The long fight for women
(Monday 12 November 2007)
MARY SENIOR
MARY SENIOR on why the Scottish TUC women's conference has achieved so much over the last 80 years.
This week sees the 80th Annual STUC Women’s Conference, chaired by Glasgow Trade Unions Council’s Patricia McLaren, taking place in Glasgow’s City Chambers. This landmark birthday for STUC women provides the ideal opportunity to both look back at past achievements, and look forward to future challenges.
The purpose of the Women’s Committee and Conference, when it was established in 1926, was to support and galvanise the women’s trade union movement. Looking back at the impact of the Women’s Committee and Conference, and at the number of women delegates registered for the 80th Conference, it is certainly serving its purpose.
The STUC’s archives, held at Glasgow’s Caledonian University, reveal the driving force behind the establishment of the STUC Women’s structures was a woman called Margaret Irwin, the daughter of a ship’s captain. Our incredibly helpful archivist Audrey Canning, a volunteer at Caledonian University, authored Margaret’s biography in “The Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women” (Edinburgh University Press 2006), and provided me with the fascinating background to the establishment of the STUC Women’s structures.
Margaret Irwin, the Secretary of the Scottish Council for Women’s Trade, was from Broughty Ferry, Tayside. In 1897, the year the STUC was established, Margaret was appointed as Secretary of the whole STUC, clearly a pivotal role, but not quite the same as today’s position of “General Secretary”. Margaret Irwin’s late 19th Century peers describe her as instrumental in the whole founding process of the STUC. She went on to argue for STUC structures that both reach out to, and articulate the views of women trade unionists. And on 30th January 1926, just on the eve of the General Strike which began in May, the first Conference was held with the purpose of setting up the “STUC Organisation of Women Committee”.
Fewer delegates assembled in 1926 than the 130 plus that we will have in 2007. Our records show that 51 delegates attended. Just less than half of these – 24 – were women! And in the chair was a man, Joseph Duncan of the Agricultural Workers Union. Brother Duncan chaired the Organisation of Women Committee too.
It is not until the early 1930s that we actually see a woman taking her rightful place as Chair of the STUC Women’s Committee in the form of Eleanor Stewart. The 1927 STUC Congress duly approved the 1926 Women’s Conference decision to establish women’s structures.
The work of the early STUC women’s movement was very practical and recruitment focussed. Women went out into communities and forged links with the Co-operative Women’s Guild and the YWCA to build the women’s trade union movement. Women’s weekend schools provided the vital training to activists in the late 1920s as they do in this millennium. STUC women campaigned for the family allowance, on youth employment, and for school children to be taught about social and working class history not just about Kings and Queens.
In the following 80 years STUC women have so diligently and imaginatively pursued their agenda of equal rights for women in the workplace, in public life, and in the political arena. The Scottish trade union women’s movement has traditionally been a campaigning one. A movement that is only too aware of the issues impacting upon working women and their families. A movement that identifies the levers for change, and applies the pressure to deliver upon that change, improving the lives of women, men and children across Scotland, and further afield.
Whether it be the “washing line protest” outside the Scottish Office underlining the devastating impact the privatisation of water would have upon families, or standing on the streets collecting signatures for the universal free nutritional school meals petition, Women’s Committee campaigns have certainly been innovative.
Trade union women knew long before we had the Equal Pay Act, that women were losing out in their pay packets. Our political campaigning for mandatory equal pay audits, is matched by the practical work STUC has pursued, more recently through the Close the Gap project, building capacity, training reps, and working with employers. This week’s scandalous figures of a 15% gender pay gap in Scotland, only reinforces the case for legislative change.
STUC Women’s Committee work has embraced internationalism, whether welcoming refugees from Chile in the 1970s, campaigning to end the detention of asylum seeking families in Dungavel, supporting South African women, and in practical solidarity with women from Zimbabwe through the “Dignity Period!” campaign.
Inspired and initiated by the STUC Women’s Committee, the 50:50 Campaign was a success of the 1990s. The case for equal representation in the inaugural Scottish Parliament led to the Scottish Labour Party twinning constituency seats in 1999 fielding equal numbers of male and female candidates. Sadly we have lost ground from the high point of 39% women MSPs in 2003. The Committee’s intention to re-launch the 50:50 campaign is particularly timely when we see women making up just one fifth of councillors, just over one tenth of senior police officers, and only 12 percent of the senior judiciary in Scotland.
This week’s conference focuses on tackling violence against women and children. Recent work pursued by the STUC on human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of children has shocked, but also identified where trade unionists can take action to combat this modern day slavery, and support its victims. The Committee is very clear that the sexual abuse faced by trafficked women and the callousness of the UK sex trade are not just issues for women. Every part of the labour and trade union movement has to work together to end this shameful trade and abuse of human beings.
The themes of fairness, equality and human decency, have resonated throughout the eighty-odd years of the STUC Women’s movement. As we meet this week we will celebrate the achievements of our sisters before us, and really galvanise today’s women to continue the fight.