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.CS1 maint: others (link)
  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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