“The Efforts of Women in the Co-operative Movement”, Bolton Co-operative Record, January 1916, 8–9

Abstract

[Sarah Reddish (1849–1928) was born into a family of textile workers in Westleigh, Lancashire. Her father was an active co-operator, serving as secretary and librarian to the Bolton Society. At the age of eleven, she began work as a silk-winder, later becoming forewoman in a cotton mill in Bolton. Reddish joined the Bolton Society in 1879 and was president of the local branch of the WCG from 1886 until 1901. Elected onto the guild’s central committee in 1889, a grant funded by Mary Llewelyn Davies’ mother allowed her to quit the factory and work as a full-time organiser for the guild between 1893–1895, a role she performed with great enthusiasm. She was also an active suffragist and helped get guild backing for the franchise bill at its annual conference in 1904. In her obituary, Llewelyn Davies warmly remembered Reddish talking about “the large Socialistic vision of a new life which filled her mind”. She was not the only socialist feminist at this time with high hopes for organising consumption for women – so had Teresa Billing-ton-Greig, though her book, The Consumer in Revolt (1912), disparaged co-operation – and Reddish saw the guild in this light, believing that it had the potential to bring great numbers of working-class women “into active life”. [Gillian Scott, Feminism and the politics of working women. The Women’s Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London: UCL Press, 1998), 50, 93; June Hannam and Karen Hunt, Socialist Women: Britain 1880s to 1920s (London: Routledge, 2001)] The extract below is a paper she delivered at a “ladies’ concert” organised by the Bolton Society during the First World War. Drawing on Holyoake’s history, Reddish chose to remind her listeners of the legacy of Owenite feminists, particularly Emma Martin, and underlined the success of the guild, which now had 600 branches and a membership of 32,000. Significantly, Reddish supports her argument for universal co-operation by quoting the words of an old Owenite, Dr Channing, who looked forward to the establishment of a “community” where “no class nor sex will seek a monopoly of honour or good”.]