Labour Women: A Study of Women in the Bexley Branch of the British Labour Party (1945-50

Abstract

At the present time women are attracting more political attention than at any other time since the days of the suffragettes. This is due to the campaigning of the various movements for the social liberation of women which have sprung up fairly recently. It is not that women have been politically inactive during the period between the suffragettes and modern 'women's lib'. Instead their activities have taken place within organizations composed of both sexes. In particular, the British Labour Party has placed great emphasis on organizing women for political work. It is the purpose of this essay to examine the result of the party's policy, during a period of Labour government (I945-50), as it was manifested at local level in the Bexley district of London. A local study is especially useful in tllis respect because the primary unit of women's organization in the Labour Party is in the local party branches. First, a few words about Bexley and its Labour Party in the years of the Attlee government will help to provide a setting in which to examine the material on Labour women in the area. Bexley is a dormitory suburb of south-east London. Between I945 and I950 it had a population of approximately 9go,ooo. About 25 per cent of occupied people commuted to work in central London each day, whilst others were employed in engineering factories on the fringe of Bexley or in the London docks.2 In the