That the political history of modern Scotland has been, for a generation at least, dominated by “Red Clydeside” (the period of labor unrest immediately before, during, and after the First World War) is a commonplace within Scottish historiography. And the usual corollary to that observation is that it is very much a masculine story. There is, however, a difficulty in reconciling this perspective with the iconic imagery of what was perhaps the most genuinely significant event of Red Clydeside, the Glasgow Rent Strike of 1915. As the future Labour MP and minister of health John Wheatley said at the time, “This was pre-eminently a strike for a poor woman … and poor women should undertake it” (Forward, 19 June 1915). Even if the wartime Coalition only passed the 1915 Rent and Mortgage Interest (War Restriction) Act in order to stop the unrest spilling into the munitions factories, it remains the case that it was the direct action taken by working-class women that ultimately forced the government’s hand. And from this, so much else would follow: the involvement of the state in providing council housing and, it can be argued, much of the electoral success of the Labour Party post-1918.

And yet Scotland is often depicted as a particularly patriarchal society, although in fact this is usually expressed in terms of a rather superficial comparison with England. How then to reconcile the militancy of working-class women in Scotland with their apparent lack of direct political involvement and leadership roles? Annmarie Hughes’s intention is an ambitious one: “to fundamentally alter and challenge the narrative of working-class history in the inter-war period” (9). She seeks to “subvert” this “masculine narrative … by highlighting how working-class women’s experiences of everyday life politicised them” (181).

While I think Hughes is claiming too much originality here, she has nonetheless produced a fresh and significant contribution. Other historians, including me, have been nibbling away at the male-oriented focus of Scottish working-class political history for some time now. Indeed Hughes herself has done much already; her first major intervention in this field was an essay published in Scottish Labour History in 1999. Where this book really makes its mark is in the author’s contention that working-class women did not need to formally embrace feminism in order to behave in a feminist way and therefore to be effectively feminists. Hughes is convincing in her formulation of a plurality of feminisms, rather than a movement defined by a single issue, and further that these were not mutually exclusive. What reforms different women chose to prioritize was “largely determined by [their] personal, social and economic circumstances” (104). One might add to this that behavior was similarly determined.

In the interwar period Scotland did not experience the emergence of a “new” working class marked by consumption, status, and suburbia as in England. Where home ownership was a genuine possibility for English workers, it was more or less impossible for Scots. Council housing was much more significant north of the border as, Hughes argues, were traditions of community support that remained much more of “a determining force.” This could lead to conflicts of interest where, for instance, female Labour activists effectively argued for breaking “neighbourhood cultures” by seeking to disperse slum dwellers rather than have them transferred en masse to new estates.

Exploring women’s experiences, particularly working-class women who leave few written records, can be very difficult, and Hughes is to be complimented on her skillful use of sources, both published and especially her oral testimonies. The latter really do make this work come alive and provide genuinely new insights. While being aware of a clear difference in attitudes toward women by the male leaders of the 40 Hours Strike of 1919 and the General Strike of 1926, I was not familiar with the sheer extent of women’s active participation in the latter. The chapter detailing this provides an excellent example of reclaiming a hidden history.

Hughes is good also at examining the role of middle-class feminists and putting them under more critical observation than usual. As she points out, any antagonism between socialists and feminists is usually explained by the labor movement’s “extreme male dominance,” whereas the political and class loyalties of middle-class women such as the members of the Glasgow and West of Scotland Suffrage Society (GWSS), tend to be ignored. This strength does at the same time reflect what is perhaps the book’s major weakness. The antisocialist tendencies of the GWSS and the much more friendly attitudes of its sister body in Edinburgh are well known. The problem here is that those differences are not fully analyzed or explained.

The main reason for this is that this is not really a book about Scotland and Scottish women. It is, as the narrative makes clear, about working-class women, and, as the sources and examples illustrate, it is primarily a study of such women in the greater Glasgow area. While some events and individuals from elsewhere are mentioned, the focus is firmly on Clydeside. This reflects the origins of the study in its original PhD dissertation form. While some of the supporting statistics refer to all Scotland, town or regional examples all come from the West Central belt. The oral testimonies are overwhelmingly from Glasgow or neighboring towns. The author uses the term “a rough kind of feminism” (201) and this might have been both a more resonant and accurate title. Although on grounds both of geography and class this is not the study declared on the dust jacket, all subsequent work on women and politics in Scotland (regional or national) will have to confront and acknowledge this book.