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Published by Relgocrest Ltd., 328/9 Upper Streat, London N.1. Printed by Prestagate Ltd., Reading, Berks.
Life As We Have Known It by Cooperative Working Women (with Introductory Letter by Virginia Woolf), edited by Margaret Llewelyn Davies (Virago, £1.25)
The other day I was talking to a woman who has spenttwenty yearsof her life working as a waitress. Astheeldest of seven children brought up amongst the pungent smells of offal from the nearby fish dock, shehashad ample experience of real poverty and hardship. But her enthusiasm about the area in which she lives is tremendous, and so is her ability to relate it. As we talked 1 was particularly struck by a remark she made: "If only I could write, I'd make a book out of all the experiences I've had. A book indeed.
It is precisely with the intention of publishing personal reminiscences of working women that Virago, the feminist publishing company, has reprinted Life As We Have Known It, a series of accounts by women in the Co-operative Guild. This book (first published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf in 1931) recounts the lives of women as children, workers, housewives and Guild members, bringing out in a simple but striking way the day to day reality with its degradation and inhumanity.
Unliketheir wealthy contemporaries, childhood for these women was far from being the innocent fantasy which the Victorian middle classes professed. On the contrary, they received a quick and often crude introduction to working life. The appalling, but obviously profitable, nature of child labour is described by one woman who recountsher experiences working in the fields with fortyor fifty other children whose average age was six. As she says: We were followed all day by an old man carrying a whip in his hand which he did not forget to use' It is through the small but keenly observed derails that the autobiographies come to life, showing the hypocrisy of the time and the sickening contrast between therich and poor. They also reveal the links between home and work. One woman, aminer's wife, speaksof the frustration in trying to combat the coal dust trailed in daily from the pits. Another shows how smallpox was prevalent in the homes of match workers and allowed to spread in the interests of profit. A foretasteof Seveso!
Their membership of the Co-operative Women's Guild clearly meant a great deal to the women writing. Certainly, the strength of the movement was in its abuity to recognise the importance of women's issues and to stimulate members' intellectual and political self-confidence.
Despite the great enthusiasm in the voices of these women however, the book unfortunately Ieaves me with a feeling of disappointment. The keytothis can be found in looking at the politics of the Co-operative Guild itself. The kind of socialism it stood for seems to have been a rather confusing mixture of humane reformism, much the same asthat of the Labour Partyto which it was affiliated. In the same way, these individual testimonies very much reflect a vagueness about the realities of ownership and power - in other words, class. Judging from the book, the Guild itself appears to believe that change will come abour by women achieving places on committees. In her introduction, Margaret Llewelyn, the General Secretary, talks about the peaceful revolution from autocratic capitalism to democratic co-operation...
What is very much revealed by these accounts is an individual pride in having fought successfully in a man's world to achieve places as Poor Law Guardians or, for some, as JPs. But there is a certain smugness about them. Nowhere is there a real questioning of any of the wider issues concerning women's emancipation. I'm forced to wonder just how typical these women were. As we know only too clearly, their intentions, however laudable, did not bring about the fundamental transformation of society — as my friend the waitress would strongly testify, we are still awaiting it! In her introductiontothe 1931 edition of the book, Virginia Woolf comments aptly, If every reform they demanded was granted, it would net touch one hairof my capitalist head'.
During the period about which these reminiscences were written however, capitalism was receiving a few strong dents from other quarters. The late nineteenth and carly twentieth century was atime of enormous militancy amongst women workers. Organisations like the Women's Trade Union League were formed, and women began to recognise themselves as a highly exploited section of the workforce which necded to take militant action if change was to occur. One result of the many famous strikes which happened all over the country was that male trade unionists were forced to see the necessity of unity with women workers and the importance of female militancy for the whole working class.
Sadly, the importance of these struggles is not reflected in the book. It would be unfair simply to criticise the personal testimonies of individual women. Their omissions are in themselves interesting. What is lacking overall in the book, however, is an accompanying social commentary.
Anna Davin could well have enlarged her minima, introduction for this edition to place the book in some deeper historical context. The precise value of hindsight is that it enables us to raise some of the wider issues and to learn from the past. Nowhere in the book is the success or failure of the movement assessed or the implications of it for today drawn out. It may bethat these women were the equivalents of today's Shirley Williams and Barbara Castles. If so, we have to question just what the Guild achieved for the vast majority of working women. The book leaves us with our appetite whetted but not satisfied The great value of a feminist publishing company should be not only to reprint extracts of this sort but to locate these voices of the past in the richertapestry of thestruggleof women as a part of the working class as a whole. There seems no great value, to me, in devoting sixteen pages to list books read by Guildswomen. Dickens wins in the popuTarity polls, but where does that leave us today? The space could well have been used to print extracts from the works of such other contemporary women activists as Sylvia Pankhurst, Annie Besant or Eleanor Marx.
These are not small points. As it is forty-five years since the book was first published, it is important to place it in context. By failingto do this we may fall into the trap of eulogising personal accounts without recognising their weaknesses and learning from them.
It will be interesting indeedto sec our reactions in another forty-five years from now to the writing of May Hobbs on the night cleaners" strike. Or my friend living near the fish dock — if I can persuade herto put pento paper that is.
GLENSPRAY