The Women's Labour League (WLL) was a pressure organisation, founded in London in 1906, to promote the political representation of women in parliament and local bodies.[1] The idea was first suggested by Mary Macpherson, a linguist and journalist who had connections with the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants,[2] and was taken up by several notable socialist women, including Margaret MacDonald, Ada Salter, Marion Phillips and Margaret Bondfield.[3][4] The League's inaugural conference was held in Leicester, with representatives of branches in London, Leicester, Preston and Hull. It was affiliated to the Labour Party.[3] Margaret MacDonald acted as the League's president,[5] while both Margaret Bondfield and Marion Phillips served at times as its organising secretary.[6]
Much of the League's campaigning effort was devoted to the issue of women's suffrage. When the Representation of the People Act 1918 gave a partial women's franchise, the League decided to disband as an independent organisation. It became the women's section of the Labour Party, which had reorganised under a new constitution that year.[3]
The Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People's History Museum in Manchester holds the records of the Women's Labour League in their collection.[7]
Members of the Executive
The following were members of the executive of the Women's Labour League:[8]
^Collette, Christine (1989). For Labour and for Women: The Women's Labour League 1906โ18. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 31. ISBN0-7190-2591-5.
^Collette, Christine (1989). For Labour and for Women: The Women's Labour League 1906โ18. Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 132โ34. ISBN0-7190-2591-5.
^Christine Collette, For Labour and for Women: The Women's Labour League, 1906-1918, p.54
^appears in the 1911 census at 12 Station Road, Ashley Down, Bristol no occupation shown aged 34 living with her husband Walter Ayles.
^appears in the 1901 Census at 24 Victoria Avenue Stockon on Tees shown as a Socialist Health Lecturer aged 36 with her husband a trade union organiser