Radical Women, 1880-1914 - call for papers

Radical Women, 1880-1914 

Call for papers for a one-day public conference at WCML*

* Working Class Movement Library

51 The Crescent

Salford, M5 4WX

From WCML e-bulletin: The Library is delighted to issue a call for papers for a conference to be held there on Saturday 17 September.

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Sheila Rowbotham, Manchester University
Professor Karen Hunt, Keele University

The decades spanning the turn of the twentieth century saw an upsurge in female activism as women began to organise themselves into trade unions, take part in the socialist debates on social and economic change, and demand the vote.  Radical women had a significant effect on working class industrial power as the London matchgirls' strike of 1888 sparked the rise of New Unionism, which combined socialism with trade unionism.  The co-operative movement and syndicalists also benefited from the hard work and determination of female members.  Not all was harmonious, though, as demands for the vote and gender equality were met by the benign patriarchy of socialists such as Blatchford, the overt misogyny of Ernest Belfort Bax and ‘Tattler’ as well as the industrial gender-conservatism of male trade unions.  Radical women not only battled against the gender-conservative males within their family or community but also those who claimed to be fighting for equality.

This conference will celebrate the battles and achievements of working-class women in the drive to achieve a fairer and more balanced society.  Public-facing proposals for 30-minute papers on any aspect of female radicalism are invited.  Papers might address (but are not limited to) the following areas:

•    Female campaigners and organisers
•    Female industrial combination
•    Female authors, playwrights and poets
•    Regional and metropolitan female activism
•    Cross-gender working relations

Deadline for proposals: Monday 25 April 2016.

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words to:- 

Dr. Deborah Mutch, De Montfort University, Leicester via email: dmutch@dmu.ac.uk

Conference fee: £20 waged; £7.50 unwaged.

Tottenham 100 years ago; R M Fox's autobiography

Wednesday   13 October   at 8 pm

Meetings venue; The Postmen's Office; at the North London Community House, 22 Moorefield Road, London, N17 (The old Post Office). The venue is just around the corner from Bruce Grove British Rail Station, where Bruce Grove meets the High Road in Tottenham. Wheelchair accessible. Any High Road bus is OK 

Richard Michael Fox - more commonly known as R M Fox - was brought up in Tottenham and went on to become an 'Influential Irish Historian'.  We shall be examining his autobiography 'Smokey Crusade'. R M Fox lived in Bruce Castle Road, attended the Lancastrian primary school on the Roundway, N17, and worked in several local  factories, mainly in the Tottenham Marshes area; and they were 'marshes' in those days. His life can be divided into sections
* Working in Tottenham area factories up to 1912;
* Working around  London and active in the socialist and anti-war movement pre-WW1;
* Anti-war work after 1914, street corner meetings, court martial and prison, released 1919;
* Trade union student at Ruskin College, Oxford, visits to Russia, Germany and Ireland, as a journalist, the  move to Ireland, marriage, and a career as writer and academic.

We are concerned with his first 30 years and can look at three main themes in his book:
1.    Industrial work. He slaved away  for some years in various small plants then some big, organised ones. The original JAP motor cycle engine which eventually moved to Northumberland Park Road, then a sweat-shop on the marshes  and lastly in a  massive plant just over the border into Walthamstow. He worked as a machine operator, often on shifts and subject to the cut backs and the sack. This was the age of Taylorism as described in the mis-titled 'Sabotage', (see Brown below in further reading).  Fox read as he could and later wrote a book on 'Factory Echoes'.  Outside work he was become active socialist and he was a keen union member.  Later, he also lived and worked for a period in Woolwich.