Who was the first woman cabinet member

Margaret Bondfield �

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Q.� Quite an achievement. She was from a well-to-do family then

A.� Wrong. Margaret was her mother Anne's 11th child and her husband William was 61 when she was born. He had worked in the textile industry since he was a boy and was well known for his radical political beliefs.

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Q.�� So, a socialist upbringing

A.� So it would seem. At 14, Margaret left home to serve an apprenticeship in a large draper's shop in Brighton where she became friendly with Louisa Martindale, one of her customers. Martindale was a strong advocate of women's rights and Margaret regularly visited the Martindale home where she met other radicals and borrowed political books.

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Q.� That was�the beginning�of her political career, then

A.� Quite. In 1894, Margaret went to live with her brother Frank in London. She found work in a shop and was soon elected to the Shop Assistants' Union District Council. She began writing for The Shop Assistant, the union journal and caused an outcry when she described the ideal married couple as one in which both went out to work and shared the household tasks! Her fame spread and the Women's Industrial Council asked her to investigate shop workers' pay and conditions. Bondfield's report was published in 1898, the same year she became assistant secretary of the Shop Assistants' Union.

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Q.� And she moved up in the union

A.� Up to a point. Bondfield became known as Britain's leading expert on shop workers and gave evidence to the Select Committee on Shops (1902) and the Select Committee on the Truck System (1907). In 1908, however, she resigned from the union and became secretary of the Women's Labour League. In 1910 the Liberal government asked her to serve on its advisory committee on the Health Insurance Bill. She succeeded in getting maternity benefits included in the bill - and they were to be paid to the mother.

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Q.� There's also a strong political and suffragette connection here

A.� Indeed. She chaired the Adult Suffrage Society - and unlike Mrs Pankhurst's suffragettes (click here for a feature on her), Bondfield believed all women should get the vote. She was a member of a radical group that included George Bernard Shaw, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, then moving to the Independent Labour Party and Fabian Society.

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Q.� And parliament

A.� She was elected Labour MP for Northampton in 1923 and when Ramsay McDonald became Prime Minister in 1924 he appointed Bondfield parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Labour. She became chief woman officer when her union merged with the General Workers' Union (1920-38), and was the first woman chairman of the Trades Union Congress in 1923. She lost her Commons seat in 1924, but returned as MP for Wallsend (1926-31).

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Q.� Ministerial office

A.� When Ramsay McDonald became PM for a second time in 1929 he appointed Bondfield Minister of Labour. In the financial crisis of 1931, Bondfield upset many members of the Labour Party when she supported the government policy of depriving some married women of their unemployment benefit. She lost her seat in the 1931 General Election after making enemies in her party for supporting McDonald's national government.

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Q.� And then

A.� She continued her trade union work until 1938, when she toured Mexico and the USA to study labour conditions. She became vice-president of the National Council of Social Service in 1939, chairman of the Women's Group on Public Welfare (1939-49), and lectured for the British government in the USA and Canada (1941-3). Bondfield died in 1953.

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By Steve Cunningham

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