Mary Macarthur and the Women's Trade Union League

Socialists and feminists among the new breed of social reformers were concerned about women's vulnerable position in the labour market. The League actively promoted women's trade unionism. Not a union itself, it functioned as a Trade Union Congress (T.U.C.) for unions with women members. It focused on organisation, legislation and social work, including the arrangement of entertainment and weekly club nights and social evenings for members and their friends and families.

The League was supported in part by contributions from a body of subscribers, who were in sympathy with the aims and objectives of trade unionism, and partly by the contributions of trade societies and affiliated trade unions. The affiliation fee for trade unions was 2s 6d (12.5p) per 250 women members. The fee was kept low in order not to exclude the smaller and poorer unions.

In 1903 the League was struggling to achieve its aims, and it was being run on a deficit. Mona Wilson had resigned as secretary. When Lady Dilke, a leading figure in the League, met with the Committee, she did so in a mood almost of despair. She felt that the task of bringing the idea of trade union organisation to the minds of the mass of scattered, underpaid and helpless women workers seemed well-nigh hopeless. She recognised that the new secretary would have to be able to organise and inspire.

That is exactly what they found in Mary Macarthur, when she became the League's secretary in 1903. Mary's biographer, Mary Agnes Hamilton wrote, "If they were not sure at first that they wanted so powerful a blast through their organisation, they were soon to be conquered both by results and by the sun behind the storm." (Hamilton, 1925, p31). Mary soon made things move. She was not going to wait for Unions to join the League, she was going out to make them. "Don't think of the Empire on which the sun never sets," she said, "think of the wage that never rises."

Mary quickly built up a credit balance in the accounts, and in the Illustrated Mail (1st April 1905) was described as "truly a wonderful woman, organising meetings, attending to the huge correspondence, and what endears her to the girls more than anything else, giving advice and encouragement to all in trouble." Perhaps even more wonderful was Mary's ability to inspire almost anyone with whom she came into contact.

Mary admitted that at the beginning her enthusiasm led to a few mistakes. "About the first time I started an open air meeting I got a number of girls around me on a street corner and told them about Unionism. I was very enthusiastic, and perhaps I gave it to them in too glowing terms. They believed me, and gave me their names to join the union. Ten days afterwards the girls looked more inclined to mob me than anything else, and I asked them what was the matter. 'Oh, we've been ten days in the Union and our wages haven't gone up yet!' "(Sarah Boston, 1980)

Publicity was a weapon Mary used with great skill. During the box-makers strike at the Corruganza Works in Tooting, a photo of which is reproduced here, Mary led a march to Trafalgar Square, in the rain, where photographers and journalists were treated to speeches made by the women's leaders. There was little doubt that they conveyed their message effectively, because while the skies brightened, the crowd rained down coins on the speakers' stage.

J.J. Mallon, a leading figure in the Anti-sweating League, wrote a pen portrait of Mary. "Breathlesness is her dominant characteristic. She is always at top speed. She whirls from meeting to meeting, strike to strike, congress to congress: the street shouting behind the dust and rattle of her car." Agnes Hamilton described one of her meetings. "The girls cluster around her platform, while she talks to them.... 'Keep on, miss,' said a tired Lancashire woman, with a rapt expression, listening to her recently.'It's better than t'seaside' "

In two years 14,000 new members joined the League, increasing the total to over 70,000. She had succeeded in forming unions in Littleborough, where 200 women hosiery workers had been threatened with fifteen to fifty per cent wage reductions, in the Midlands among boot and shoe operators, in Paisley among the thread girls and in London among the tailoresses and telephonists. Despite the success, raising sufficient funds continued to be a problem. In 1906, during a snowy winter in Dundee, Mary wired Gertrude Tuckwell, the League's President, asking her to forward £100 to sustain a prolonged strike of jute workers. Miss Tuckwell was unable to raise the funds, the workers could not be given strike pay, and the strike failed. This incident was one of the factors that led Mary to form the National Federation of Women Workers (N.F.W.W.) in 1906. Its aim was to combine smaller unions into one large general union, which would be financially more stable and able to amass a much larger strike fund.

Mary became the secretary of the N.F.W.W. whilst continuing her role as secretary of the Women's Trade Union League, and campaigning with the Anti-sweating league to establish Trade Boards and a minimum wage. The Women's Trade Union League was absorbed into the T.U.C. in 1921, the same year as Mary's death.

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Updated:	Thu 12 Jul 2007 - 0
Interpretation written by	Barbara Harris
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