For Women, For Wales and For Liberalism , livre ebook

FOR WOMEN, FOR WALES AND FOR LIBERALISM
Gender Studies in Wales
Astudiaethau Rhywedd yng Nghymru
Series Editors
Jane Aaron, University of Glamorgan
Brec hed Piette, University of Bangor
Sian Rhiannon Williams, University of Wales Institute Cardiff
Series Advisory Board
Deirdre Beddoe, Emeritus Professor
Mihangel Morgan, Aberystwyth University
Teresa Rees, Cardiff University
The aim of this series is to fill a current gap in knowledge. As a number of historians, sociologists and literary critics have for some time been pointing out, there is a dearth of published research on the characteristics and effects of gender difference in Wales, both as it affected lives in the past and as it continues to shape present-day experience. Socially constructed concepts of masculine and feminine difference influence every aspect of individuals lives; experiences in employment, in education, in culture and politics, as well as in personal relationships, are all shaped by them. Ethnic identities are also gendered; a country s history affects its concepts of gender difference so that what is seen as appropriately masculine or feminine varies within different cultures. What is needed in the Welsh context is more detailed research on the ways in which gender difference has operated and continues to operate within Welsh societies. Accordingly, this interdisciplinary and bilingual series of volumes on Gender Studies in Wales, authored by academics who are leaders in their particular fields of study, is designed to explore the diverse aspects of male and female identities in Wales, past and present. The series is bilingual, in the sense that some of its intended volumes will be in Welsh and some in English.
FOR WOMEN, FOR
WALES AND FOR
LIBER ALISM
__________________________________
WOMEN IN LIBERAL POLITICS IN WALES, 1880-1914
Ursula Masson -->

CARDIFF
UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS 2010
© Helen Molyneux, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to repro-duce any part of this publication should be addressed to The University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff, CF10 4UP.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7083-2253-6
e-ISBN 978-1-7831-6397-7
The right of Helen Molyneux to be identified as copyright holder of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: Cardiff and District Women s Suffrage Society, 1908, by kind permission of Cardiff Central Library
Ursula Masson (1945-2008), Lecturer and subsequently Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glamorgan from 1994 to 2008, was the author of a number of journal articles and book chapters on Welsh women s history. Her editorial work included co-editing Llafur, the Welsh people s history journal, Women s Rights and Womanly Duties : the Aberdare Women s Liberal Association, 1891-1910 (2005) and for Honno Press, Elizabeth Andrews s A Woman s Work is Never Done (2006) and The Very Salt of Life: Welsh Women s Political Writings from Chartism to Suffrage (2007). She was involved in setting up and chairing Archif Menywod Cymru/Women s Archive of Wales and initiated its highly successful series of roadshows. In recent years she also chaired the west of England and south Wales Women s History Network. In all these activities she proved a lasting inspiration to those who worked with her or were taught by her. This current volume, based on her successful Ph.D. thesis, was at the point of going to press when she died; the editors of the Gender Studies in Wales series would like to thank Professor June Hannam of the University of the West of England for her help in preparing the final draft.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank June Hannam and Deirdre Beddoe for their expert help and guidance and, above all, patience and friendship during the course of my studies. Many thanks too to all those archivists and librarians of the collections listed in my bibliography for their assistance in locating and accessing the materials which form the basis for this work. To colleagues at the University of Glamorgan, to friends and students too numerous to name, thanks for invaluable discussions about sources and interpretations. And to my family, especially, all my thanks for support through the rough and the smooth, without which I could not have completed this book.
Earlier drafts of chapters in this book have been published elsewhere and I am grateful to the publishers for permission to reproduce versions of them here. For a more extensive account of the history of the Aberdare Women s Liberal Association given in chapter 5 , see the introduction to my edited volume Women s Rights and Womanly Duties : The Aberdare Women s Liberal Association, 1891 - 1910 (Cardiff, 2005). Some of the material in chapter 6 was published as Ursula Masson, Women versus the People : language, nation and citizenship, 1906-11 , in T. Robin Chapman (ed.), The Idiom of Dissent: Protest and Propaganda in Wales (Llandysul, 2006)
Contents
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I: THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF WOMEN S LIBERAL POLITICS IN WALES, 1880-1914
1 A groove to work in : Women s Liberal Organization in Wales, 1880-1914
2 Women, Awake! The Welsh Union of Women s Liberal Associations and the Impact of Women s Suffrage
3 The spoken centre ? The Welsh Union of Women s Liberal Associations and the National Movement in Wales
PART II: POLITICS, PLACE AND GENDER: TWO CASE STUDIES
4 Life in earnest : Aberdare Women s Liberal Association, 1891-1914
5 Out of villadom : Cardiff Women s Liberal Association, 1890-1900
6 Are not women to be included in the people? Cardiff Women s Liberal Association, 1900-1914
Conclusion
Appendix: 1894 Elections for Board of Guardians, Cardiff Union: Brief Biographies of Women Candidates
Notes
Bibliography
Abbreviations
AL
Aberdare Leader
APEGW
Association for Promoting the Education of Girls in Wales
AT
Aberdare Times
BC
Aberdare Reference Library Biographical Collection
BWTA
British Women s Temperance Association
CCL
Cardiff Central Library Local Studies Collections
C&DWSS
Cardiff and District Women s Suffrage Society
CLA
Cardiff Liberal Association
CN
Cambrian News
CNSWS
Central National Society for Women s Suffrage
COS
Charity Organisation Society
CPLWU
Cardiff Progressive Liberal Women s Union
BUL
Bristol University Library Special Collections
DLB
Dictionary of Labour Biography
EFF
Election Fighting Fund
GRO
Glamorgan Record Office
ILP
Independent Labour Party
LNA
Ladies National Association for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts
ME
Merthyr Express
NLF
National Liberal Federation
NLW
National Library of Wales
NUWSS
National Union of Women s Suffrage Societies
NVA
National Vigilance Association
NWLF
North Wales Liberal Federation
ODNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
SDF
Social Democratic Federation
SWA
South Wales Argus
SWDN
South Wales Daily News
SWDP
South Wales Daily Post
SWLF
South Wales Liberal Federation
SWMFWSS
South Wales and Monmouthshire Federation of Women s Suffrage Societies
SWR
South Wales Radical
SWWA
South Wales Weekly Argus
UDMD
Undeb Dirwestol Merched y De
UDMGC
Undeb Dirwestol Merched Gogledd Cymru
WCG
Women s Co-operative Guild
WFL
Women s Freedom League
WGS
Women s Guardians Society
WHR
Welsh History Review
WLA
Women s Liberal Association
WLF
Women s Liberal Federation
WLGS
Women s Local Government Association
WLL
Women s Labour League
WLUA
Women s Liberal Unionist Association
WNLA
Women s National Liberal Association
WNLC
Welsh National Liberal Council
WNLF
Welsh National Liberal Federation
WSPU
Women s Social and Political Union
WTUL
Women s Trade Union League
WUWLA
Welsh Union of Women s Liberal Associations
WM
Western Mail
WR
Welsh Review
WWP
W.W. Price Collections, Aberdare Reference Library
WWPBI
W.W Price Biographical Index, Aberdare Reference Library
YW
Young Wales
Introduction
This book examines the relationship of women to feminism, to political parties and to national identity, through a history of women s Liberal organization in Wales from the 1880s to the outbreak of the First World War. The introduction outlines the subject matter and structure of the book and the survival and interpretation of sources; it provides a brief discussion of historiographical issues relating to the three themes of party, feminism and nation; and, finally, considers the theme of place and the value of the local studies which form a large part of the volume.
Argument, aims, structure
The book demonstrates that the intersection of party, feminism and nation in Wales from the 1880s to 1914 made for a distinctive politics: women s liberalism in Wales was different from men s liberalism because it was women centred, shared the ethos and values of British women s liberalism and needed to accommodate feminism. The material supports recent historiography which suggests that women were instrumental in a reinterpretation of liberalism, developing a distinctive view of the meaning of citizenship, and that Liberal women in Wales shared that world-view and sense of their place in the political public sph