William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester

William Brefoot, date unknown

Now I have to confess that for me William Barefoot was just a name on a plaque in the Pleasaunce, and if pushed I could also point to William Barefoot Drive and a small park in Plumstead.

All of which is  particularly embarrassing given that we were both members of the Woolwich Labour Party and Mr Barefoot had along connection to Eltham as a councillor and to the history of Woolwich.

And it was while I was in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum that I decided to take a break from researching the Great War and instead begin to learn more about this remarkable man.*

I knew that he had been born in 1872 that his father was a sadler and that the family had lived on Frances Street not far from the Dockyard and I vaguely also knew that he had been a councillor for Eltham for 33 years and was the Mayor of Woolwich not once but three times, all of which is an impressive record of municipal service.

But there was much more.

A Hall, Will Crooks 7 W Barefoot, 1910

“Will Barefoot fought West Woolwich several times without success, but it was as Agent for the Borough Party that he lived and died. 

From the days of his apprenticeship in the Royal Arsenal he was identified with the Trade Union, Socialist, Co-operative and Municipal life of the Borough.  

Woolwich Labour Representation Committee was one of the first to enlist ‘individual members’ and made national history in 1902 when Will Crooks was first returned to Westminster.  

Success followed in every direction and came primarily as a result of Will Barefoot‘s genius for organization.  
He was supported in all efforts by his wife and it was a poignant circumstance that Mrs Barefoot died within a few weeks of her husband’s passing.”**

He worked alongside Will Crooks the first Labour MP for Woolwich and would have been an active participant in many of the great events of the early 20th century from the election of Mr Crooks to the General Strike of 1926.

And during the Great War he was active on the London Food Vigilance Committee.

Food Vigilance Committees had sprung up across the country as a means of drawing attention to the sharp rise in the cost of living and set forth a clear set of policies, demanding greater control by both the Government and local authorities of food and fuel along with the participation of the Labour movement.

Inside the archives, 

So for me Mr Barefoot has come out of the shadows, and I rather think I will be spending more time in the Archives & Study Centre calling up material on his life and contribution.

“The Labour History Archive & Study Centre (LHASC) is the main specialist repository for research into the political wing of the labour movement.  

It holds the archives of working class organisations from the Chartists to New Labour, including the Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain.  

From Salford, 2013

The collections provide an insight into the social, political and economic life of the last two centuries.

As well as the archives of political parties and leftwing pressure groups, LHASC collects the personal papers of radical politicians, writers and activists.  

The archives complement the objects, photographs and banners found in the museum collections and researchers may well find material of interest in both.*

William Barefoot Memorial, 2013

All of which may seem a long way from Woolwich, but I think not.

Sitting there yesterday reading the same material he would have handled I was reminded that we shared quite a lot.

Pictures; photographs of William Barefoot, Will Crooks and A Hall along with the interior of the study centre and view of the Museum from Salford, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/ and  William Barefoot Memorial in Well Hall Pleasunce, from the collection of Chrisse Rose, 2013

* Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

** Report of the Annual Conference held the Central Hall Westminster May 25 to 28th, 1942

Connections ...... Edith Nesbit of Well Hall and William Barefoot Labour politican and councillor for Eltham

Edith Nesbit, circa 1890

Now I like the way that history continues to surprise you, often taking you in directions which you could not have imagined.

Until recently I was not aware that Edith Nesbit had lived at Well Hall and knew only that she had written the Railway Children.

But she was far more than just someone who wrote children’s books.

Her marriage appears to be what we might today describe as an open one and she adopted two children from her husband’s relationship with another woman who was employed as their house keeper.

She was one of the founder members of the Fabian Society, a member of the Social Democratic Federation and wrote and spoke regularly on socialism.

Amongst her friends were H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and the Webb’s, all of whom visited the house in Well Hall.

She was also a member of the local Labour Party and it was here she met Tommy Tucker an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry, who she married three years after the death of her husband Hubert.

All of which fits nicely as like Edith, Hubert and Tommy I was also a member of the same local Labour Party.

Woolwich Labour Party was formed in 1903.  At that time the Woolwich constiuency took in Woolwich and Eltham, and even when it was split between Woolwich East and Woolwich West for the 1918 General Election the Labour Party took the decision to stay as one party.

So when I joined in 1966 aged just 16 I was walking with Edith, Hubert and Tommy.

William Barefoot, date unknown

And also William Barefoot who will have known Edith and may well have been a guest at her home in Well Hall.

He was one of the leading forces in the Woolwich Labour Party having been its secretary from 1903 till 1941.*

He had become secretary of the Woolwich Trades Council in 1899 a post he held until 1921, was editor of The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer a weekly paper.**

Now if I were prone to idle speculation I might well go ‘off on one’ pondering on how well Ms Nebit and

Mr Barefoot knew each other and whether she contributed to either The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer.

Now the Greenwich Heritage Centre holds both the Journal and the Pioneer but the collection only cover the years 1919-1926, and I am not sure when she left Well Hall.

I know she married Mr Tucker in 1917 and later moved to Friston in East Sussex, and later to East Kent, and died in 1924.

That said I shall go digging elsewhere for both journals and the first port of call will be the archives of the People’s Museum.

Now it would really be nice to discover some of her political writing which in turn will have crossed William Barefoot’s desk and so I shall go looking.

Pictures; Edith Nesbit courtesy of The Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ and William Brefoot, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/william-barefoot-and-day-in-archives-of.html

** ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABOUR PARTY AT LOCAL LEVEL, The Woolwich Labour Party, 1903-53, Dr Roger Eatwell, 1982,  http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97253.pdf

Annot Robinson ........ revisiting a remarkable woman

I have decided to revisit Annot Robinson*.

Mrs Annot before her marriage to Sam Robinson

I first came across her   in an excellent account of her contribution to Manchester politics in the early 20th century.**

Just weeks before I had  been reading some of her correspondence to the Daily Citizen in 1915 on the exploitation of woman in the workforce. 

“Women” she wrote “will most certainly have to take the place of men.  

There is already a shortage of men workers in Manchester  but so far as I am aware no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage.“***

She had been born in Scotland in 1874 married and moved to Ancoats in 1908 and returned to Scotland in 1923 where she died two years later.

She had become active in Scottish politics in the 1890s and by 1895 was working for the Independent Labour Party in Dundee.

Annot Robinson speaking at a Suffragette meeting circa 1910 with her daughter

“She entered a marriage based at first on love and shared political ideals but which was ultimately disastrous. 

Subsequently living as a single-parent in an unaccepting age, she struggled in support of her chosen and unpopular causes, a constant and active member of the ILP and at different times of the WSPU, the NUWSS and the Women’s Labour League (WLL), Women’s War Interests Committee, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an ebullient speaker and tireless traveller and twice a candidate in local elections.”****

All of which was set against the backdrop of being “at first the family bread winner and then a single parent of two young children.”*****

And at this point rather than just lift Ms Rigby’sresearch I shall point you towards the article and in the fullness of time return to Annot Robinson when I found out more myself.

Pictures; Annot  before she married Sam Robinson, and Suffragette meeting in Manchester, circa 1910, Annot Robinson standing.  The baby is her daughter, Cathy.  From ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE

*Annot Robinson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annot%20Robinson

**ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE, Kate Rigby, Manchester Regional History Review, Vol 1 Nu 1 Spring 1987,
http://www.hssr.mmu.ac.uk/mcrh/files/2013/01/mrhr_01i_rigby.pdf

***"no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage" ............stories from the Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/no-women-taking-on-mans-work-will-be.html

****ibid Kate Rigby

***** ibid Kate Rigby

Letters to the Daily Citizen, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Annot Robinson ........

Annot before her marriage to Sam Robinson

I have decided to revisit Annot Robinson.*

I first came across her in an excellent account of her contribution to Manchester politics in the early 20th century.**



I had already been reading some of her correspondence to the Daily Citizen in 1915.

“Women” she wrote “will most certainly have to take the place of men.  

There is already a shortage of men workers in Manchester  but so far as I am aware no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage.“***

She had been born in Scotland in 1874 married and moved to Ancoats in 1908 and returned to Scotland in 1923 where she died two years later.

She had become active in Scottish politics in the 1890s and by 1895 was working for the Independent Labour Party in Dundee.

Annot Robinson speaking at a Suffragette meeting circa 1910 with her daughter

“She entered a marriage based at first on love and shared political ideals but which was ultimately disastrous. 

Subsequently living as a single-parent in an unaccepting age, she struggled in support of her chosen and unpopular causes, a constant and active member of the ILP and at different times of the WSPU, the NUWSS and the Women’s Labour League (WLL), Women’s War Interests Committee, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, an ebullient speaker and tireless traveller and twice a candidate in local elections.”****

All of which was set against the backdrop of being “at first the family bread winner and then a single parent of two young children.”*****

And at this point rather than just lift Ms Rigby’sresearch I shall point you towards the article and in the fullness of time return to Annot Robinson when I found out more myself.

Pictures; Annot  before she married Sam Robinson, and Suffragette meeting in Manchester, circa 1910, Annot Robinson standing.  The baby is her daughter, Cathy.  From ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE

*Annot Robinson, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annot%20Robinson

**ANNOT ROBINSON: A FORGOTTEN MANCHESTER SUFFRAGETTE, Kate Rigby, Manchester Regional History Review, Vol 1 Nu 1 Spring 1987,

***"no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage" ............stories from the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=stories+from+the+Great+War

****ibid Kate Rigby

***** ibid Kate Rigby

Letters to the Daily Citizen, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Another side to life on the Home Front in Manchester during the Great War

“This meeting views with grave concern the enormous rise in the price of foodstuffs and coal, which is equivalent to a considerable reduction of wages of those fully employed and the enormous profits that Shipping, Dealers and other gamblers in the means of life are at present reaping by their unholy profiteering.

We therefore call upon the Government to take immediate action to control supplies to regulate food prices and to put an end to this flagrant exploitation of the necessities of the poor.”*

Such was a resolution passed by a large audience in the Free Trade Hall on Sunday February 14 1915.

It was the culmination of a few days of factory and street corner meetings which focused on the swift rise in rents as well as food and coal prices since the beginning of the war.

And it is an aspect of life on the Home Front which does not always feature prominently in many accounts of the Great War.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at that Free Trade meeting was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike  over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.****

But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Back in January the Manchester Guardian had reported “the all-round advance in the price of most household commodities since the outbreak of hostilities – an advance amounting in several instances to over 50% [was] causing concern to the average householder whose income is inelastic”*****

And amongst working class families this all-round advance was causing great hardship more so because it was accompanied by rises in rents and fuel prices.

But strikes to maintain living standards were not the only response to the jump in the cost of living.
On the day war broke out the Labour Movement had formed the War Emergency Workers National Committee tasked with defending the interests of organised working people.

During the next four years it received daily reports all on everything from rises in rents, the cost and quality of food to pensions and conditions in factories and on the land as well as the railways, war babies, air raids and women’s war service.

Much of the correspondence came from local Labour and Trades Councils across the country which set up their own local committees.

Here in the city the Manchester & District Workers (War Problems) Joint Committee consisted of Manchester & Salford Trades and Labour Council, Manchester & Salford Labour Party, Gorton Trades Council, the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation, Building Industries Federation, Women’s Trade Union Council, Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade & Labour Council, Manchester & Salford ILP, Manchester Salford  & District Co-operative Societies, Women’s Co-operative Guilds, Women’s Citizen’s Association, and the Women’s War Interest Committee.

This was a broad cross section of those organisation representing the working class.
In turn Food Vigilance Committees were set up across the country to monitor prices and ensure local councils were enforcing regulations on both prices and the quality of food.

They also called meetings, distributed leaflets and like the War Emergency Workers National Committee pushed hard for more Government intervention in regulating the abuses thrown up during the war.

Now that to me promises to be a fascinating story.

Pictures; courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*Resolution passed at the Free Trade Hall on February 14 1915

**LABOUR AND FOOD PRICES. A FREE TRADE HALL PROTEST, Manchester Guardian Feb 15 1915

***ibid Manchester Guardian Feb 15 191

****O’Neil Joseph, Manchester in the Great War, 2014

*****FOOD PRICES AND THE WAR, Manchester Guardian January 31 1915

Burrowing deep into the Great War ................the War Emergency Workers National Committee

Women munition workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 

Yesterday I was thinking back to  one of those mornings which for me was pretty near perfect.

I had been in the Labour History Archive and Study Centre in the Peoples’ History Museum looking at the work of the War Emergency Workers National Committee which was formed the day the Great War broke out “by the Labour Party, the Trades Union Congress, and the Co-operative movement, plus a number of other affiliated organisations such as the Fabian Society. 

Manchester Tramways Employees in uniform, 1915

The main concern of the WNC was to defend the interests of organised working people. 

The size of the collection goes some way toward showing the impact of the war on people’s lives. 

With over 20,000 pages of correspondence on all domestic matters relating to the war including: rents, food, employment, agriculture, pensions, railways, war babies, air raids and women’s war service etc. 

Bullet Factory, the Royal Arsenal Woolwich, 1918

It is a large collection of papers that relates very closely to the day to day domestic environment during the war. 

Importantly it depended on the actions of what used to be called the ‘rank and file’ of the labour/trade union movement for its running, it was far from a ‘top down’ committee.”*

Now there will be those that mutter I have wandered off into the academic stratosphere but not so.

During the war there were massive rises in food prices along with fuel and rents, a persistent concern about the adulteration of food and growing anger at pay levels and working conditions.

And all these issues were being grappled with by the National Committee.

There are correspondence about the separation allowances paid to the wives of men who had enlisted, reports of sweated labour and the exploitation of children and the availability of speakers on a range of issues from food prices to rent rises.

It is the stuff of everyday life made more vivid by the backdrop of the war.

In 1915 the Stockport Labour Party reported on the level of representation on pensions committees, and Mr J. Robinson of the Stockport Branch of the Tailor’s Society queried the rates for making Khaki tunics.

Later still in 1917 the National Committee was engaged in the registration of shops in Manchester and the rising price of coal.

What makes these documents fascinating is that not only do they cover the whole country but are powerful examples of ordinary people challenging wrong doing and seeking to improve conditions.

So I have no doubt that they will reveal much about life during the war

All of which just leaves me to reflect on what a pleasant place the archive centre is for burrowing deep into the past.  The staff were most helpful and friendly and there are grand views of the river.

Pictures; Women Munitions workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 m08093, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass the Bullet Factory, Arsenal, Woolwich, 1918,  from the collection of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm and  Manchester Tramways Employees in uniform, 1915 Don’t You Wish you were boak in Bolton from the collection of David Harrop

* Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Information Guide No. 8, http://www.phm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/8-World-War-I.pdf Peoples’ History Museum, http://www.phm.org.uk/

“No boy ought to be kept from school to work"........ stories of child labour in the Great War

Now I am off on a search for the story of John Thomas Longhurst.

On the meadows circa 1880

He was born in 1902 in Weston Underwood in Buckinghamshire, and his father and brother were agricultural labourers and in the July of 1915 he too was working the land.

Now nothing much remarkable perhaps in all that except that John Thomas Longhurst featured along with six others in a report on child labour in agriculture complied by Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.

He was working in Pitsford, Northamptonshire which was in the next county north of his birth place.  It was still common for agricultural labourers as young as Thomas to work away from home.

During the 19th century farmers had undertaken to house and feed young farm labourers of both sexes in return for paying a reduced wage.

Of course it may also be that the Longhurst family had moved into the area.

On the meadows in the 1950s

What is more interesting are the details of his employment and the background to how at just 13 he was working in the fields in Northhamptonshire.

Since the outbreak of the Great War agricultural labour had become scare.

This was in part because many young men had enlisted but also because wage levels remained low.  In 1914 county weekly wage rates varied from twelve shillings in Oxfordshire, fifteen shillings and nine pence in Northampshire and sixteen shillings in Buckinghamshire.

In the northern counties wages were higher.  In Cheshire they were eighteen shillings and in Lancashire twenty-two shillings and three pence.

This disparity had been pretty much the case during the 19th century and reflected that simple fact that farmers in the north had to compete against the pull of the great manufacturing towns and cities.

And the Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union pointed out that where there were military camps or alternative industrial employment labourers were tempted to better themselves and leave the land.

All of which had produced serious concerns about agricultural productivity and the practice of employing both women and children.

Virtually everyone was opposed in principle to the use of child labour but it was three creeping in as was the employment of women.

Now the agricultural labour’s union was opposed to both and on the grounds that there was clear evidence that it was driving down wages.

The union cited cases of women being employed on much lower wages  and made it clear that if  women were “to be allowed to engage in labour ordinarily undertaken by men, [it could only be for] the same rates of pay.”* 

Harrowing mustard, 1899

But that said it remained implacably opposed to child labour,

“No boy ought to be kept from school to work.  

The mind gets clogged if a boy is made to work so young and it is impossible like that for the mind to expand as it should.  

We want educated men as farm labourers.”*

And the evidence that came in from union branches where children  were employed was not good.

Young John Thomas was paid four shillings a week for a ten and a half hour day, which included field work, carting manure and scaring birds.

The union was able to detail both pay and hours along with the tasks undertaken each day which helps reveal another side of the the Great War.

There is much more research to do and along the way something more of John Thomas Longhurst’s life will be revealed.

Pictures; from the collections of Alan Brown,  and the Lloyd collection, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899, Haggard, H Rider, 

*Report on Child Labour in Agriculture, Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.
April 1915, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Looking for the stories of the children who worked the land during the Great War

I have pretty much admitted defeat in the search for Herbert Catchpole.

Now anyone who has gone looking for a relative as part of a family history project will know how frustrating it can be.

Despite acres of official documents, parish records and the off chance of a newspaper story there is nothing  on him save an entry in the 1911 census and a reference in a report from the National Agricultural Labourers’ & Rural Worker’s Union dated 1915.

Not that this is that surprising for even at the beginning of the 20th century it was still possible for an individual  to fall through the cracks or just reinvent him or herself

Some missed having their birth registered, avoided being recorded on a census return or  might never offer personal information about work, shopping preferences or voting intentions.

In the case of Herbert Catchpole I know he was born in 1903 in Woodton in Norfolk, that his mother’s name was Caroline and that she was single, worked a sick nurse and in 1911 was 46 years old.

And that is pretty much all I have on her.  There are two earlier census references but they do not add much to what I know.

Now all of this matters because of what Herbert was doing in the April of 1915 a year into the Great War which is where that report from National Agricultural Labourers’ & Rural Worker’s Union comes in.

The union was much concerned with the employment of both women and children on the land at a time when agricultural labourers were leaving to enlist and others were being tempted by better wages in the towns and cities.

The response of some farmers was to take on women and boys but pay them substantially less than men.

The union’s position was simply that if women were to be employed it had to be on the same wage rates as men and remained totally opposed to the use of child labour and collected evidence on both the exploitation of women and the use of children.

And so Herbert appeared on that report for April 1915 along with six other boys aged between 11 and 13.

The report detailed the pay they received, the hours they worked and what they were expected to do.

Herbert was working in both Norfolk at Woodton and on the Suffolk border, was paid 3 shillings a week , and worked six out of the seven days for nine hours each day.

The remaining six worked similar or longer hours with some being paid slightly more.

So far a search of the records for two of the other boys has also turned up very little.
Fred Noble was paid four shillings for working the fields with the men, digging, weeding and keeping cows while John Thomas Longhurst spent 10½ hours a day, scaring birds, thistle spudding, horse hoeing and carting manure.

Both were just 13 years old, but apart from one census return there is so far nothing more.

In time I will pursue the records of the union and the degree to which more evidence come to light about child labour but I doubt little will surface of the lives of these three and for that I am saddened.

Pictures; extracts from Report on Child Labour in Agriculture, Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.

*Report on Child Labour in Agriculture, Agricultural Labourers & Rural Workers’ Union.
April 1915, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

"no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage" ............stories from the Great War

“Women will most certainly have to take the place of men.  

There is already a shortage of men workers in Manchester  but so far as I am aware no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage.“*

Now it is easy to fall into that view of the Great War which portrays women as coming out of the shadows and somehow being liberated by the conflict.

It is an attractive idea and of course has some substance.

Women were employed in a whole range of occupations some of which were totally new to them but in the process faced opposition from male colleagues.

In 1915 the secretary of the National Agricultural Labourers’ & Rural Worker’s Union wrote “I am to point out that we shall oppose to the uttermost the employment of women in Agriculture and if the policy outlined is pursued our 300 Branches scattered throughout the country will undoubtedly have something to say on the matter, and I am quite certain trouble lies ahead.  

We oppose the employment of women in the Agricultural Industry on moral and economic grounds.”** 

And a few months later the union wrote of one woman employed on a farm in Shropshire who “worked for days in succession driving a pair of horses attached to harrows or other agricultural implements , to cultivate the land.  This woman receives one shilling a day in wages without any other allowance s for the service s which she renders to the farmer.”***

Of course it might be easy to dismiss such evidence as a one off, but as Annot Robinson pointed in March 1915, “no women taking on a man’s work will be receiving a man’s wage” and going on to reveal that “the Women’s Emergency Corps have undertaken an enquiry  to find in what trades women could replace men .  

It has not found a single instance where women’s wages have been increased to meet the rise in the cost of living.

In the majority of cases a percentage has been taken off their wages and the amount employers are offering for clerks for instance is generally about 5 shillings a week less than the current  rates before the war.”

Nor had things improved a year later when she reported that few employer’s in the Manchester munition factories were following the government’s recommendations of a flat rate for women of at least a £ a week.

So that much advanced idea that women gained from the war has to be judged more carefully as does that equally hawked view that a grateful nation rewarded the contribution made by women by finally granting them the vote for in reality the extension of the franchise was limited.

Now for some this will not be a revelation but for others I think it will, and so I shall be revisiting working conditions in the Great War, drawing on the correspondence of the War Emergency Workers National Committee and looking more closely at Annot Robinson who was a remarkable women.****

Pictures; the Tube Factory, the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, 1918,  from the collection of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm Women Munitions workers Belsize works, Openshaw, 1918 m08093, and  Women working in a munitions factory, date unknown, m08096   courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Mrs Annot Robinson, Daily Citizen, March 20 1915

**letter to the War Emergency Workers National Committee, February 27 1915, archives People’s History Museum

*** letter to the War Emergency Workers National Committee, April 26 1915

****War Emergency Workers National Committee, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20War%20Emergency%20Workers%20National%20Committee

Letters to the War Emergency Workers National Committee, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

The power of the Union ............ half forgotten stories from the Great War

“This meeting views with grave concern the enormous rise in the price of foodstuffs and coal, which is equivalent to a considerable reduction of wages of those fully employed and the enormous profits that Shipping, Dealers and other gamblers in the means of life are at present reaping by their unholy profiteering.

We therefore call upon the Government to take immediate action to control supplies to regulate food prices and to put an end to this flagrant exploitation of the necessities of the poor.”*

Such was a resolution passed by a large audience in the Free Trade Hall on Sunday February 14 1915.

It was the culmination of a few days of factory and street corner meetings which focused on the swift rise in rents as well as food and coal prices since the beginning of the war.

And it is an aspect of life on the Home Front which does not always feature prominently in many accounts of the Great War.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at that Free Trade meeting was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike  over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.****

But this is to get ahead of ourselves.

Back in January the Manchester Guardian had reported “the all-round advance in the price of most household commodities since the outbreak of hostilities – an advance amounting in several instances to over 50% [was] causing concern to the average householder whose income is inelastic”*****

And amongst working class families this all-round advance was causing great hardship more so because it was accompanied by rises in rents and fuel prices.

But strikes to maintain living standards were not the only response to the jump in the cost of living.
On the day war broke out the Labour Movement had formed the War Emergency Workers National Committee tasked with defending the interests of organised working people.

During the next four years it received daily reports all on everything from rises in rents, the cost and quality of food to pensions and conditions in factories and on the land as well as the railways, war babies, air raids and women’s war service.

Much of the correspondence came from local Labour and Trades Councils across the country which set up their own local committees.

Here in the city the Manchester & District Workers (War Problems) Joint Committee consisted of Manchester & Salford Trades and Labour Council, Manchester & Salford Labour Party, Gorton Trades Council, the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation, Building Industries Federation, Women’s Trade Union Council, Manchester and Salford Women’s Trade & Labour Council, Manchester & Salford ILP, Manchester Salford  & District Co-operative Societies, Women’s Co-operative Guilds, Women’s Citizen’s Association, and the Women’s War Interest Committee.

This was a broad cross section of those organisation representing the working class.
In turn Food Vigilance Committees were set up across the country to monitor prices and ensure local councils were enforcing regulations on both prices and the quality of food.

They also called meetings, distributed leaflets and like the War Emergency Workers National Committee pushed hard for more Government intervention in regulating the abuses thrown up during the war.

Now that to me promises to be a fascinating story.

Pictures; courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*Resolution passed at the Free Trade Hall on February 14 1915

**LABOUR AND FOOD PRICES. A FREE TRADE HALL PROTEST, Manchester Guardian Feb 15 1915

***ibid Manchester Guardian Feb 15 191

****O’Neil Joseph, Manchester in the Great War, 2014

*****FOOD PRICES AND THE WAR, Manchester Guardian January 31 1915

Snapshots of the Great War nu 1 ..... “If a farmer or milk dealer was selling milk at 4d per quart on Nov 15 1914 is he entitled to charge 6d per qt now?”......

During 1915 and into 1916 the cost of living continued to rise while some foods became in even shorter supply.

In the February of 1916 the National Women’s Labour League expressed their concerns at the restrictions on the import of fruit “it is the cheap fruits that will be chiefly affected, since other food stuff have become so dear, children in poor districts have been fed more than ever on oranges, dried figs and dates.”*

While the Spen Valley Trades & Labour Council in December of the same year reported that Landlords had increased the rent 6d per week “Rates are the same & no repairs etc.  The tenants have refused the increase , but the landlords are entering it in the arrears col” 

These and many other observations and reports were sent in to the  War Emergency Workers National Committee which had been established at beginning of war to protect interests of working classes on matters of everything from employment,  wages, conditions of service and supply of essential commodities.

In turn they gave advice and helped co-ordinate local campaigns against price rises, exploitation and a whole range of issues raising these and many other concerns with the Government.

Sadly in answer to the question of whether a farmer or milk dealer could increase the cost of milk the answer was yes, but the Committee gave practical advice on the rights of both those angered at the price rises and also to tenants facing rent rises while continuing to put the case to the Government and to the general public of the need for greater state intervention in all aspects of the production distribution and pricing of food.

But that is for another snapshot.

Picture; leaflet announcing a Mass Meeting organised against the rising cost of living at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, February 1915, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum

*Minutes of War Emergency Workers National Committee 1915-1916, courtesy of the Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Looking for the Chorlton Socialist Society in 1908

Now I am always looking for those little bits of our history which have been lost but are now coming back out of the shadows.

So it is with the Chorlton Socialist Society which was active in the decades either side of the turn of the 20th century.

There isn’t much and what there is hints at much more.

In 1895 they had complained bitterly to the Manchester Guardian that they had been prevented from holding a meeting in the Public Hall which was a “hall built for the public, consecrated to the common good, free from the trammels of faction, open for the use of all” and following this had met the same response from
“every other room belonging to a public body.”*

The letter was signed by Charles Fletcher of 9 Chestnut Avenue who was the secretary, and in the course of the next five years there were three more secretaries who were recorded in the Labour Annual and its successor The Reformer’s Year Book**

In 1898 Mr Fred Hughes of 16 Manchester Road was secretary of a group which had 40 members and three years later he was followed by Mr J Crispin who lived at 32 Whalley Road and in 1901 by George Lee of 17 Albermarle Road.

So far little is known of these men, although a Charles Fletcher who later lived in Rusholme served during the Great War, and Mr Lee can be tracked across Chorlton from 1901 to 1911.

Charles Fletcher gave his occupation in 1915 on his Attestation papers as a lorry driver, while George Lee was a designer for a calico printing firm.

Now these were the sort of people who had been moving in to the township since the 1880s when much of New Chorlton was developed.

“The influx of a new population of lower middle class city workers who have to find room to live in the new houses erected on open spaces where a few years ago there were green pastures and golden corn fields.

These people have brought with them a new political outlook consistent with the great advance of Labour in recent years.”***

And with places like the Public hall barred to them they were forced to meet “on certain nights around lamp posts”**** to spread their political message. ****

That said by 1906 they at least were afforded the same rights as other political groups and had been given permission to hold two meetings on the village green.

Like all such groups their membership remained small but there was a steady core which took a dip in 1910 which at present is unclear.  In the previous few years it had affiliated to the Manchester & Salford Labour Representation Committee and its membership was on a parr with some of the bigger areas of the city.

In 1906 when the Labour Representation Committee changed its name to the Labour Party the Chorlton Socialist Society had debated its response to that name change.

Along with other such groups it was a branch of the Independent Labour Party which had been formed in 1893, and at the 1907 Annual ILP meeting which was to be held at Stockton-on-Tees, there were suggestions that the party should change its name.

The Pendlebury and Swinton branch along with Chorlton suggested a change to the Socialist Party while other branches came up with variations.*****

As it was the ILP retained its name and in turn affiliated to the Labour Party.

All of which may mean that after 1906 Chorlton had its own branch of the Labour Party which attracted members from the Socialist Society and that will introduce us to William Mellor who was also an active trade unionist and socilaist living in Chorlton.******

And that I guess means a return to the archives of the Peoples History Museum where no doubt I will be able to uncover a shed full more on both the society and at the start of the Labour Party here and perhaps a little more on Mr Fletcher, Mr Lee and those other secretaries.*******

We shall see.

Picture; Solidarity, Walter Crane, 1887

Additional research from Barry Clark and Morris, D 'Labour or Socialism'. Phd, University of Manchester 1982

* C. Fletcher, Chorlton-cum- Hardy Socialist Society, Manchester Guardian, October 23 1895

**Labour Annual, 1895-1900, The Reformer’s Year Book, 1900-1909

***Davies, Rhys. J., Socialism in Suburbia, 1930

****ibid Davies, page 9

*****New name for the ILP, The Manchester Guardian March 8 1906

******William Mellor, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/William%20Mellor

*******Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk

Snapshots of the Great War nu 3 ........... the Manchester Pals

Now I don’t have a date for the picture but it’s of a young James Callaghan of the 8th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment.

He was one of almost 10,000 men who enlisted in the eight Manchester Pals battalions which were formed in the first few months of the Great War.

The day after Lord Liverpool called for the formation of a Pal’s battalion in Liverpool, Manchester followed suit.

He had spoken of the need for "a battalion of pals, a battalion in which friends from the same office will fight shoulder to shoulder for the honour of Britain and the credit of Liverpool.“

In the early days the authorities couldn’t keep pace with the numbers wanting to join up.

Of the almost 10,000 who enlisted 4,776 were killed.

In recognition of the commitment and sacrifice made during the Great War the People’s History Museum has an exciting programme of events to accompany their changing exhibition A Land Fit for Heroes which runs till February 2015.*


Picture; James Callaghan, date unknown courtesy of Joe Callaghan and embroidered picture post card from the collection of David Harrop

*A Land Fit for Heroes, http://www.phm.org.uk/news/a-land-fit-for-heroes-events-programme/

150 years of Co-operation at the People's History Museum till May

A CWS jam advert circa 1930s

Now all most all my close friends can remember their mum’s co-op divi number.

Whenever you bought anything at the local store you had to quote it, to earn the dividend.

Sadly I am not one of them and try as I might it has been forgotten.

But I can remember quoting it when I was sent to the shop and came across some of those blue stamps which took the divi number’s place.

Later I went to work for the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and later still joined the Co-op bank when we lived in Ashton.

That bank account in the 1970s was quite a life line, for in a time when there were no holes in the wall to dispense money, the Co-op would cash cheques at the weekend at the big Arcadia store.

Co-op cocoa made at the CWS & SCWS-factory,1902

All of which is an introduction to the new exhibition at The People’s History Museum* on 150 years of the Co-operative Movement which runs till May 2014.

“For 150 years The Co-operative has grown to first manufacture and then to sell products. Its services continue to support the families and communities of Great Britain and the world ‘from the cradle to the grave’.

This people’s business began its humble origins as the Co-operative Wholesale Society in Greater Manchester in 1863. The exhibition explores the story and values behind the ‘caring sharing co-op’ and offer a unique insight into the way we shop and live.”

So along with my friend Tommy and a group of fellow co-operators we were taken around the exhibition which includes a number of interactive displays along with plenty of posters and other things to see.

There was a guided tour and the staff opened up some of the archive material for us to handle.

So I shall be going again, taking the family and anyone else who wants to come.

And it is an important exhibition celebrating as it does the idea that people can co-operate to make a better world and that profit is not the only means by which products can be produced and traded.

In an age of banker’s bonuses and that much peddled idea that the markets determine all it is worth reflecting on the Co-op which “is the UK’s largest mutual business, owned not by private shareholders but by over seven million consumers. 

Bus advertisement for The Co-operative Bank circa 1970s

They are the UK’s fifth biggest food retailer and a major financial services provider, operating The Co-operative Bank and The Co-operative Insurance. 

They also operate a funeral services, the third largest pharmacy chain and one of Britain’s largest farming operations. The Group operates 4,800 retail trading outlets, employs more than 100,000 people and has an annual turnover of more than £13bn.

Their members are their owners; members tell them what is important to them and they listen and act on it. 

Its part of their model: as a consumer co-operative, they run their business for the benefit of members. That means members are involved in democratic decision-making and profits are shared with the members. 

Dividend stamps introduced nationally by CWS in 1969

Members also set a social and campaigning agenda that they support.

They have become pioneers in areas such as Fairtrade and combating climate change. The more commercially successful they are, the more they can do to give back to the communities they serve and to influence the wider world.”

So even despite its current embarrassment with its banking arm and faces challenging from the big companies
I think the Co-op is still worth considering and certainly visiting its history.

*The People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

Follow @PHMMcr on twitter to keep up to date with the exhibition  #coop150ex

Pictures; A CWS jam advert c1930s, National Co-operative Archive, © The Co-operative Group,
Advertisement-for-co-operative-cocoa-made-at-a-joint-CWS-and-SCWS-factory-in-Luton-from-1902-National-Co-operative-Archive-© -The-Co-operative-Group, Bus advertisement for The Co-operative Bank circa 1970s, National Co-operative Archive, © The Co-operative Group, Dividend stamps introduced nationally by CWS in 1969, National Co-operative Archive, ©The Co-operative Group