The pre-First World War British women’s suffrage revolt and labour unrest: never the twain shall meet?

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the years immediately preceding the First World War Britain experienced mass social unrest on a scale not seen since the early nineteenth century. Despite their distinctive priorities of gender and class, respectively, both the women’s suffrage revolt for the vote (embracing suffragettes and suffragists) and the labour unrest of 1910–14 (involving strikes in pursuit of higher wages, better working conditions and trade union recognition) utilised dramatic extra-parliamentary ‘direct action’ forms of militant struggle from below that represented a formidable challenge to the existing social and political order of Edwardian Britain. Although the two militant movements effectively co-existed side-by-side on parallel tracks, with a huge and frustrating gulf between them, there were nonetheless some very important linkages between the struggles of women and labour that have often been missed, ignored or downplayed by feminist and labour historians alike. This article re-examines the historical record to deploy both new and previously utilised evidence to foreground neglected aspects of the subject, reveal fresh factual insights, and provide a more detailed than hitherto available assessment of the cross-fertilisation that existed between the women’s and labour movements and for the broader linking of class and gender issues, even if these were not always fully recognised, pursued or developed.