IF YOU MISSED IT this time make sure you see the repeat of BBC TV's showing of God Speed Cooperation the story women in the Women's Cooperative Guild (a very different organisation than it is today!).
In history books today all you read about is the suffragettes and their more spectacular campaign for the vote - never about the thousands and thousands of working who CaSS WOLED paigned for birth control for ITCC school meals, maternity benefits and around all aspects of women's lives.
T've had nine children in seven years and I've onof working ly one left now,' stated one of the many hundreds of members of the WOUICH Guild who wrote letters telling of their experiences as part of the campaign for ES maternity benefit for married and unmarried mothers.
The misery and terror of being on a conveyor belt of compulsory childbirth, miscarriages, infant morTalIV. ill health and exhaustion powerfully portrayed. "Family restriction' then as now was a key issue in the fight for even a glimmer of equal rights for women.
In those days cure was used rather than prevenTOT 3815 woman remarks in her letter: It's not OTEVCHION that women use. much cheaper, you see, to go out and get those drugs at the chemists, hikey pikey, gin and gunpowder, iron and aloes, turpentine and washing powder.
For these women brought up in the belief which they soon found out to De laise nat too never sends a babe without the bread to feed it", discovering the Coop Women's Guild must have been truly a liberation - opening the door to knowledge and understanding means to fight back fas well as the divi on the shopping!). 1915 the Guild had 30,bg Founded in members and by 1933 90,000 - mainly working class women.
Mrs Layton, the main character in the TV story (which is partly based on her book Life as We Have KnOWn l published by Virago) is a typical example of the women who joined. One of fourteen children she went into serice the age of ten.
volved she had to walk six miles to conferences and back because she couldn't afford the transport.
The courage and determination of such women is truly an inspiration to us all and is part of the heritage modern women's movement as the suffragettes are.
The Guild was one of the first organisations t demand legalised abortion and also in 1913 came out in favour of divorce by years separati after too years separation which outrageous idea they had all their funding from the Coop cut off for four years.
Women seen as key to the Coop because the idea was to have "peaceful revolution' bas ed on women's 'marketing basket' wealth being redistributed through the dividend paid out to members. Fortunately th women memoers did not restrict their campaigning to thie may uton wee may think we've Come along wasince then really sometimes wonder whether Maggie Thatcher and her cronies aren't trying to send us back to those days - when you se things like the funding fo Brook Clinics (which provide funding for young people are withdrawn and abortion is being hived off into the private sector.
The issues which our sisters raised before us are still vital today and have a lot to learn from them.