, 1968), p. 150
38. see also Jill Liddington, The Road to Greenham Common: Feminism and Anti-militarism since 1820 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1991)
39. Christopher Driver, The Disarmers: A Study in Protest (London, 1964)
40. Richard Taylor, Against the Domb (Oxford, 1988)
41. See the Birmingham Feminist History Group, "Feminism as Femininity in the Nineteen-Fifties?" Feminist Review 3 (1979): 48-65
42. "See Gabriella Turnaturi, "Between Public and Private: The Birth of the Professional Housewife and the Female Consumer," in Women and the State, ed. Anne Showstack Sassoon (London, 1981), pp. 255-78; on the general question of consumerism
43. see Jean-Christophe Agnew, "Coming Up for Air: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective," in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London and New York, 1993), pp. 19-39
44. See figures in Ministry of Labour, Manpower: The Pattern of the Future (London, 1964), table 2 (d), p. 49; see also the contemporary interest in this marked by two works, Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein, Women's Two Roles (1956; reprint, London, 1966)
45. and Viola Klein, Britain's Married Women Workers (London, 1965)
46. See, e.g., Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (1957; reprint, Harmondsworth, 1962)
47. See figures in British Labour Statistics: Historical Abstract, 1886-1968 (London, 1971), tables 47 and 48, pp. 112-15
48. The literature on this is enormous, but central texts are, e.g., Mark Abrams, Richard Rose, and Rita Hinden, Must Labour Lose? (Harmondsworth, 1960)
49. Eric Hobsbawm, "The Forward March of Labour Halted?" Politics for a Rational Left (London, 1989), pp. 9-28
50. J. E. Goldthorpe, Social Mobility and Class Structure in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1980)
51. Jeremy Seabrook, What Went Wrong? People and the Ideals of the Labour Movement (London, 1978)
52. Ivor Crewe, "The Politics of 'Affluent' and 'Traditional' Workers in Britain," British Journal of Political Science 3 (1983): 52
53. The exceptions are James Cronin, "Politics, Class Structure, and the Enduring Weakness of British Social Democracy," Journal of Social History 16 (1982-83): 123-42
54. Labour and British Society, 1918-79 (London, 1985)
55. Nick Tiratsoo, "Popular Politics, Affluence and the Labour Party in the 1950s," in Contemporary British History 1931-61, ed. L. Johnman, T. Gorst, and W. Scott Lucas (London, 1991), pp. 44-61
56. and Stephen Brooke, "Labour and the 'Nation' since 1945," in Party, State and Nation in Modern Britain, ed. Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997), pp. 153-75
57. See, e.g., John H. Goldthorpe, David Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer, and Jennifer Platt, The Affluent Worker: Political Attitudes and Behaviour (Cambridge, 1968)
58. Denise Riley, "Am I That Name?" Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History (Minneapolis, 1988), chap. 3
59. See, e.g., Anna Clark, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995)
60. James Hinton, "Voluntarism versus Jacobinism: Labor, Nation, and Citizenship in Britain, 1850-1950," International Labor and Working-Class History 48 (1995): 68-90
61. Joanna Bourke, Working-Class Cultures in Britain, 1890-1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity (London, 1994)
62. Sonya Rose, "Gender and Labor History: The Nineteenth-Century Legacy," International Review of Social History 38, suppl. (1993): 145-62
63. Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class (New York, 1992)
64. Richard Price, "The Future of Labour History," International Review of Social History 36 (1991): 249-60
65. Brian Harrison, "Class and Gender in Modem British Labour History," Past and Present, no. 124 (1989), pp. 121-58
66. Joan W. Scott, "On Language, Gender and Working-Class History," International Labor and Working Class History 31 (1987): 1-13
67. Barbara Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem (New York, 1983)
68. Pamela Graves and Joseph White, " 'An Army of Redressers': The Recent Historiography of British Working Class Women," International Labor and Working Class History 17 (1980): 1-17
69. See Smith, "Sex Vs. Class"; and Graves, Labour Women
70. Thane, "The Women of the British Labour Party and Feminism."
71. For a recent survey see Joy Parr, "Gender History and Historical Practice," Canadian Historical Review 76 (1995): 354-76
72. See, e.g., Joan Scott, "Deconstructing Equality-versus-Difference: Or, The Uses of Poststructuralist Theory for Feminism," Feminist Studies 14 (1988): 33-50
73. Sonya O. Rose, "Gender History/Women's History: Is Feminist Scholarship Losing Its Critical Edge?" Journal of Women's History 5 (1993): 93
74. Labour Party, Report of the Annual Conference of Labour Women (hereafter ACLW) (London, 1968), p. 26
75. Quoted in Melanie Phillips, The Divided House: Women at Westminster (London, 1980), p. 161
76. ACLW (1967), p. 37
77. Martin Pugh, Women and the Women's Movement in Britain 1914-1959 (London, 1992), pp. 131-32
78. See, e.g., Steven Fielding, Peter Thompson and Nick Tiratsoo, "England Arise!": The Labour Party and Popular Politics in 1940s Britain (Manchester, 1995), pp. 9, 183
79. Trades Union Congress Report (hereafter TUCR) (1964), p. 459. It has been estimated that, in 1939, women represented one-eighth of the affiliated trade union membership; in 1968, one-fifth; and by 1980, one-third. See Labour Party, Women, Sexism and Socialism (London, 1980), p. 22. This compares to the estimated 50 percent or slightly more for women's membership in the Conservative Party over the same period. See Joni Lovenduski, Pippa Norris, and Catriona Burness, "The Party and Women," in Conservative Century: The Conservative Party Since 1900, ed. Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball (Oxford, 1994), pp. 611, 624
80. Jill Hills, "Britain," in The Politics of the Second Electorate: Women and Public Participation, ed. Joni Lovenduski and Jill Hills (London, 1981), p. 31
81. See April Carter, The Politics of Women's Rights (London, 1988), p. 125. 48 Labour Party, Agenda for the 37th Annual Conference of Labour Women (London, 1960), p. 5
82. See LPA, NJC, General Purposes Committee Minutes, 12 February 1953
83. Editorial, Labour Woman 39, no. 5 (May 1951): 103
84. See, e.g., Harry Earnshaw, "Thanks to Our Women," Labour Woman 40, no. 1 (January 1952): 241-42
85. and George Wright, "Organise-and Educate," Labour Woman 40, no. 8 (August 1952): 408-9
86. "See, e.g., "An Open Letter to the Housewives' League," People's Pictorial 2 (1953): 1
87. LPA, Report of Elections Sub-Committee, "General Election: 1959," 22 October 1959
88. LPA, NEC, Staff Board, "Interim Report of the Staff Salaries Committee," March 1960
89. See Abrams et al., Must Labour Lose; Clancy Sigal, "To Fly a Kite," and Ralph Samuels, "The Deference Voter," both in New Left Review 1 (January-February 1960): 22-5, 9-13
90. LPA, Special Meeting, "The State of the Party," 13 July 1960
91. Between 1945 and 1966, there were 110 female Labour M.P.s, compared to 114 Conservative. See Colin Mellors, The British MP: A Socio-economic Study of the House of Commons (Farnborough, 1978), p. 107
92. Quoted in Pamela Brookes, Women at Westminster (London, 1967), p. 140
93. Quoted in Margaret Stacey and Marion Price, Women, Power and Politics (London, 1981), p. 165
94. Quoted in Phillips, Divided House, p. 160
95. Quoted in Elizabeth Vallance, Women in the House: A Study of Women Members of Parliament (London, 1979), p. 197
96. Melville Currell, Political Women (London, 1974), p. 87
97. Olive Banks, The Politics of British Feminism (Aldershot, 1993), p. 45
98. LPA, S. Barker to Women's Sections, Women's Constituency Committees and Federations, and Labour Women's Advisory Councils, 4 September 1961
99. Parliamentary Debates, Commons, 5th ser., vol. 658 (3 May 1961), col. 1259
100. Quoted in Stacey and Price, Women, Power and Politics, p. 84
101. Quoted in Elizabeth Wilson, Halfway to Paradise: Women in Postwar Britain, 1945-1968 (London, 1980), p. 185
102. See J. Mitchell, "The Longest Revolution," New Left Review 40 (November December 1966): 11-37
103. Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1974-6 (London, 1984), p. 388
104. and also comments in The Castle Diaries, 1964-70 (London, 1984), p. 373
105. See, e.g., comments in Castle, The Castle Diaries 1974-6, p. 22
106. See Hinton, "Militant Housewives," and "Women and the Labour Vote."
107. See Stephen Brooke, Labour's War (Oxford, 1992), pp. 149-55
108. Labour Party, Another Hole in Your Purse (London, 1954), p. 5
109. Labour Party, The Food Fraud (London, 1954), p. 15
110. Labour Party, The High Price of Toryism (London, 1954), p. 9
111. See polls in G. H. Gallup, ed., Gallup International Public Opinion Polls: Great Britain, vol. 1, 1939-68 (New York, 1976), pp. 307, 336, 390, 431, 530; see also LPA, R. 496, Cost of Living Working Party, "Report to Policy Committee," March 1955
112. See, e.g., Elaine Burton, Battle for the Consumer (London, 1955)
113. Labour Party, Political Education (London, 1956), p. 6
114. See Tiratsoo, "Popular Politics, Affluence and the Labour Party in the 1950s."
115. See Brooke, "Labour and the 'Nation' since 1945."
116. See C. A. R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism (1956; reprint, New York, 1957), 212 ff., and "Monopoly, Advertising and the Consumer," in his The Conservative Enemy. (London, 1962), esp. pp. 66-67
117. Labour Party, Women in This Election Vote for Them (London, 1964), p. 3
118. Labour Party, Mothers (London, 1961), p. 2
119. See Cronin, Labour and Society in Britain, pp. 178-79
120. On this, see Martin Francis, "Socialism and Gender," in Martin Francis, Building a New Britain: The Labour Governments and Socialism, 1945-51 (Manchester, in press)
121. Douglas Jay, The Socialist Case (1937; reprint, London, 1947), p. 258
122. Labour Party, A Woman's Place Isn't Bounded by Four Walls (London, 1956), p. 8
123. Labour Party, Don't Let Men Make All the Decisions (London, 1965), p. 7
124. Vicky Randall, Women and Politics (London, 1987), p. 263
125. See Labour Party, Women, Sexism and Socialism
126. For an account of the postwar campaign for equal pay, see Jane Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945: Women, Family, Work and the State in the Post-war Years (Oxford, 1992)
127. Quoted in Wilson, Halfway to Paradise, p. 46
128. Quoted in Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945, pp. 79-80
129. Lewis Minkin, The Labour Parly Conference (Harmondsworth, 1978), pp. 77-79
130. See Smith, "The Politics of Conservative Reform: The Equal Pay for Equal Work Issue, 1945-55," pp. 401-15
131. ACLW (1953), p. 22
132. TUCR (1963), p. 371
133. Labour Party, Discrimination against Women: A Discussion Paper for Women's Sections (London, 1967), p.6
134. MCLH (1967), p. 36
135. See Barbara Castle, Fighting All the Way (London, 1993), p. 427
136. see also Richard Cressman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 3, Secretary of State for Social Services, 1968-70 (London, 1977), entry for 4 September 1969, p. 627
137. Vallance, Women in the House, p. 88
138. See Smith, "Sex vs. Class," pp. 25-27
139. Graves, Labour Women, p. 86
140. See also Barbara Brookes, Abortion in England, 1900-1967 (London, 1988), p. 111
141. Mitchell, "The Longest Revolution," p. 11
142. Labour Party, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Party Organization, p. 9
143. See, e.g., NLΛVAC, Discrimination against Women (London, 1968)
144. Tony Benn, Office without Power: Diaries, 1968-72 (London, 1988), p. 257
145. See Hilary Wainwright, Labour: A Tale of Two Parties (London, 1987), chap. 4
146. Patrick Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left (London, 1987), pp. 35-36, 47-50
147. Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright, Beyond the Fragments (London, 1979)
148. David Kogan and Maurice Kogan, The Battle for the Labour Party (London, 1982)
149. Joyce Gould, interviewed in Focus: Labour Women's Bulletin, vol. 1 (March 1981)
150. R. H. Tawney, "The Choice before the Labour Party," Political Quarterly 3 (1932): 332
151. See, e.g., Sarah Baxter, "Labour Men: The Biggest Vested Interest of Them All," London New Statesman (3 July 1992), and "A Boys' Own Story," London New Statesman (29 October 1993)
152. See Colin Hughes and Patrick Wintour, Labour Rebuilt (London, 1990), pp. 61, 200-201, 207
153. Eric Shaw, The Labour Party since 1979 (London, 1994), p. 133
154. See Clare Short, "Women and the Labour Party," Parliamentary Affairs 49 (1996): 17-25
155. Andy McSmith, John Smith (London, 1993)
156. See Chris Waters, British Socialists and the Politics of Popular Culture, 1884-1914 (Stanford, Calif., 1990)
157. Quoted in Carter, The Politics of Women's Rights, p. 89