The groundbreaking women organisers in the Victorian Heavy Woollen District

On the 1st of February 1875, weavers in the textile mills of Batley walked out in an organised strike action opposing a 10% cut to their wages. A few days later, they were joined by weavers in the mills of Dewsbury. This strike is thought to be the first strike in England which was organised and directed by women workers: key figures in the weavers’ committee included Anne Ellis, Kate Conran and Hannah Wood, all textile workers whose pay and conditions had come under threat.[1]

The towns were situated at the heart of Britain’s industrial might, in the middle of four of the largest cities in Victorian Britain. Leeds’ population had quadrupled to 200,000 in sixty years, and Yorkshire in general had seen a huge growth in industrial activity and population.[2] With this rapid accumulation came a deterioration in living standards: slum housing, pollution, poor sanitation and disease all contributed to a short life expectancy.

25,000 workers in the fifty mills of the Heavy Woollen District were faced with this 10% wage cut. It was claimed by the mill owners that the proposed cut — reducing the workers’ wage by two shillings, leaving them with just three shillings a week — was a result of a drop in trade. With the already harsh living conditions of the time, this kind of blow to income would have been devastating to the lives of the working classes in the area, and an example of further exploitation and degradation by bosses.

Coordinating the actions of thousands of weavers was a democratically elected committee of thirteen women weavers, an incredibly unique circumstance for the time. As well as this, there were significant displays of solidarity from male workers: the Huddersfield Examiner quoted a striking male weaver some days into the strike as stating ‘the men should be faithful and true to the women… a man who won’t back a woman is no man at all’.[3] A significant moment for the strike was the assembly of around 9000 striking weavers and workers near the Spinkwell Mills in Dewsbury. 

Importantly, the late 1800s is identified as the inception of ‘new unionism’, when unions and workers were increasingly engaging in direct industrial action and trade union militancy. Labour organising moved away from segregated unions based on specific craft and towards holding wider power bases in sectors of aligned workers. For example, rather than weavers, dyers and cutters belonging to separate unions, they came together in one. These new unions included a greater number of poorer, precarious workers compared to some of the artisanal craft unions. The weavers’ strike in Dewsbury and Batley was one of the first examples of new unionist action, preceding better-known actions in London, such as the 1888 Matchgirls’ Strike in 1888 and the Dockers’ Strike in 1889, the latter of which achieved an outcome of 6 pence per hour pay for 100,000 workers.[4]

The all-female Weavers’ Committee were radical in their leadership, steadfast against the Masters’ Association who represented the new monied industrialists, the factory owners and certain in who they took help from in carrying out their strike. They were wary that offers of help from outside unions led by middle class women, such as the Women’s Protective and Provident League, could negate the aims of their strike and the aims of what they were elected by their fellow workers to achieve. The male workers also rejected calls from well established socialist and union organisers, instead placing their trust in the Weaver’s Committee that they endorsed and elected.[5]

Furthermore, ran deep from neighbours as the committee raised a strike fund of over £12000 (roughly £1,735,000 in today’s currency) from other weavers in the area and from the miners’ unions of Wakefield.[6]

The Dewsbury and Batley Weaver’s strike lasted two months, and resulted in 48/50 of the mill owners reversing the pay cut. Though the weavers’ committee had rejected assistance from middle-class socialists and other unions, they had achieved tremendous success for working people in West Yorkshire, and served as a foundational example of success through union militancy.[7] This strike shaped British labour struggles with Ryan and Marsh, in the Historical Directory of British Trade Unions, attributing the 1875 strike as the impetus for the formation of the General Union of Textile Workers, who were founded in Newsome, Huddersfield, a few miles west of Batley. 

Membership of the GUTW peaked at 64,000 in 1918, and a majority of its members were in the West Riding due to the intense concentration of wool factories, mills and secondary industries such as dyers and garment making. By 1910, already half of its members were women.The GUTW later merged with other sector-aligned unions to form the National Union of Textile Workers in 1922, which even sponsored socialist and trade unionist parliamentary candidates such as Holmfirth-born Ben Turner, a full time GUTW official. It was an active and powerful union, and one of the foundations laid for its creation was the instance of the powerful strike in Dewsbury and Batley led by an elected all-women committee.

Trade unions historically (and in the present) have often been criticised for being male-dominated, too focussed on the issues of male workers and organising in industries primarily worked by men. The TUC reported on the gender imbalance within unions in 2018: although women workers are more unionised, they are disproportionately led by male officers and reps.[8] 

Bibliography

1. https://tuc150.tuc.org.uk/stories/the-weavers-strike/
2. https://archive.org/details/b24751261_0001/page/n23/mode/2up
3. Huddersfield Examiner, 17th Feb 1875
4. Lovell, John. Stevedores and dockers: a study of trade unionism in the Port of London, 1870-1914 (1969)
5. Huddersfield Examiner, 17th Feb 1875
6. https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/labour/west-yorkshire-lasses-female-trade-unionism-and-its-radical-past/
7. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/injury-one-injury-all
8. https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/equality/tuc-equality-audit/EqualityAudit2022?page=4#section_header