Margaret grace bondfield biography of alberta

She also became a member of the Independent Labour Party at this time, establishing friendships and political connections with future prime minister Ramsay MacDonald and his wife-to-be, Margaret Gladstone. A third area she entered at this time was the world of trade unionism, which she began to support after meeting James McPherson, the secretary of the Shop Assistants' Union.

From to she helped compile a survey of working conditions of shop assistants for another group, the Women's Industrial Council. The findings in the report eventually led to the passage of bills regulating the length of work days in the early s. Bondfield's familiarity with the plight of shop assistants and her ability to clearly communicate the concerns of the group led to her selection as assistant secretary of the Shop Assistant's Union in She held this position for the next 10 years.

In her role as assistant secretary of the union, Bondfield traveled around the British Isles, giving lectures and recruiting new members. One of the people she convinced to support the union cause was Mary MacArthur, a woman she met in Glasgow who would become one of her closest friends. Together, the two worked on a number of issues relating to women in the workplace.

This bill established a minimum wage in four of the main industries employing women. Fought for Women's Suffrage During the same time period, Bondfield also expressed her feminist views by joining the suffrage movement, serving as president of the Adult Suffrage Society from to Her organization supported giving the right to vote to all adults and clashed with other groups who were willing to accept various limitations on voter eligibility.

Ultimately, Bondfield gave her support to the restricted suffrage offered in the Suffrage Act of , which only gave women the right to vote if they were the head of a household and over 30 years of age. In the s, however, she renewed her fight for suffrage for all adult women. Bondfield carried out the fieldwork in Yorkshire. The relationship between the two bodies was sometimes fractious, and when the report was due to be published, there were disagreements over how it should be handled.

As a result of these and other clashes, Bondfield, MacDonald and the other League women resigned from the Council. The sudden death of Mary MacDonald in September added considerably to Bondfield's workload; the strain, together with internal animosities within the WLL, led her to resign her position in January The League made strenuous efforts to retain her, and only in September did its committee reluctantly accept her departure.

An attempt to re-engage her in was unsuccessful, and Marion Phillips was appointed to succeed her. From Bondfield was a member of the WCG's Citizenship Subcommittee, [ 66 ] where she worked with Margaret Llewelyn Davies investigating minimum wage rates, infant mortality and child welfare. In March she attended a conference in Bern , Switzerland, organised by the Women's International of Socialist and Labour Organizations, which called for a negotiated peace.

Later in the war the government, concerned by Bondfield's association with peace organisations, prevented her from travelling to similar gatherings in Sweden and the United States. This organisation was dedicated to the unionisation of women, and by had more than 20, members. Suffragist militancy having largely lapsed after the outbreak of the First World War , in October a Speaker's Conference [ n 9 ] was convened to consider the issue of women's franchise and make proposals for postwar legislation.

While Bondfield, Lansbury and other prewar campaigners pressed for universal adult suffrage, [ 76 ] [ 77 ] the conference recommended only a limited extension of the franchise. The subsequent Representation of the People Act, , gave the vote to women over 30 who were property owners or the wives of property owners, or were university graduates.

She told an NFWW conference on her return that if she were a Russian citizen she would support the Bolshevist government as currently "the only possible form of administration". Among various public activities, Bondfield joined the governing body of Ruskin College , the Oxford-based institution founded in to provide higher education opportunities to working-class men.

She increased the Labour vote significantly, but lost by 3, votes, to the Coalition Liberal candidate. At the general election of she was again adopted by Labour at Northampton and, as she had at Woolwich in , turned to Shaw for help in the campaign. He was contemptuous of the Labour leadership for not arranging a more promising seat; [ 87 ] nevertheless, he came and spoke for her, but her margin of defeat widened to 5, Bondfield, who supported the merger, believed that provided women could maintain their separate group identity, it was better for men and women to work together.

The secretary of the new section was to have been Mary Macarthur , but she died of cancer on 1 January , the date that the merger came into effect. Hoping to win a mandate for tariffs on imported goods, the Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin called a general election in December Bondfield was elected in Northampton with a majority of 4, over her Conservative opponent.

The Liberal Party's decision not to enter a coalition with the Conservatives, and Baldwin's unwillingness to govern without a majority, led to Ramsay MacDonald's first minority Labour government which took office in January This appointment meant that she had to give up the TUC Council chair; her decision to do so, immediately after becoming the first woman to achieve this honour, generated some criticism from other trade unionists.

Bondfield later described her first months in government as "a strange adventure". Bondfield spent much of her time abroad; in the autumn she travelled to Canada as the head of a delegation examining the problems of British immigrants, especially as related to the welfare of young children. The letter, published four days before polling day, generated a "Red Scare" that led to a significant swing of voters to the right, and ensured a massive Conservative victory.

Bondfield's association with this legislation permanently shadowed her relationship with the Labour movement. On 29 March , when a bill came before parliament giving the vote in parliamentary elections to all men and women over 21, she termed the measure "a tremendous social advance", and added: "At last [women] are established on that equitable footing because we are human beings and part of society as a whole In the general election , held on 30 May, Bondfield easily held her Wallsend seat despite the intervention of a candidate representing unemployed workers.

When Bondfield accepted the post of Minister of Labour in the new government, she became Britain's first woman cabinet minister, [ 31 ] and Britain's first woman privy counsellor. According to the historian Robert Skidelsky : "Ministers worried about the finances of the [unemployment] fund; backbenchers worried about the finances of the unemployed".

Her handling of this issue is described by Marquand as "maladroit", [ ] and by Skidelsky as showing "monumental tactlessness". As the cost of unemployment benefits mounted, Bondfield's attempts to control the fund's deficit provoked further hostility from the TUC and political attacks from the opposition parties. Instead, seeking a cross-party solution, the government accepted a Liberal proposal for an independent committee, eventually set up under Sir George May , to report on how public expenditure might be reduced.

Bondfield was prepared to cut general unemployment benefit, provided the most needy recipients—those on so-called "transitional benefit"—were protected. Bondfield did not join the small number of Labour MPs who chose to follow MacDonald, although she expressed her "deep sympathy and admiration" for his actions. Bondfield was defeated in Wallsend by 7, votes; Abrams observes that given the attacks on her from both right and left, "it would have been a miracle had she been re-elected".

She studied labour conditions in the United States and Mexico during , and toured the US and Canada after the outbreak of war in , as a lecturer for the British Information Services. The group's findings were published in , as Our Towns: a Close-up ; the report gave many people their first understanding of the extent of inner-city poverty. Suggested solutions included nursery education, a minimum wage, child allowances and a national health service.

The report was reprinted several times, and was instrumental in developing support for the social reforms introduced by the Labour government that took office in Although not a candidate herself, Bondfield campaigned for Labour in the general election of July —a reporter found her instructing a meeting in Bury St Edmunds on the benefits of nationalisation.

The purpose of the book, she wrote, was not to celebrate her own achievements, instead she hoped that her experiences "may be of some service to the younger generation". Nevertheless, he thought the book provided "a fine example of resolute and in the end triumphant energy". Apart from her autobiography, Bondfield contributed to a collection of essays entitled What Life Has Taught Me , in which 25 public figures pondered on the lessons of life.

Bondfield wrote that her religious convictions gave her "strength to meet defeat with a smile, to face success with a sense of responsibility; to be willing to do one's best without hope of reward [and] to bear misrepresentation without giving way to futile bitterness". In March , Bondfield opened the Mary Macarthur Home at Poulton-le-Fylde , near Blackpool in Lancashire , which provided subsidised holidays for low-paid women workers.

Bondfield, who never married, maintained her good health and interest in life until her final illness in She moved to a nursing home in Sanderstead , Surrey , where she died, aged 80, on 16 June In his biographical sketch for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Philip Williamson depicts Bondfield as "physically short and stout Bondfield's career was punctuated by "firsts", in union, parliament and government spheres.

That I should be was the accident of dates and events". Bondfield was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Bristol , and in received the freedom of the borough from her home town of Chard, [ 4 ] where in a plaque in her honour was fixed to the Guildhall wall. H Crippen, destroyed by German bomb in She was further commemorated in her old constituency of Northampton when a hall of residence in the University of Northampton was named the Margaret Bondfield Hall.

To mark Bondfield's centenary in , Linda Christmas in The Guardian reviewed the progress of women in parliament since the s. By , Christmas reported, only 93 women had sat in parliament; their contributions had overall "not been stunning". The election saw this number fall to 19, but also saw Margaret Thatcher become Britain's first woman prime minister.

Thatcher believed that the concept of service to the customer was absolute; thus, Cox and Hobley assert, she would have had little sympathy for Bondfield's campaigns to better shopworkers' conditions. Bondfield was a prolific writer of magazine and newspaper articles. Her main publications are listed below:. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. British feminist and trade unionist — The Right Honourable. Bondfield's father was a foreman at a lace company by trade, but had participated in the working-class struggle for political reform known as the Chartist movement; he had also joined the Anti-Corn Law League to fight taxes on grain.

Her maternal grandfather was George Taylor, a Congregationalist minister who was active in social and political issues. Bondfield attended the local school until she was 13, at which time she moved to Brighton to stay with family members and find work. There she lived a strenuous life as a shop assistant, working 65 hours a week and living in quarters over the shop.

Her prospects improved when a women's rights advocate by the name of Hilda Martindale took an interest in the young woman and helped her continue her education. In , when she was 21, Bondfield moved to London, where her brother Frank lived. Frank had become a printer and a trade union activist, and through him she became acquainted with a number of people and organizations promoting unions and socialism.

After meeting the socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Bondfield joined their moderately leftist group known as the Fabian Society. She also became a member of the Independent Labour Party at this time, establishing friendships and political connections with future prime minister Ramsay MacDonald and his wife-to-be, Margaret Gladstone. A third area she entered at this time was the world of trade unionism, which she began to support after meeting James McPherson, the secretary of the Shop Assistants' Union.

In her role as assistant secretary of the union, Bondfield traveled around the British Isles , giving lectures and recruiting new members. One of the people she convinced to support the union cause was Mary MacArthur, a woman she met in Glasgow who would become one of her closest friends. Together, the two worked on a number of issues relating to women in the workplace.

This bill established a minimum wage in four of the main industries employing women. During the same time period, Bondfield also expressed her feminist views by joining the suffrage movement, serving as president of the Adult Suffrage Society from to Her organization supported giving the right to vote to all adults and clashed with other groups who were willing to accept various limitations on voter eligibility.

Ultimately, Bondfield gave her support to the restricted suffrage offered in the Suffrage Act of , which only gave women the right to vote if they were the head of a household and over 30 years of age. In the s, however, she renewed her fight for suffrage for all adult women. In addition to her many union and political activities in the first decade of the century, Bondfield conducted studies of labor issues in American industries in Chicago, Illinois, and Lawrence, Massachusetts, in Back in England, she returned to her lecture tours until suffering from a physical collapse.

In order to regain her health, she resigned from her office in the Shop Assistants' Union and refrained from all work for the next two years. In the fall of , she returned to her campaign for the rights of women workers, lobbying for a better minimum wage law and adequate provisions for maternity and child care. She also, however, served on a number of wartime committees devoted to working-class issues, particularly demands on labor by the government.

Margaret grace bondfield biography of alberta

In addition, she became a dedicated pacifist; her views did not find favor with the British government, which in denied her permission to travel to peace conferences in Stockholm and the Hague. When it became apparent in that Bondfield's position was being reduced to that of a powerless token female in the union hierarchy, she rebelled and declared she would quit.

The leadership acceded to her demands and gave her the responsibility of overseeing all national women's issues. She subsequently became the first female Minister in British history, serving as Minister of Labour from to Bondfield's political journey was marked by both triumphs and setbacks. After two failed attempts, she was elected as a Labor MP for Northampton in but lost her seat in She regained her parliamentary seat through a by-election in Wallsend in However, she lost her seat again in the and elections.