Labour Women in Power Paula Bartley Labour Women in Power

Cabinet Ministers in the Twentieth Century Paula Bartley Stratford-upon-Avon, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-14287-2 ISBN 978-3-030-14288-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14288-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019932971

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Cover images: Margaret Bondfeld © GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo; © Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo; Judith Hart © Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo; Ellen Wilkinson © Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo; © Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo Cover design by Fatima Jamadar

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For Dóra, Kata and Réka Dudley; and Eva and Kate Karalius. Acknowledgements

Every historian is indebted to archivists and librarians whose specialist knowl- edge smooths the way for researchers. I am especially grateful to Emma Pizarro, Gemma Read and their colleagues at the LSE library; Carole Jones and the staff at the library and Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick; Jess Dunnicliff at Stratford-upon-Avon public library; Sophie Welsh and Nicola O’Toole at the Special Collections, Bodleian Libraries; Debbie Horner and the library staff at the British Library. Judith Hart deposited her constituency papers in Glasgow which would have been impenetrable, but for the help, I received from Michael Gallagher and Barbara McLean at the City Archives. The archivists at the People’s History Museum, especially Darren Treadwell and Julie Parry were, as ever, exemplary, always welcom- ing, always helpful, always knowledgeable about their splendid collections. Dean Rogers at Vassar College Archives and Special Collections Library not only helped me fnd my way around its archive on Margaret Bondfeld but helped me with my hotel and travel plans and told me about another col- lection held at President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Library. Thanks to Patrick Fahey, archive technician at FDR Presidential Library for forwarding letters between Margaret Bondfeld and Eleanor Roosevelt. Thanks too to the staff at the National Archives who have digitised its collection of Cabinet papers making the life of this researcher a lot easier. Lastly, I am grateful to Terry George for his technological help. I would like to thank Robert Dudley, Karl Sabbagh, Kathy Stredder and the three anonymous reviewers who usefully commented on my book pro- posal. Thanks to Emily Russell and Oliver Dyer at Palgrave for their patience and for seeing the book through to completion. Thanks to the many histo- rians who have helped in various ways, including Maggie Andrews, Diane Atkinson, Lucy Bland, Lucy Delap, Richard Carr, Anna Davin, Neil Fleming, Hilda Kean, Janis Lomas, Kate Murphy, Angela V. John, Stephanie Mair, Jenny Mathers, Mary Jane Mossman, Paul O’Leary, June Purvis, Mari

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Takayanagi and Stephanie Ward. My long conversations with Sue Morgan have been most enlightening, and I thank her for her insightful analy- sis. Thanks to Keith Jenkins and Peter Freeman for their comments on the chapters on Judith Hart; to Cathy Hunt for her comments on Margaret Bondfeld; and to Cathy Loxton and Dawn Rumley for their comments on the entire book. Finally, thanks to Réka Dudley for helping me with the statistics. Special thanks to for her interest and her abundant generos- ity. She was always willing to share her insights into life at the political top, recommended books I should read on overseas aid, read the manuscript in full and made many useful suggestions to improve the text. She introduced me to Peter Freeman who in turn introduced me to Maggie Sidgreaves and Peter McLean, all of whom worked closely with Judith Hart when she was Minister for Overseas Development: their insights into her character were inestimable in helping me understand what she was like both as a person and as a Minister. Clare Short also introduced me to the late Rodney Bickerstaffe, former General Secretary of UNISON, who worked tirelessly all his life to improve the lives of low-paid workers, most of whom were women, and convinced me by his actions that trade unions and women’s equality were interlinked. Thanks also to Jane Clarke and Rachel Reeves who put me in contact with Steve Hart and to Shirley Williams for letting me read an unpub- lished account of her life as a female MP. Steve Hart shared some of his mem- ories about his mother, and I am grateful to him for this. Labour Women in Power could not have been written without the sterling work of others. I have drawn on the work of scholars working in a variety of felds, in particular women’s history, Labour history, political history, political biography, religious history, political science and the history of Empire. I am grateful to all the historians and political scientists mentioned in this book for their research and for their insights into—for me—sometimes unfamil- iar areas. Historians rely on conferences too: I am grateful for the comments made by delegates at the various Women’s History Network Conferences and the Vote 100 Conference 2018. I could not have researched this book without fnancial support. Thank you to The Society of Authors’ Foundation for awarding me a research grant to visit the various archives and to Professor Ronald Patkus and colleagues for awarding me the Vassar College Archives and Special Collections Library grant which was sponsored by Charlotte Hall. As ever, I am most grateful to my husband, Jonathan Dudley. He accom- panied me on my research trips to , Manchester, Glasgow and New York and helped me with my work on each trip, the only reward being a glass of wine or a plate of pasta in the evening. He was always willing to listen to my ideas, always happy to read and comment upon my drafts. However, it is his unwavering support of me, his joyous sense of humour and his love which I value most. The book is dedicated to the younger generation of our family. Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 A Woman in a Man’s World: Margaret Bondfeld’s Early Career, 1873–1929 21

3 Over the Glass Cliff: The First Female Cabinet Minister, 1929–1953 55

4 The Mighty Atom: Ellen Wilkinson, 1891–1945 87

5 The First Female Minister of Education, 1945–1947 115

6 A Political Apprenticeship: Barbara Castle, 1910–1964 135

7 In and Out of Cabinet, 1964–2002 159

8 From to Lanark: Judith Hart, 1924–1968 189

9 The First Woman and Beyond, 1968–1991 217

10 Climbing the Parliamentary Ladder: Shirley Williams, 1930–1974 249

11 In the Cabinet and Out of Labour, 1974–2018 273

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12 Conclusion: From 1997 Onwards 299

Bibliography 309

Index 317 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Women MPs in twentieth-century Britain 2 Fig. 1.2 Number of female and male candidates standing for election from all parties 2 Fig. 1.3 Number of Labour women and men standing for election (Compiled from David Butler and Gareth Butler’s Twentieth Century British Political Facts, 1900–2000, Macmillan, 2000) 3 Fig. 1.4 Governments formed following general elections 9 Fig. 2.1 Margaret Bondfeld as a young trade unionist (Courtesy of Vassar College) 22 Fig. 2.2 Kicking off a football game in her constituency (Courtesy of Vassar College) 45 Fig. 3.1 Margaret Bondfeld, the frst woman Cabinet Minister, 1929 (©Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo) 56 Fig. 4.1 Ellen Wilkinson as a young trade unionist (Courtesy of People’s History Museum) 88 Fig. 5.1 Ellen Wilkinson in the Labour Cabinet, 1945 (Courtesy Peoples History Museum) 116 Fig. 6.1 Barbara Castle and Irene Ward with Equal Pay Petition, March 1954 (©Dave Bagnall Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) 143 Fig. 7.1 Barbara Castle in Cabinet (©Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo) 160 Fig. 8.1 Judith Hart visiting Uganda (Courtesy of Peoples History Museum) 205 Fig. 9.1 Judith Hart in the Cabinet (©Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo) 218 Fig. 10.1 Shirley Williams as Minister of Education, 1967 (©Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo) 262 Fig. 11.1 Shirley Williams on the Front Bench (©Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo) 274

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