One hundred years ago, in 1906, the National Federation of Women WorkersFootnote ¹ was formed in Britain, under the guidance of the Women's Trade Union League.Footnote ² Its raison d'être was to provide a trade union for women who found themselves excluded, on grounds of sex, from the unions that drew membership from their trade. Its President, Mary Macarthur, believed that men needed to be educated into accepting that women could be both reliable and long term trade union members. She held that separate organisation provided the most effective short term solution, until such time as men and women could be equally welcomed and represented in the same unions.Footnote ³ The Federation's Annual Report for 1914 lists seventy-six branches across England and Scotland and membership at the end of that year was at least 10,000 members.Footnote ⁴ Its officials' energies were directed into ensuring that women recognised the benefits of union membership. Their tasks included trying to persuade women that they would be better off financially if they wore the Federation badge and better equipped to deal with exploitation and hostility from both management and male coworkers on the factory floor.

In Coventry, in the years before the First World War, several women of diverse ages, backgrounds and life experiences became involved in the establishment and running of a Federation branch. Within one locality and despite all working for the same cause, these activists had individual motives for becoming involved in campaigning. Their contributions were unique and although they worked together to support women in industrial disputes, to arrange meetings and social events and to persuade the male dominated Coventry labor movement of the merits of the Federation, the different interpretations and emphases that each of the women placed on their work, arguably had significant effects upon branch development. By highlighting the involvement of three of them—Sally Griffiths, Helen Dawson, and Edith Stringer—it becomes apparent that it is inaccurate to talk collectively or generally about regional Federation leadership.Footnote ⁵ Dawson and Griffiths were referred to as “honorary” members of the Federation because they were not working women; the fact that they organized from outside the factory had a distinct effect on the work that they did for the Federation. By contrast, Stringer was a factory worker and her contributions and the ways in which she was treated by the national and local leadership reveal that her approach to her union work often differed from that of her two colleagues. Only by emphasizing difference is it possible to abandon stereotypical images of women activists and move closer to the experiences of those who worked in the regions. June Hannam and Karen Hunt draw attention to the importance of a biographical approach in their work on socialist women in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain.Footnote ⁶ Deborah Thom recognizes the need for studies that focus on regional organization and the work of grassroots members, because “the history of women's collective organization has been dominated by the history of its leaders.”Footnote ⁷ She suggests that the ideology of the national leadership may have constrained ordinary working women, preventing full participation in union life because of an underlying assumption of their weakness and incapacity to engage in collective action unless given direction.Footnote ⁸ Such an ideology, argues Thom, was reinforced by the Federation's dependence upon paid and unpaid organizers rather than on elected officials from the branches. This study provides an opportunity to consider whether leadership within one locality reflected or deviated from such an ideology and how this affected the organization of women workers. There are currently few available regional accounts of women's trade unionism in this period with some notable exceptions. Joanna Bornat's study of women's involvement in the General Union of Textile Workers in Yorkshire before the First World War emphasizes women's “collective spirit” while at the same time explaining why their membership in a male led trade union was marginalized.Footnote ⁹ Eleanor Gordon's work on women's trade unionism in Scotland before the First World War includes detailed evidence of the nature of industrial disputes and emphasizes the strength and unity displayed by women workers.Footnote ¹⁰ By contrast, there is no similarly detailed coverage of the regional work of the League and the Federation in England or Wales during this period and instead historians focus on problems that were seen to be common to women workers, such as low pay, irregular employment, and domestic responsibilities, all of which have been acknowledged as obstacles to bringing women into the labor movement and keeping them there.Footnote ¹¹

Source material for early twentieth century women's trade unionism is limited. When the Federation amalgamated with the General and Municipal Workers' Union in 1921, its records were lost and a similar fate befell women's branches of mixed-sex trade unions that were swept up into larger mixed branches when local leadership decided that it was not feasible to sustain separate women's sections. Feminists have noted a tendency among mainstream historians to assume that the absence of formal organizational records indicates insignificance and this arguably results in continued historical neglect. Anna Davin notes that it is not a conscious conspiracy that leads to the exclusion of women's organizations from many general histories of trade unionism. Rather, it is a reflection of the fact that the records of the smallest, least affluent organizations were never preserved in the same way as those of the more financially powerful exclusively male or male-dominated institutions.Footnote ¹² Some material exists; Ada Nield Chew toured Britain as a spokeswoman for the League and her account provides general descriptions of the work of the organization on behalf of women workers in Britain.Footnote ¹³ The Gertrude Tuckwell CollectionFootnote ¹⁴ is a valuable resource that includes newspaper cuttings and reports on women's trade union activities, although it does not provide a fully comprehensive picture of Britain.Footnote ¹⁵ The Federation and League Annual Reports include branch lists and reports, which provide the names of local personnel as well as details of strikes, disputes and branch activities. Although these give a snapshot of Federation activity in the regions, allowing the researcher to follow up local leads, the record that they present is incomplete. The production of local accounts was either dependent on responses from branches—and these might not be forthcoming if the year had seen little in the way of expansion or industrial action—or on reports from national organizers who had attended local disputes. In addition to the Annual Reports is the Federation newspaper, Woman Worker, but it was only produced between 1907 and 1910, with only the earliest volumes regularly reporting on branch life.Footnote ¹⁶ There are no surviving official records of the Federation branch in Coventry yet information relating to the mission and activities of the Coventry branch has emerged from a variety of alternative sources, including revisited oral testimonies,Footnote ¹⁷ interviews and correspondence,Footnote ¹⁸ the local press and accounts of sections of the Coventry labor movement before the First World War, in particular those of the Trades Council.Footnote ¹⁹

In the first years of the twentieth century, British trade-union membership increased dramatically. During “the great unrest” between 1910 and 1914, membership rises ensured that trade unions became definite and recognizable “fixtures on the political scene.”Footnote ²⁰ Women's trade unionism rose from 166,803 in 1906 to 357,956 in 1914.Footnote ²¹ By far the greatest number of these women were members of the textile unions whereas the Federation directed energy into organizing women from a wide range of industries that included textile work in, for example, lace, thread, or dye works and small dressmaking firms, the food and drink industry, hollow ware, box making, and chain making. Many of its members were sweated workers, previously untouched by trade union organization and in its early years, the Federation was heavily involved in campaigning against sweating and increasing public awareness of the “hidden” work done by thousands of women for extremely low pay and often in appalling conditions. It was assisted by the publicity that accompanied high-profile strikes such as that of the Cradley Heath chain makers in 1910 and disputes among sweated factory workers in the East End of London. The League was aware of the need to recognize and publicize hidden regional differences in women's pay and conditions; Sheila Blackburn draws attention to Clementina Black's report, which identified wage differences even within two rooms of the same East End shirt making factory, despite the fact that the women were doing the same work.Footnote ²² While Mary Macarthur embarked on promotional tours around Britain, the League and the Federation directed national organizers to help in regional disputes and assist in branch formation. Sarah Boston emphasizes the importance of central figures such as Mary Macarthur and Gertrude Tuckwell being on hand to give women their first experience of leadership and organization in the hope that they would be able to pick up the reins and continue to organize within their area.Footnote ²³ Boston suggests that women gained confidence from public expressions of industrial disputes, by attending marches and demonstrations,Footnote ²⁴ and Thom notes that organizers made effective use of tactics from the women's suffrage movement, producing leaflets, ribbons, and badges in order to publicize their struggle and inspire potential members.Footnote ²⁵ However, the impact that the Federation hierarchy had in the regions is difficult to judge: evidence from Coventry shows that displays of public unity and resolve were notoriously difficult to translate into determination to maintain members in local branches once disputes were over and normal working conditions resumed. It was then up to local activists to ensure, through education and a continuous presence, that the roots of women's trade unionism were given time to deepen and it is to their work that I now turn.

After a prolonged period of economic stagnation during which the two craft industries that had dominated nineteenth century Coventry—silk ribbon weaving and watch making—had seen a significant contraction of both their capital investment and workforces, the take-off of the cycle industry in the 1880s marked a revival of Coventry's industrial fortunes and the beginnings of large scale factory production in the city. In 1891 the population of Coventry was 52,742 but this had increased to 106,549 by 1911.Footnote ²⁶ In 1881 there were sixteen cycle manufacturers in Coventry and this had increased to over seventy by the boom years of the 1890s. While the cycle industry was subject to periods of trade depression, technological advances and capital injections from new manufacturers encouraged experimentation with the motor industry and diversification into components and machine tools.

The old craft industries had been characterized by small workshops and home working and widespread worker resistance had delayed the introduction of large scale factory production. Women, a recognized and accepted part of the workforce in Coventry, were essentially regarded, particularly by skilled male weavers and watch makers, as helpers. Although by 1891 women outnumbered men in the ribbon industry by more than three to one, this merely reflected the fact that the industry was no longer prestigious or reliable enough to employ significant numbers of skilled male weavers. Instead, more work practices had been diluted and handed over to women.Footnote ²⁷

By 1911, although many women remained either as home workers or isolated within small textile workshops, factory employment for men and women was firmly established in Coventry. The opening of Courtaulds, makers of synthetic textiles, in Coventry in 1904 represented a significant change in the nature of women's work in the city, creating 833 jobs for women by 1907.Footnote ²⁸ However, the arrival of women in the cycle factories resulted in anxiety and criticism from male workers and members of the labor movement in Coventry. Their numbers were small—a mere seven percent of occupied women worked in the cycle industry by 1911Footnote ²⁹—but their presence was regarded as a serious threat, particularly by those skilled men who had regarded with suspicion the changes in the city's expanded and increasingly unskilled workforce and who now articulated their fears of wage undercutting by expressing their concerns for the physical and moral safety of the women workers. The isolation of workers in small production units had not encouraged the development of a strong trade-union movement in Coventry;Footnote ³⁰ at the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of societies affiliated to the Coventry Trades Council were skilled trade unions with an overwhelmingly male membership, accounting for a minority of the city's workforce.Footnote ³¹ As the economic climate in Coventry changed, these unions, particularly those associated with engineering, fought two battles, one against the introduction of unskilled male workers and the other against women workers, believing that their craftsmen status was threatened by unskilled rates of pay. In 1907 the Workers' Union, a mixed sex general union for unskilled workers of any trade was established in Coventry, where it was to enjoy some of its most impressive successes over the next fifteen years as well as bitter clashes with the engineering unions.

So, when the Trades Council raised its objections to the presence of women in the city's cycle factories in 1904, it was not because women were a new phenomenon in the local workforce but because they had found their way into the skilled man's arena which had so recently also been invaded by unskilled and semi skilled men. Its 1904 Annual Report described the introduction of female labor in local cycle factories not just as an evil, “working detrimentally to the interests of the workman” but as “a standing disgrace, injurious to the health and physique of the females employed.”Footnote ³² The report, by concluding that the “evil” could be “abolished” in Coventry if the workers were organized, lays the blame for the current situation at the door of the unskilled worker.Footnote ³³ Two years later the secretary of Coventry's Labour Representation Committee, T.J. Harris, wrote to the local press about the “coarse and uncongenial surroundings [that] are constantly tending to deprive female workers of the graces and modesty which are both a woman's strength and glory.”Footnote ³⁴ Evil is again the word chosen to describe female factory employment, seen as responsible for the sufferings of the whole local community as women are regarded as “mere chattels of service instead of as the helpers and purifiers of men's lives.”Footnote ³⁵ However, the first point made by Harris is that the demoralization caused by women's labor degrades men's wages “below the point which enables them to fulfill their duties in providing suitable homes for their wives and children.”Footnote ³⁶ Harris's letter was written to offer thanks to a local clergyman for bringing the public's attention to the potentially dreadful consequences of mixed factory labor. Although such outrage was to be a recurrent theme in Coventry over the coming years, local studies have shown similar hostility towards women workers in other British cities, identifying the effects that employment conditions and the gender balance of the workforce could have upon the development of regional labor movements. Michael Savage has shown that the perceived threat of female labor in Preston influenced the ways in which that city's labor politics were organized and expressed.Footnote ³⁷ J.T. MacPherson, the Labour MP for Preston between 1906 and 1910 aired his views on the subject of women mill workers who, in his opinion could, not adequately keep up with both their domestic chores and their paid work. The women's welfare, however, was secondary to his main complaint that women were depressing both wages and working conditions for the male operatives.Footnote ³⁸ In his study of Liverpool's Labour politics, Sam Davies notes that the skilled craft unions were likely to have reacted negatively to female labor because “the very concept of ‘skilled’ work often had clear gender implications in its exclusivity.”Footnote ³⁹ There is evidence of such reactions during a 1908 Trades Union Congress debate when metalworkers' union leaders stated their objections to women workers in the metal trades who “look like sweeps and [are] far more unhealthy.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Although, as in Coventry, the men stressed the unhealthiness of elements of the trade, appealing to sentiment by urging the withdrawal of women from trades that “make[s] them unfit to be sweethearts or mothers” (…“only the other day we had a little girl scalped who was receiving four shillings per week; if the beautiful hair of woman is not her crowning glory and stock-in-trade, what is?”),Footnote ⁴¹ the underlying concern was that female labor was undercutting male rates. Mary Macarthur responded by urging men to offer practical assistance in the organization of women workers “which they had a right to expect” instead of being negative almost to the point of proposing the “abolition of women altogether.”Footnote ⁴²

In 1908 the Brassworkers' Union distributed leaflets in Coventry addressed “To Everybody, Trade Unionists Especially” urging parents and friends of girls and women working as cycle polishers to persuade them that the work, being done at “reduced rates,” was “dirty and unhealthy” and would shorten their lives. Its conclusion was an appeal to “females”:

From its earliest days, the Coventry Federation branch tackled the antagonism shown towards women workers by appealing both to the skilled unions and the wider community, strongly reflecting the national leadership's belief that organizing women ensured that their presence in the workplace was more likely to be tolerated by men.Footnote ⁴⁴ At a Labour Party demonstration in Coventry in July 1908, Louisa Hedges, a national Federation organizer, was shouted down by men in the audience declaring that women should be turned out of the factories.Footnote ⁴⁵ Hedges' appeal to the people of Coventry to follow in the footsteps of their own Lady Godiva by helping “the oppressed poor” provides an example of Thom's concern that, for many women's trade union leaders, “the principle of organization was one of protection, of help for the weak rather than of self-activity.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Whether this principle was also expounded locally is best explored by looking at the roles played by women who worked to establish and shape the Coventry Federation branch.

Helen Dawson arrived in Coventry in 1906 as the housekeeper of the Christian Socialist vicar, P.E.T. Widdrington, who that year became the incumbent at St. Peter's, situated among many of the new cycle factories. On arrival in Coventry, Widdrington launched himself into local politics, supporting Labour candidates in the 1907 local elections. He became a familiar face at Labour demonstrations and when he left Coventry in 1918, a presentation evening was held to thank him for his many contributions to the advance of Labour politics in the city.Footnote ⁴⁷ Whilst it was Widdrington whose public role was noted and commented on by the local press, Dawson was also heavily involved in local politics. When Widdrington's first wife, socialist and suffrage campaigner, Enid Stacy, died aged thirty five in 1903, her friend, Helen Dawson, came to live in the household to care for Stacy and Widdrington's young son. She remained in this role until 1911 when she and Widdrington married. Both Widdrington and Dawson were strong advocates of women's right to full participation in the life of the community. Widdrington stressed the importance of giving women in the parish “some substantial part in the management of their church which was equally their church with that of the men.”Footnote ⁴⁸ They opened up the vicarage to be used by parish groups and fellowships, philanthropic organizations and political groups and, in the years before the First World War, it gained a reputation as a center of leftist activity, “the light to which most people in the city looked if they had any sympathy whatever with the aspirations of the new Labour movement.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Theatrical productions were enacted on the vicarage lawns, put on by the Fabian Society and the reading group of the Independent Labour Party.Footnote ⁵⁰ The vicarage has also been referred to as a sanctuary for suffragettes attempting to escape rearrest and imprisonment under the terms of the 1913 Cat and Mouse Act.Footnote ⁵¹

Although Dawson was not a factory worker, she used her parish and political connections to bring her into contact with female factory workers and other working-class women. At the same time it could be argued that she also used her position of respectability and Widdrington's reputation within the labor movement to seek acceptance for the Federation among the city's left-wing political activists and male trade unionists. When the branch was first formed in January 1907, as a result of a visit by Macarthur and boosted by a further visit from League organizer Ada Nield Chew,Footnote ⁵² it held its meetings at the Alexander Coffee Tavern. This was a favorite venue for many left-wing groups and skilled trade unions in the city and one with an undoubtedly male dominated environment, serving up “a good working man's dinner, with meat and two veg for sixpence.”Footnote ⁵³ Despite the efforts of local organizers, the branch remained small and by 1908, it had transferred its meetings to the nearby St Peter's Vicarage. The newness of women's trade unionism and women's labor in previously male-dominated trades meant that the Federation branch organizers had to utilize all the help and advantages they could in order to persuade women of the benefits of organization. Their report in Woman Worker in November 1907 expressed a desire to grow but stated that “the working girls here are most of them content with low wages for long hours.”Footnote ⁵⁴ So, if the atmosphere at the Alexander was rather macho, the move to the Vicarage could be seen as a way of securing a more suitable, safe, and less intimidating location in which to hold meetings than the alien environment of the coffee tavern. It was not only the women and girls who needed encouragement. It is likely that many of them needed to seek the approval of their families before attending evening meetings and it is conceivable that some parents and husbands were more favorably inclined towards the Vicarage than the tavern. Julia Varley, as a women's organizer for the Workers' Union, wrote of her distaste for what she called “pleasant Sunday afternoon methods” of recruiting, although she recognized the importance of employing such methods to make both acceptance and appeal of the union as wide as possible.Footnote ⁵⁵ The Coventry branch held social evenings with “music and refreshments” in an attempt to show women “the advantages of unity.”Footnote ⁵⁶ However, even when social events were well attended, there were no guarantees that evenings filled with songs, recitations, whist drives and refreshments resulted in anything more than promises of membership.Footnote ⁵⁷ The difficulties of organizing women outside of disputes and strikes were recognized by the national leadership and were not peculiar to Coventry. Margaret Bondfield, Assistant Secretary of the Federation, noted that “a large part of the membership was built up as its organizers came to the help of unorganized groups of strikers.”Footnote ⁵⁸ Mary Macarthur wrote of the need for women to receive sound educational grounding in union ways to ensure that they then retained their membership:

The shallowness of the roots of women's trade unionism in some areas is further illustrated by an example from Coventry of one method used to attract new members in the early days of the branch. The organizers reported that the attractiveness of the Federation badge, first introduced to the branch in 1908, had the potential to win over some women to the union cause:

The importance of both respectability and support to the Coventry Federation are illustrated by overtures it made to members of the city's clergy in May 1908. Dawson may have been able to use her situation within the Diocese to encourage sections of the Church to listen to Federation aims. Clergymen were asked to provide a meeting room for at least one night in order “that we might place before the women and girls of his church the aims and objectives of our Union.”Footnote ⁶¹ While this approach reflects the local leadership's emphasis on securing protection for women workers in Coventry, it also indicates the importance it placed on ensuring that factory women were seen to be respectable and still occupying traditional, ladylike positions in society, despite the perceived degradation of their employment. In the light of the extensive hostility shown towards women factory workers in Coventry, it was perhaps felt that men needed reminding that the new employment had not stripped women of their moral decency. Although there were several favorable replies from city clergymen, there is no evidence of how successful the approaches were. The Reverend Walker's 1906 remarks about immoral behavior prompted by “mixed works,” coarsening women and stripping them of grace and modesty, suggests that the task was a difficult one.Footnote ⁶²

Dawson's wider involvement in the women's movement as a member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) suggests that her political objectives went further than seeking union protection for working women. She used publicity in the local press and at labor and suffrage demonstrations to raise awareness of the situation of both middle-class and working-class women in Edwardian Britain. The full extent of her involvement in the WSPU militant campaign is unclear but there are numerous examples of both her attendance at public suffrage meetings and of her determination to organize events for the WSPU. For example, in 1910 she was one of the organizers of a four-day WSPU mission in Coventry. Events included lunchtime meetings outside factories where significant numbers of women were employed and an evening meeting at the Corn Exchange at which Christabel Pankhurst was the principal speaker. Dawson was one of six activists (at least two of whom had association with the Federation) who “paraded” the streets wearing sandwich boards to advertise the week's events.Footnote ⁶³ Sonya Rose has suggested that the suffrage campaign may have provided encouragement and enthusiasm to women trade unionists who were able to explain to women the wider significance of both gaining the vote and becoming unionized. She shows how the suffrage campaign in Lancashire between 1900 and 1906, traced by Jill Liddington and Jill Norris,Footnote ⁶⁴ began to attract the support of working women as women recognized the links between their lack of political power and their subordination in the factory.Footnote ⁶⁵ It is not possible to assess whether Dawson's suffrage work had a strengthening effect on the Federation in Coventry. In an earlier publication I have argued that her simultaneous involvement in both organizations may in fact have deterred women who were suspicious or hostile towards the WSPU from joining the Federation because of confusion over leadership and similarities in meeting styles and places.Footnote ⁶⁶

Dawson's allegiance to the WSPU also set her apart from Macarthur and Bondfield, who were supporters of the principle of universal suffrage, on the grounds that this would enfranchise working class men and women alike. The Coventry branch of the WSPU was small and the numerous reported incidents of verbal and physical aggression shown towards its members at public meetings suggest that an organization perceived as having a middle-class leadership, was likely to face an uphill struggle for acceptance in such a working class city.Footnote ⁶⁷ Depending on Dawson's involvement and prominence in both organizations, it is conceivable that her presence may have at times been regarded as a liability by other members of the Federation. It is also possible that any hint of a middle-class “do-gooding” image would have been exploited by the Workers' Union, the only other general trade union involved in organizing women in Coventry during these years. Its local leadership was prepared to challenge the craft unions' previous supremacy in the city whereas the Federation continued to seek help and support from the skilled unions. As a result, within the local labor movement, women's organization was, from its earliest days, swept up in the rivalry that existed between the Workers' Union and the craft unions, particularly the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The situation was made more complex by local socialist politics; the Workers' Union leadership was dominated by members of the Marxist influenced Social Democratic Federation while the craft unions and Federation leadership were more influenced by the ideology of the Independent Labour Party. Conflict between the two unions seeking to recruit women members was inevitable. Statistical evidence suggests that the Federation was more successful in its aims than the Workers' Union in the years before the War; by 1914 the Federation had 450 members in Coventry compared to the Workers' Union's 110 women members.Footnote ⁶⁸ However, when these figures were reported in the Coventry Trades Council Annual Report of 1914, the Federation had recently successfully concluded two strikes in the city, which had resulted in the recruitment of many new members. As has already been noted, there were real problems in maintaining membership once strike action was over and fluctuations in membership were a significant feature of the branch. The League's Annual Report of 1914 recognized the importance of the 1914 strike action in Coventry, evidence, it claimed, that the women workers of had “at last been awakened.”Footnote ⁶⁹

Sally Griffiths, who became vice president of the Coventry Federation in 1907, was born in Coventry in 1871. She claimed in an interview given towards the end of her public life, to have been working since the age of seven, enduring a childhood of poverty.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, by the time the Federation branch was formed, she was a wife and mother and no longer in paid employment outside the home. Like Dawson, she played an active part in Labour politics but each appears to have taken on distinct and separate roles within the Federation, and these reveal different, albeit linked, motives for their involvement in women's trade unionism. In 1907 Griffiths was elected as a Labour candidate to the Coventry Board of GuardiansFootnote ⁷¹ and she later indicated that the hardship she had experienced in childhood enabled her to understand the sufferings and problems encountered by those of her own class. Her association with municipal politics extended into the 1930s and she was well known locally for her work on the Public Assistance and Public Health Committees. It is conceivable that she was at least partly motivated to encourage trade union organization among women by the desire to ensure that conditions for subsequent generations of women would not be as grim as those she had experienced herself. This appears to coincide with what Thom refers to as the “maternalistic overtones” present among the national leadership, offering protection and help to women rather than encouraging them to take responsibility for and shape their own branch activities.Footnote ⁷² Further evidence of a broader approach to her union work can be found in a letter that Griffiths wrote to Woman Worker in 1908 to raise public awareness of society's harshness towards unmarried mothers which, she claimed, so often prevented women from “lift[ing] their heads again after they have once fallen,” unable to care for their child, unable to leave the workhouse and, on occasion, driven to infanticide.Footnote ⁷³

A caring, protective nature is evident in what is known of her involvement in talks with factory management during disputes. While her maturity and standing in the community were likely to have been put to good use by the branch, calming volatile situations arising out of wildcat strikes and spontaneous disputes, it is also worth considering whether, on occasion, Griffiths unintentionally undermined female workers by establishing too cordial a relationship with the employers. Edith Stringer referred to a dispute at the Courtaulds plant in Coventry when Griffiths agreed to a management request to provide the names of the women and girls who were involved in the dispute.Footnote ⁷⁴ As this resulted in their sacking and the end of negotiations with the firm for many years, Stringer was appalled at what she regarded as Griffiths' political naivete, amounting to what she saw as a failure to adequately protect actual and potential members. Stringer also remembered that, on a different occasion, Griffiths completed negotiations with a firm and then stayed to have a cup of tea with the bosses!Footnote ⁷⁵

It is, however, important to balance Stringer's criticisms by acknowledging both the extent of the exploitation and hostility endured by Coventry women workers and the indifference towards organization shown by the majority of women workers. Coventry's industrial scene had changed since Griffiths became a worker in the 1870s. With no tradition of women's organization in the city, there was arguably a need for those committed to the principles of trade unionism to become involved, whether or not they had any experience and whether or not they were themselves workers. Dawson acknowledged in a letter to the local press in 1908 that “there is no town where such a union is more needed than in Coventry. The conditions which obtain in many of the factories are deplorable and need not be tolerated for a single day if only the workers band together in a strong union.”Footnote ⁷⁶ She urged women not to wait until the hard work of organization was done but to do what they could to ensure that the union became “a real force in the life of the city.”Footnote ⁷⁷

It is therefore likely that in order to establish a Federation branch, the position of “honorary” members such as Griffiths and Dawson was necessary to provide protection and support to women who were vulnerable to victimization from their employers and could not risk taking on union roles. In order to strengthen the position of women workers, they sought support from the established male craft unions in the city, taking advantage of approaches by Griffiths, to organizations such as the Amalgamated Society of Toolmakers.Footnote ⁷⁸ Griffiths, a member of both the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party-affiliated Women's Labour League, as well as being a Labour-elected Guardian of the Poor, was well placed within the labor movement to publicize and promote women's trade unionism among men. In November 1907, Mr. Binks of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers was invited to the monthly meeting of the Coventry Federation. He gave a talk about the history of his union and “impress[ed] upon us the need for unity of action.”Footnote ⁷⁹ Griffiths's attempts to seek approval from the craft unions reflects the general aim of the national leadership of both the Federation and the League to prove that women were every bit as diligent and reliable in their trade-union duties as men. In order to do this, the Federation worked in cooperation with the craft unions, encouraging branches to be amalgamated into previously all male unions where this was possible. Barbara Drake gives some examples of which unions agreed to such a move but in Coventry, despite offers of support, there is no evidence of all-male unions opening their doors to women members.Footnote ⁸⁰ However, given the intensity of the hostility shown towards women factory workers, Griffiths's tactics of seeking to establish cordial relations with the skilled unions may have at least led to increased acceptance of the Federation among their members.

In the same way that it is not easy to distinguish Dawson's motives for her involvement in the Federation from her commitment to a wider women's movement, it is also difficult to separate Griffiths's commitment to trade unionism from her determination to protect women workers from the worst elements of industrialization, even if that meant removing them from the factory. In February 1909, the Midland Daily Telegraph reported that Griffiths was one of two women members of the Coventry Board of Guardians to attend a meeting of the Women's Labour League in the city at which a talk entitled “The State Endowment of Women” was given by Miss Millicent Murby of London. Among the subjects raised were the abolition of married women's labor and the raising of men's wages to compensate for any family loss of earnings.Footnote ⁸¹ While no details exist about the conclusions drawn from the meeting, the Women's Labour League members who attended were heavily criticized by the Coventry Social Democratic Federation's Women's Circle for insulting factory workers with their implied patronizing discussion about the welfare of women workers.Footnote ⁸² Gordon emphasizes the broad acceptance among the Federation leadership that the ideal environment for the married woman was the home and that her need to continue to work was an indication of the wrongs of the capitalist system. She points out that this attitude, by reinforcing the ideology of women as essentially dependent, eclipsed the economic needs of nondependent, single women.Footnote ⁸³ Locally, it is conceivable that the Federation's position may have been weakened if some of its leaders were seen to share the attitudes of the men of the labor aristocracy that men should earn enough to support their wives and families. This was further ammunition for those who sought to sully the name of the Federation by highlighting a perceived lack of understanding of the real issues facing working women. It provided opportunities to support those within the labor movement who saw the League—and the Federation by association—as being dominated by “goody-goody, preachy, patronizing reformers”Footnote ⁸⁴ and “highborn ladies.”Footnote ⁸⁵ While the male-dominated labor movement could continue to project a false image of the League being exclusively led by middle- and upper-class women, general unions such as the Workers' Union could continue to argue that the Federation did not relate to the needs of its potential recruits. In Coventry, Dawson's suffragette connections and Griffiths's membership of the Independent Labour Party may well have provided the Social Democratic Federation-inspired Workers' Union with an opportunity to discredit the local branch of the Federation and strengthen its own women's membership.

Edith Stringer is the only one of the three women profiled who was a factory worker at the time she became involved in the Federation. She was born in Coventry in 1886, one of thirteen children whose father, a widowed baker, was a radical liberal who conducted political arguments with his customers.Footnote ⁸⁶ Stringer left school before her fourteenth birthday in 1900 to contribute to the family income and she went to work at a cardboard box factory in Coventry. There, she acquired a reputation as a rebel and the factory owner referred to her, in unusually tolerant tones for Victorian bosses, as “my little radical.”Footnote ⁸⁷ She was able to continue her education by attending evening classes run by the Education Committee of the Co-operative Society on subjects such as Citizenship and through her attendance she met women who were involved in the Coventry Federation. Stringer described two of the women, the Miss Olivers, as “very nice young ladies who didn't really have the vim to push the thing along,”Footnote ⁸⁸ recalling that one of them was in the confectionery trade, the other in dressmaking. Her remarks, together with her already noted opinion on Griffiths's attitude towards factory management, suggest that she felt that it was important for women who were actually factory workers to become involved in the running of the branch. It is therefore interesting to observe how she was mentored and protected by the older and honorary members of the Federation. Their treatment of the young activist illuminates the style of both the national and local Federation leadership and serves as further evidence of the extent of the hostility facing women workers from male workers and employers in Coventry in the years up to 1914.

Before the First World War, the Federation and the League regularly dispatched their paid organizers into the regions to assist the work of the volunteer activists who ran the branches, to coordinate strike action and to recruit members. Thom draws attention to Drake's observation that many women assumed that bargaining help would come from outside rather than inside the union and that they were consequently slow in the first years of the Federation to assume shop steward duties within the workplace.Footnote ⁸⁹ Coventry evidence suggests that the leadership may have taken a positive decision to organize membership from outside of the factories, making use of the honorary members and visits from national organizers. During a strike at Reynold Chain in Coventry, Stringer recalled that she was not involved in discussions with the management of the company because the Federation decided that she should not expose herself to the risks of victimization that included blacklisting and long-term unemployment.Footnote ⁹⁰ However, her association with the Federation was no secret and on numerous later occasions, including a further strike at Reynold Chain, she was permitted to interview management although instances of Federation “support” or protection continued.Footnote ⁹¹ In 1913 there was a strike at Cramp's blouse making factory and Louisa Young was sent from London to help with negotiations. Stringer was woken at home early one morning by a man from Cramps, demanding that she call off the pickets outside the factory. Stringer did not attend but instead went to the factory later in the day with Young where they spent seven hours with Mr. Cramp, making an application for a half-penny extra per finished blouse.Footnote ⁹² Stringer's decision not to speak to the pickets may of course have been tactical and have represented a refusal to bow to management pressure but it could also have been that she was expected to wait for instructions and guidance from Young.

The protective attitudes of the older, honorary local members and national leadership towards Stringer could also be interpreted as a determination to ensure that Stringer received thorough training to allow the Federation to strengthen, develop and attract similarly energetic members. Her energy was harnessed in several ways; in the years before the First World War, she became secretary of the Coventry branch of the Federation and went on to become regional secretary for the Midlands.Footnote ⁹³ She was a delegate at a Federation conference in London, staying with the socialist R.H. Tawney and practicing songs for the conference rally in Trafalgar Square with another prominent activist, J.J. Mallon.Footnote ⁹⁴ She became one of the first women delegates to the Coventry Trades Council and was the first woman member of the Coventry Insurance Committee, where she represented the Federation.

So, although the local organizers may not have been initially keen to expose Stringer to management talks, she nonetheless assumed a very public role in the Federation. On one occasion she gave an impromptu talk standing on a box in the central marketplace during a dispute involving women workersFootnote ⁹⁵ and in 1910, during the Cradley Heath chain makers' strike, she was involved in the staging of an event to raise strike funds for the women and to maximize publicity for their cause.Footnote ⁹⁶ Some of the striking women came to a football match in Coventry, wearing chains around their necks to symbolize the oppression of their trade. Along with Coventry Federation members, they stood in the centre of the football pitch, holding a sheet onto which spectators were invited to throw coins. So much money was raised that the women had to take it back to the Alexandra Coffee Tavern in a taxi. Whether this incident signifies a softening of Coventry men's attitude towards women labour or a sympathetic response to a widely publicized strike is not clear but it is an example of Stringer's determination and resolve to advance the cause of women's trade unionism by confronting a potentially hostile reaction from a predominately male audience.