This article is focused on an anonymous book published in 1918 which purports to be the diary of ... more This article is focused on an anonymous book published in 1918 which purports to be the diary of a dead junior army officer from the Western Front in World War I. The article solves the mystery of the authorship of this book and in doing so discusses questions of masculinity at this time and its connections with contemporary ideologies of
This ‘long weekend’ of British history witnessed many important shifts towards contemporary socie... more This ‘long weekend’ of British history witnessed many important shifts towards contemporary society. But there was a sense in which the First World War could not be left behind. The individual and collective mourning, visible everywhere in human grief and stone memorials, were the outward signs of a society which could never quite come to terms with the trauma of the so-called Great War. Historians are still assessing the impact of the war on British society. Recently, Susan Kingsley Kent has put new emphasis on the paramount need to reassert traditional gender differences after their apparent blurring during the duration of the conflict.1 This has led to a vigorous debate about the nature of ‘new’ feminism in these years. It is apparent, however, that ‘first wave’ feminism as a mass movement was dead, but feminist issues were still doggedly pursued by a dedicated group of predominantly middle-class women.
... women, many wearing distinctive red berets and dresses, marched via Coventry, Northampton, Be... more ... women, many wearing distinctive red berets and dresses, marched via Coventry, Northampton, Bedford, and Barnet to London for a mass rally in Hyde Park where ... proudly at the head of the march and were led by Dora Cox, wife of the Party organizer in south Wales, Idris Cox. ...
The years between the turn of the century and the First World War were ones of rapid social chang... more The years between the turn of the century and the First World War were ones of rapid social change and upheaval. Internationally, the once dominant British economy was increasingly under threat from new industrial powers, such as the USA, the newly unified Germany and Japan. With the British Empire at its height, notions of colonial domination and racial superiority form an inescapable aspect of the age. Imperial pomp and splendour, and rising living standards for many, masked the enduring misery of the underclass. The rise of social science and investigation uncovered wretched living conditions for as many as a third of the population. Many of these researches, such as Maud Pember Reeves’ study of Lambeth, Round About a Pound a Week and Lady Bell’s study of Middlesborough, At the Works contain much valuable material concerning working-class women.1 An increasingly interventionist state introduced a major period of social reform. Although the origins of this movement are complex, it certainly had more to do with nationalism than any desire to ameliorate the lives of the poor.
... Public health discourses, conveyed through advertising and other means, returned to the issue... more ... Public health discourses, conveyed through advertising and other means, returned to the issue of ... warns against emphasising too strongly the association of women's smoking with emancipation ... many women workers whose labour in the factories in London's East End, and other ...
Historical scholarship on the women's liberation movement (WLM) across the UK is as yet underdeve... more Historical scholarship on the women's liberation movement (WLM) across the UK is as yet underdeveloped. This article argues against the commonly held assumption that London socialistfeminist accounts speak for England as a whole. This article examines the history of the WLM in England as refracted through a range of different English urban localities, specifically Bristol, Brighton, Norwich, Bolton and Leeds/Bradford. It attempts to show the importance of local studies to appreciate the diversity of the English women's liberation movement. The movement had very many unifying characteristics, but how they played out across the country differed according to local contexts.
This article uses oral testimony to examine the social origins of the women's liberation movement... more This article uses oral testimony to examine the social origins of the women's liberation movement (WLM) in Britain c1968-1982. Whilst we have a well established narrative for the political origins of the movement, little work has been done on the background to the women of the 'baby boomer' generation who became second wave feminists. Examining life histories, particularly from the perspective of routes to feminist thinking, identifies such factors as family background, education and everyday sexism to create a picture of the women who made a movement which helped change the face of Britain. This article also seeks to demonstrate that the WLM was broadly based, with a substantial presence of working class women, and was truly national in character.
The Second World War marks a definitive moment in British history. Never before or since has Brit... more The Second World War marks a definitive moment in British history. Never before or since has British society been so massively affected by warfare. The enormous mobilization of resources, scale of government intervention and extent of civilian involvement made this even more of a ‘total war’ than the First World War. Sometimes referred to as ‘the people’s war’, the Second World War was certainly a more ‘popular’ war than the first, although much of the population was war weary towards the end of the six long years.1 Many contemporary and early historical accounts of the war maintained that social divisions were lessened, but more recent work has failed to substantiate this.2 Events such as the Blitz have also been subjected to the revisionist treatment.3
Acknowledgements Introduction 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast Women': The Early Years 'No ... more Acknowledgements Introduction 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast Women': The Early Years 'No Time to Weep': The First World War 'The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same': The Interwar Years 'We Can Do It!': The Second World War From Austerity to Prosperity and The Pill: The Post War Era Second Wave and Beyond: Towards the Millennium Conclusion Select Bibliography Index
This article demonstrates the centrality of the small group process, known as consciousness-raisi... more This article demonstrates the centrality of the small group process, known as consciousness-raising, to the women's liberation movement in 1970s Britain. It argues that by focusing on women's liberation campaigns, demands and conferences too much emphasis has been placed on the ‘public’ face of the movement and insufficient emphasis has been given to the process by which women sought to understand their oppression, redefine themselves and create new feminist identities. By examining the impact of women's liberation on personal life we see how women sought to live out the implications of the slogan ‘the personal is political’. This article examines the process of consciousness-raising in one south London group from 1972 to 1979.
Work on the miners' Lock-Out of 1926 tends to focus on the perspective of the National Union ... more Work on the miners' Lock-Out of 1926 tends to focus on the perspective of the National Union of Mineworkers, while nothing has been written which attempts to examine, for example, how miner's wives coped for six months without pay. "The Women and Men of 1926" investigates the Lock-Out from the perspective of gender relations, offering a social history of the mining communities in south Wales during the Lock-Out. Sue Bruley aims to analyse how individual families and households coped with the Lock-Out and to assess how gender relations were affected, using hitherto unpublished oral testimony as well as other archive material. Individual chapters consider topics such as school canteens, miners' lodges, recreational activities, picketing and politics.
This article is based on the experiences of two women who gave up a comfortable life in the Surre... more This article is based on the experiences of two women who gave up a comfortable life in the Surrey countryside to work in an aircraft component factory during the Second World War. Kathleen Church-Bliss and Elsie Whiteman wrote an extensive dairy during their time at Morrison's in Croydon. This article aims to shed light on a hitherto neglected group; the older woman worker, and in particular, the older single woman. The Church-Bliss diary reveals how dilution arrangements in Britain during the Second World War were made to ensure that women working in previously male preserves were prevented from achieving any sort of equality with male workers in the same part of the production process. The diary also provides a detailed and intimate account of the way in which the wartime circumstances helped to bring about welfare improvements inside the factory, which was in turn assisted by the creation of a works council.
This article is focused on an anonymous book published in 1918 which purports to be the diary of ... more This article is focused on an anonymous book published in 1918 which purports to be the diary of a dead junior army officer from the Western Front in World War I. The article solves the mystery of the authorship of this book and in doing so discusses questions of masculinity at this time and its connections with contemporary ideologies of
This ‘long weekend’ of British history witnessed many important shifts towards contemporary socie... more This ‘long weekend’ of British history witnessed many important shifts towards contemporary society. But there was a sense in which the First World War could not be left behind. The individual and collective mourning, visible everywhere in human grief and stone memorials, were the outward signs of a society which could never quite come to terms with the trauma of the so-called Great War. Historians are still assessing the impact of the war on British society. Recently, Susan Kingsley Kent has put new emphasis on the paramount need to reassert traditional gender differences after their apparent blurring during the duration of the conflict.1 This has led to a vigorous debate about the nature of ‘new’ feminism in these years. It is apparent, however, that ‘first wave’ feminism as a mass movement was dead, but feminist issues were still doggedly pursued by a dedicated group of predominantly middle-class women.
... women, many wearing distinctive red berets and dresses, marched via Coventry, Northampton, Be... more ... women, many wearing distinctive red berets and dresses, marched via Coventry, Northampton, Bedford, and Barnet to London for a mass rally in Hyde Park where ... proudly at the head of the march and were led by Dora Cox, wife of the Party organizer in south Wales, Idris Cox. ...
The years between the turn of the century and the First World War were ones of rapid social chang... more The years between the turn of the century and the First World War were ones of rapid social change and upheaval. Internationally, the once dominant British economy was increasingly under threat from new industrial powers, such as the USA, the newly unified Germany and Japan. With the British Empire at its height, notions of colonial domination and racial superiority form an inescapable aspect of the age. Imperial pomp and splendour, and rising living standards for many, masked the enduring misery of the underclass. The rise of social science and investigation uncovered wretched living conditions for as many as a third of the population. Many of these researches, such as Maud Pember Reeves’ study of Lambeth, Round About a Pound a Week and Lady Bell’s study of Middlesborough, At the Works contain much valuable material concerning working-class women.1 An increasingly interventionist state introduced a major period of social reform. Although the origins of this movement are complex, it certainly had more to do with nationalism than any desire to ameliorate the lives of the poor.
... Public health discourses, conveyed through advertising and other means, returned to the issue... more ... Public health discourses, conveyed through advertising and other means, returned to the issue of ... warns against emphasising too strongly the association of women's smoking with emancipation ... many women workers whose labour in the factories in London's East End, and other ...
Historical scholarship on the women's liberation movement (WLM) across the UK is as yet underdeve... more Historical scholarship on the women's liberation movement (WLM) across the UK is as yet underdeveloped. This article argues against the commonly held assumption that London socialistfeminist accounts speak for England as a whole. This article examines the history of the WLM in England as refracted through a range of different English urban localities, specifically Bristol, Brighton, Norwich, Bolton and Leeds/Bradford. It attempts to show the importance of local studies to appreciate the diversity of the English women's liberation movement. The movement had very many unifying characteristics, but how they played out across the country differed according to local contexts.
This article uses oral testimony to examine the social origins of the women's liberation movement... more This article uses oral testimony to examine the social origins of the women's liberation movement (WLM) in Britain c1968-1982. Whilst we have a well established narrative for the political origins of the movement, little work has been done on the background to the women of the 'baby boomer' generation who became second wave feminists. Examining life histories, particularly from the perspective of routes to feminist thinking, identifies such factors as family background, education and everyday sexism to create a picture of the women who made a movement which helped change the face of Britain. This article also seeks to demonstrate that the WLM was broadly based, with a substantial presence of working class women, and was truly national in character.
The Second World War marks a definitive moment in British history. Never before or since has Brit... more The Second World War marks a definitive moment in British history. Never before or since has British society been so massively affected by warfare. The enormous mobilization of resources, scale of government intervention and extent of civilian involvement made this even more of a ‘total war’ than the First World War. Sometimes referred to as ‘the people’s war’, the Second World War was certainly a more ‘popular’ war than the first, although much of the population was war weary towards the end of the six long years.1 Many contemporary and early historical accounts of the war maintained that social divisions were lessened, but more recent work has failed to substantiate this.2 Events such as the Blitz have also been subjected to the revisionist treatment.3
Acknowledgements Introduction 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast Women': The Early Years 'No ... more Acknowledgements Introduction 'The Bitter Cry of Outcast Women': The Early Years 'No Time to Weep': The First World War 'The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same': The Interwar Years 'We Can Do It!': The Second World War From Austerity to Prosperity and The Pill: The Post War Era Second Wave and Beyond: Towards the Millennium Conclusion Select Bibliography Index
This article demonstrates the centrality of the small group process, known as consciousness-raisi... more This article demonstrates the centrality of the small group process, known as consciousness-raising, to the women's liberation movement in 1970s Britain. It argues that by focusing on women's liberation campaigns, demands and conferences too much emphasis has been placed on the ‘public’ face of the movement and insufficient emphasis has been given to the process by which women sought to understand their oppression, redefine themselves and create new feminist identities. By examining the impact of women's liberation on personal life we see how women sought to live out the implications of the slogan ‘the personal is political’. This article examines the process of consciousness-raising in one south London group from 1972 to 1979.
Work on the miners' Lock-Out of 1926 tends to focus on the perspective of the National Union ... more Work on the miners' Lock-Out of 1926 tends to focus on the perspective of the National Union of Mineworkers, while nothing has been written which attempts to examine, for example, how miner's wives coped for six months without pay. "The Women and Men of 1926" investigates the Lock-Out from the perspective of gender relations, offering a social history of the mining communities in south Wales during the Lock-Out. Sue Bruley aims to analyse how individual families and households coped with the Lock-Out and to assess how gender relations were affected, using hitherto unpublished oral testimony as well as other archive material. Individual chapters consider topics such as school canteens, miners' lodges, recreational activities, picketing and politics.
This article is based on the experiences of two women who gave up a comfortable life in the Surre... more This article is based on the experiences of two women who gave up a comfortable life in the Surrey countryside to work in an aircraft component factory during the Second World War. Kathleen Church-Bliss and Elsie Whiteman wrote an extensive dairy during their time at Morrison's in Croydon. This article aims to shed light on a hitherto neglected group; the older woman worker, and in particular, the older single woman. The Church-Bliss diary reveals how dilution arrangements in Britain during the Second World War were made to ensure that women working in previously male preserves were prevented from achieving any sort of equality with male workers in the same part of the production process. The diary also provides a detailed and intimate account of the way in which the wartime circumstances helped to bring about welfare improvements inside the factory, which was in turn assisted by the creation of a works council.
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