Female Political Union of the Working Classes

The Female Political Union of the Working Classes was established in 1833 by Mary Fildes and Mrs Broadhurst.[1]

The organisation sprang from the wider labour movements of the early 19th century, influenced by Chartism and campaigns for women's enfranchisement.[2] Fildes, who had been present at the Peterloo Massacre, had previously been president of the Manchester-based Society of Female Reformers (itself a response to Blackburn Female Reform Society).[3][4]

Little is currently known of the workings of many of these societies, but they are evidence of a highly organised and committed group of working class activist women, at a time when culturally such participation was socially discouraged. Katrina Navickas writes about groups like those set up by Fildes that 'Northern working-class women challenged the middle-class notion of separate spheres not simply by entering the political public sphere, but conversely by asserting domestic concerns as public and political.'[5]

References

  1. ↑ "Letter to the editor". Poor Man's Guardian (112). H Hetherington. 27 July 1833.
  2. ↑ "British Women's Emancipation since the Renaissance". History of Women.org.
  3. ↑ "The Manchester Female Reformers address to the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the higher and middling classes of society". The Black Dwarf (31). T J Wooler. August 4, 1819.
  4. ↑ Political women, 1800–1850. Frow, Ruth., Frow, Edmund. London: Pluto Press. 1989. ISBN 1-85305-053-9. OCLC 19813910.
  5. ↑ Navickas,, Katrina (2015). Protest and the politics of space and place 1789–1848. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-7190-9705-8. OCLC 944444550.

The History of Women website situates the organisation in the history of campaigns for women's emancipation.

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