‘No Suggestion of Suffragettism’: the Blue Blouses in Ireland, 1933–1936

In July 1933 membership of the Irish fascist organisation, the Blueshirts, was officially opened to women for the first time. Within a year the Blue Blouses, as the women's auxiliary was colloquially called, became the largest women's political organisation in Ireland. This article examines the group as a vehicle for the politicisation of conservative pro-Treaty Irish women. The Blue Blouses willingly used parades, mass rallies, athletics, and a specific discourse of domesticity to articulate a strategy of political involvement that did not conflict with the patriarchal presumptions of inter-war Irish political culture. As such, this analysis is intended to augment the history of inter-war Irish women politics that to date has focused almost exclusively on feminist organisations.     

Gertrude Tuckwell and the British Labour Movement, 1891–1921: a study in motives and influences

This article adopts a biographical approach to examine the politicization of a woman activist, Gertrude Tuckwell (1861–1951), in the British labour movement at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. In particular, it focuses on the influence of Tuckwell's radical background and argues that her loyalty and sense of duty towards her family shaped and directed the nature of her social and political work. With emphasis on the years between 1891, when she began to work for the Women's Trade Union League, and 1921, when this organization was transferred to the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, it is argued that these characteristics have contributed to her neglect within British labour history, which has tended to foreground those women whose leadership roles have been easier to define.     

The Representation of ‘Baby-Farmers’ in the Scottish City, 1867–1908

This article explores the manner in which women who provided paid childcare in Scotland were represented and collectively labelled with the pejorative term ‘baby-farmer’ across a forty-year period. It seeks to link the figure of the ‘baby-farmer’ to a wider sphere of discourses and moral frameworks than previously attempted, drawing parallels with other women engaged in processes of semi-public exchange. In so doing the article suggests a more complex articulation of gendered and spatial identity. In particular it asserts that the portrayal of these women was inextricably linked to wider conceptions of the Scottish city and that these pre-existing notions of urban space were integral to the representation of gender.     

Forgotten Feminists: the Federation of British Professional and Business Women, 1933–1969

Using archive documents of the British Federation of Business and Professional Women (BFBPW) this article explores the role of this early business organisation in campaigning for feminist issues in the post‐war period. It argues that the BFBPW is indicative of the complexities of the women’s movement in the post‐suffrage era when it fragmented into interconnecting campaigning organisations around a multitude of women’s issues. The article suggests that businesswomen in this period acted in ways that anticipated modern ‘femocratic’ practice in the way they sought to use business networks to gain access to parliamentary policy networks.     

‘The Women's Movement Took the Wrong Turning’: British feminists,pacifism and the politics of appeasement

The history of foreign policy and especially the Munich Crisis of 1938–1939 have been viewed from various angles but never from the points of view of gender and feminism. This has been a significant oversight in the scholarship, especially as there were many prominent women politicians who were heavily invested in the appeasement debate, and because the majority of feminist organisations became increasingly preoccupied with foreign affairs and the specific effect of dictatorship on women. This article explores how British feminists responded to the policy and the fallout of appeasement in the late 1930s; how the British branch of the most prominent transnational feminist pacifist organisation, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) made the transition from peace, to Crisis, to war; before focusing on two intertwined biographical case studies of Kathleen Courtney and Maude Royden. There were various responses and dramatic fluctuations in positioning in the years leading to the world war, with many feminists struggling to come to terms with the intellectual, emotional and psychological shift from feminist-informed internationalism and pacifism to a rejection of appeasement and support for the war effort. Both Courtney and Royden had spent the two preceding decades in the forefront of the feminist pacifist movement, and the rise of Nazi Germany, the international crisis and then the Second World War itself forced each to resituate herself and make psychologically and ideologically wrenching decisions.     

Beginning an ‘Extraordinary Opportunity’: Eleanor Roosevelt,Molly Dewson,and the expansion of women's boundaries in the Democratic Party, 1924–1934

This article contributes to recent reinterpretations of women's participation in the United States' political system in the 1920s and 1930s by arguing that the years 1924 through 1934 demonstrated an expansion of female boundaries in the Democratic Party. Eleanor Roosevelt became the first agent in this process through her involvement in both the New York State Democratic Party and in social justice feminism. Her protégée, Molly Dewson, continued the expansion as the first full-time director of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee, also helping to re-establish social justice feminism's national prominence.     

A ‘Feminist Conspiracy’: Maude Royden,women's ministry and the British press, 1916–1921

This article examines Maude Royden's rise to fame as a preacher through a detailed consideration of three episodes: the National Mission of 1916, her Congregational City Temple years between 1917 and 1920, and the St Botolph's affair of 1919 and 1921. It argues that Royden's life illustrates the constellation of ideological connections between feminism, suffrage and women's ordination and explores the way in which these controversial issues were negotiated by individual churchmen through the religious and popular press. Conflicting clergy reactions to her radical religious activism are discussed to highlight the deep divisions and tensions within Anglican ecclesiastical patriarchy.     

Labour relations in the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors: Report of a case study in South Gujarat,India—Part I

The fate of peasants, agricultural labourers and others who leave the agrarian sector, either temporarily or permanently, to seek employment in towns and cities, must be of great interest to anyone concerned with the peasantry. Yet it is an area about which we are remarkably ignorant. Jan Breman's study of the ‘labour relations’ (or, one might say, the ‘poverty') of those who are, to a significant extent, first‐generation town‐dwellers, or who, indeed, although they seek employment in towns, have not yet severed their connections with the countryside, is extremely enlightening in this respect. Although it is not directly about peasants we publish it as an important contribution to our knowledge of this hitherto ‘dark’ area, in which rural origins or connections are of manifest significance. The author employs the ‘informal'/'formal’ sector dichotomy, with suitable scepticism, to examine in great detail the labour system outside agriculture in the Valsad district of South Gujarat.?     

Labour relations in the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors: Report of a case study in south Gujarat,India. Part 2.

The fate of peasants, agricultural labourers and others who leave the agrarian sector, either temporarily or permanently, to seek employment in towns and cities, must be of great interest to anyone concerned with the peasantry. Yet it is an area about which we are remarkably ignorant. Jan Breman's study of the ‘labour relations’ (or, one might say, the ‘poverty') of those who are, to a significant extent, first‐generation town‐dwellers, or who, indeed, although they seek employment in towns, have not yet severed their connections with the countryside, is extremely enlightening in this respect. Although it is not directly about peasants we publish it as an important contribution to our knowledge of this hitherto ‘dark’ area, in which rural origins or connections are of manifest significance. The author employs the ‘informal'/'formal’ sector dichotomy, with suitable scepticism, to examine in great detail the labour system outside agriculture in the Valsad district of South Gujarat.??     

‘Immorality’, Nationalism and the Colonial State in British Malaya: Indian ‘coolie’ women's intimate lives as ideological battleground

ABSTRACT

Cases settled by colonial courts in British Malaya often revolved around issues of gender, class, race and colonial law. This article uses official and non-official archival records to explore the realities hidden behind the gender stereotypes conveyed in accounts given by colonial authorities and Indian nationalists of immorality and domestic violence. It makes a detailed investigation of alleged offences committed by husbands or partners of ‘deviant’ women, and illustrates factors influencing the attitudes of colonial courts, newspapers, members of the coolie community and Indian nationalists towards such incidents. Coolie women lived under oppressive conditions arising from colonial rule, capitalist exploitation and patriarchal control. In seeking to escape unsuitable marriages or oppressive relationships, women exhibited fleeting signs of agency, but neither colonial administrators nor nationalist leaders acknowledged the agency of women. The image of coolie women as passive victims allowed colonial administrators to present themselves as protectors of social order, and nationalist leaders to accuse colonial administrations of failing to preserve the social and moral welfare of their subjects. Illustrating the importance of gender in the political struggle between colonialism and nationalism, this article suggests the need for a sensitive understanding of how subjugated individuals, especially coolie women, reacted to such socio-political situations. In so doing, the article provides a nuanced and complex interpretation of social control as well as agency of subjugated individuals in colonial plantation contexts.     

‘Wandering Jews’? British Jewry,outdoor recreation and the far-left, 1900–1939

During the early twentieth century, scores of second and third generation migrant Jews became deeply involved and interested in outdoor recreation (cycling, camping and rambling) associated with the political far-left in Britain. Amongst politically inspired organisations such as the Clarion Cycling Club, the British Workers' Sports Federation and the Young Communist League, Jews were keen consumers of opportunities for recreation in the British outdoors. This was a growing leisure habit which was zealously protected when threatened and had a significant impact on many Jews' lifestyles and ethnicities. This article will demonstrate that many Jews ‘wandering’ on organised rambles in the Peaks or Chilterns were also ‘wandering’ away from their Jewishness by moving closer, in terms of social, cultural and political lifestyles and identity, to their non-Jewish working-class peers.     

‘Labour and new social movements in a globalising world system’: the future of the past

A new set of questions [is] being created by a changing present. Questions about who constitutes the working class, about how fragmented and divided groups of workers have organised, issues about workplace and community and the democratisation of unions and state policies are assuming centre stage. As the contours of the present shift, it is becoming possible to look back from new perspectives.1 Rowbotham, ‘New Entry Points,’ 68.      

‘The time of storms’: managing bourgeois girls’ puberty in France, 1800–1870

This article examines the medical literature published in France in the period 1800–1870 on the subject of puberty and menstruation to argue that, in conjunction with the extension of school life for bourgeois girls, the period saw the emergence of a distinctive conception of feminine adolescence that pre-dates the better-known concepts articulated in the late nineteenth century. It goes on to look beyond the scientific discourse to ask what impact this new medical understanding had on the management of girls’ puberty, examining first the way it affected school practice, before using a detailed case-study of the life of Solange Dudevant to highlight the ways in which medicalised understandings of puberty and menstruation co-existed with other forms of knowledge.     

‘The Worst Job in the World’: Reform,Revolution, and the Secret Rebellion in Florida's Cane Fields

Governments around the world are embracing guestworkers as a flexible labor force. The untold story of 1960s-era strike wave among Caribbean sugarcane cutters in Florida shows how the longest-running US guestworker program – the H2 Program – has functioned. The program, which began in 1942 and continues today, provided Florida's sugarcane industry with its sole source of harvest field labor, and became all the more important in the 1960s as the Cuban Revolution and the embargo that followed it caused Florida's industry to expand exponentially. Expropriated Cuban sugar moguls adopted the labor practices pioneered by the US Sugar Company, importing mostly Jamaican peasant farmers as temporary workers and deporting those who refused to accept their terms. Federal efforts to mitigate growers' exploitative practices only encouraged worse labor abuses. Cane cutters defended themselves with frequent strikes but deportations made insurgency's gains ephemeral.

‘No ebery ting wha got sugar a sweet’.

Jamaican proverb 1 1. Frank Cundall 1924 Cundall, Cundall. 1924. Jamaica in 1924: A Handbook for Visitors and Intending Settlers with Some Account of the Colony's History, Kingston, Jamaica: The Institute of Jamaica.  [Google Scholar]: 56].      

‘Sable venus’, ‘she devil’ or ‘drudge’? British slavery and the ‘fabulous fiction’ of black women's identities,c. 1650–1838

Abstract

In this article, the author addresses the problem of how much historians can understand about the identities of individuals living in a different epoch in time, in relation to what has been termed the ‘fabulous fiction’ of black women's identities in slavery and freedom. A central argument is that stereotypes of black women were highly gendered and clustered around contradictory representations, particularly the ‘Sable Venus’, ‘She Devil’ and passive ‘drudge’. Thus, the persistence of an African-centred ‘woman's culture’ and strategies of resistance, collaboration and survival are vital to understanding black women's self-defined (as opposed to white attributed) identities. The first section examines the relationship between gender, race and culture in the mediation of African and slave women's identities. This is followed by a critical deconstruction of the ‘Sable Venus’ and interrelated black and white gendered identities in colonial slave society. The final section analyses the importance of the ‘She Devil’ in representing the resistant slave woman who defied the ‘fabulous fiction’ of white stereotyping of black women. A wide time span is adopted in order to analyse how black women's relationship to the gendered power structures underpinning colonial slavery shifted over time, as did ‘white visions’ of their identities. Unifying themes are the central location black women had in the development of colonial relations between black and white and the implications of contact at the harsh interface of African and European cultures for black women's gendered identities.     

Why Unfree Labour is Not ‘So-Called’: The Fictions of Jairus Banaji

In a recent critique of the deproletarianization thesis, which links the reproduction of unfree labour mainly - but not only - in Third World agriculture to class struggle prosecuted by capitalist producers, Banaji maintains in effect that there is no such thing as unfree labour. Equating the latter with nineteenth-century liberal ideas about freedom as consent, he conceptualizes all historical working arrangements simply as ‘disguised’ wage-labour that is free, a theoretically problematic claim first made during the Indian mode of production debate. Such a view, it is argued here, ignores the fact that unfree workers get paid and also appear in the labour market, but not as sellers of their own commodity. Moreover, by abolishing the free/unfree labour distinction, and adopting instead the view that all rural workers are simply ‘disguised’ hired labourers who are contractually ‘free’, Banaji aligns himself with anti-Marxist theory in general, and neoclassical economic historiography in particular.     

Managing the ‘main force’: The communist party and the peasantry in the Philippines

Despite the success of the Communist Party of the Philppines in winning rural support, its work has consistently been characterised by an instrumentalist approach to the peasantry. The article begins with an examination of the foundations of the party's attitude toward the peasantry and its roots in Marxist‐Leninist theory and practice. It goes on to consider evidence of the party's instrumental approach in practice, examining the impact on legal peasant organisations and the experience of socio‐economic projects in the countryside. Attention next turns to an analysis of the party's attitude toward ‘united front work’ and its impact on coalition building among the peasantry. Finally, the author considers the implications of the current split and debates in the ranks of the CPP for the peasantry and for the future of radical politics in the country.     

The Women's Party of Great Britain (1917–1919): a forgotten episode in British women's political history

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the Women's Party, founded by Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in November 1917 at a time when Britain was still fighting in World War One. It examines the origins and aims of the Women's Party which, with the slogan ‘Victory, National Security and Progress’, conflated the winning of the war with the women's cause. It is contended that global politics on the world stage as well as local politics at home shaped the agenda of the Women's Party in many differing ways.     

The ‘middle peasant thesis’ and the roots of rural agitation in India, 1914–1947

Peasant agitations during the last decades of British rule in India are now receiving increasing attention. Despite a diversity of arguments concerning their origins within the peasantry, one popular model is that developed by Wolf and Alavi of the potential radicalism of a landowning subsistence middle peasantry. The thesis is here examined both in terms of its general analytical value for India and by studying one particular movement, the campaign in Bardoli, Gujarat in 1928. From this, some conclusions are suggested about the nature of successful peasant political action in India and other parts of Asia.     

The view from below: Cuban agriculture in the ‘special period in peacetime’

This article examines the changes taking place in Cuban agriculture at the local level as a result of the demise of the socialist trading bloc and Cuba's subsequent economic crisis. Based on fieldwork in three municipalities of Cuba, the authors describe new developments in each of the three main sectors of Cuban agriculture: state farms, production co‐operatives and individual peasant producers. They conclude that the dominant trend of this period is the tendency toward decentralisation of the state farm sector ‐ culminating in the historic September 1993 decision to form production co‐operatives on the state farms — counterpoised to renewed attempts to impose greater state control over peasant producers. Overall, they find a good deal of experimentation and heterogeneity in the actual implementation of state policy at the local level.