COLLABORATIVE WOMEN

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Notes

*. These arguments draw on my doctoral thesis Industrial Women: Organising, Strategy and Community in Sydney, 1917–1940 (University of New South Wales, 2004). I am indebted to Lucy Taksa and Anne Junor for their invaluable support as supervisor and co-supervisor of the thesis. Thanks are also due to my two anonymous referees for their thoughtful critiques of the paper during review for this journal. All of my interviewees generously ottered time, humour and insight during the course of the research, and this paper has been enriched by their contributions. The paper was completed for publication with the assistance of a staff research grant from the Division of Business at Southern Cross University.

1. Muriel Heagney, Trades Hall, Melbourne, 1956, in Muriel Heagney Papers, Ms9061, Latrobe Manuscripts Collection, State Library of Victoria (SLVic), Melbourne.

2. Della Elliott has affirmed this perspective.

3. It is still hard to go past the works of Ranald (1982) and Bremner (1982) for thoughtful analyses of Heagney's career and frustrations. Sadly, despite acknowledgement of her impact in wider histories, such as Lake's 1999 Getting Equal, there has been little substantial publication on Heagney since that time. Lake generally confirms Heagney's involvement with activities supported by organised feminism.

4. Frustrated project funding applications to labour and political bodies are made clear in her papers, and supported by evidence in her ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, formerly Commonwealth Investigation Service) file (for example in unsuccessful applications for Literature Council funds). See Heagney Papers, Ms9061, Latrobe Manuscripts, SLVic; ASIO files A402, A6126, A6119, National Archives of Australia (NAA), Canberra (refer file for Muriel Agnes Heagney).

5. In using this term ‘industrial official’, I am drawing on terminology used in trade unions to describe employees and officials whose role for the union involves direct contact with and advocacy for members.

6. This research methodology should also make it clear that I recognise and acknowledge the rich contribution which sociology as a discipline makes to history. That contribution derives from the common heritage of the two as social history and the study of society. As Peter Burke asserts, noting traditional history's neglect of comparative techniques of analysis, historians can profit from the theories and from the methods of sociology (1980).

7. In several critical analyses illustrating inter-war industrial structures, Bennett and Frances have shown how the industrial climate of the late 1920s saw unions—on the defensive against the state—focusing their attention on the more numerous and more profitable male members. This was done to the detriment of the work of women organisers as union colleagues and employees, as well as to the workplace well-being of female members. See Bennett (1984, 1986, 1989, 1994); Frances (1986, 1990, 1992, 1993); and Frances, Kealey, and Sangster (1996). Other important foundation studies on women and unions in Australia include Ellem (1989); Kirkby (1997); Lake (1992, 1999); Nolan (1991, 1992); Reekie (1987, 1993). Searle's Silk and Calico, Class, Gender and the Vote (1988) is a very neat gendered political analysis of the early politics of women textile workers.

8. Contributors to the issue were: Markey; Cooper; Ellem and Shields; Webster; and Roberts. In particular, by highlighting the agency of women in unionisation, albeit politically based women, co-editor Rae Cooper's contribution on early twentieth-century women's political and industrial organising for Sydney Labor Council expands the historiography of women's organising.

9. Obvious exceptions here are Rae Frances and Bradon Ellem. Again, Rae Frances established baselines in this area in the 1990s, particularly with The Politics of Work (1993). Gill Kirton (2006) has enhanced the industrial literature on women as unionists, including analysis of the sex-based structures that influence the level of women's union participation, and the ways in which union women implement their activism. Melanie Nolan and Shaun Ryan (2003) also make an important and original gender analysis of industrial organising.

10. Note that, in Australian usage, ‘Labor’ denotes political activity whilst ‘labour’ denotes occupation, work, and the social movement.

11. For further explanation of these concepts as dimensions of social capital, see David Halpern (2005, 21, 27).

12. The view that feminism was a movement for middle- or ruling-class women and was anti-labour was not only reflected in Heagney's writing. Consider, for example, Jack Kavanagh's 1931 description of the NCW as ‘that well-known anti-working class organisation’ (Kavanagh Jack Papers, P12, Z400 Box 3, Noel Butlin Archives Centre (NBAC), Canberra). Della Elliott has recounted that she confused her women friends by insisting that her work for women (from the 1940s to the current day) was always industrial, never ‘feminist’ (Elliott 2003).

13. The parochial realm as the workplace or ‘missing link’ between public and private space, first proposed by Albert Hunter, has been further developed by Lofland for urban space (1998, 10, 46).

14. For this exploration of space concerning these networks, see Webb (2005). For analysis of labour space in some other cities, see Brigden (2005), and Harvey (2001) (on capital's appropriation of labour space in Baltimore). For political/industrial propositions on labour space and urban precinct, see Katznelson (1992, esp. 203–56).

15. Social gatherings and popular meeting sites nurtured activist networks through ongoing communication and contact. Regular gathering places were nominated for meetings. For example, Labor women used the Cavalier Café in Sydney's King Street for social functions. The Feminist Club also had its rooms in King Street.

16. See, for example, Minutes of the Executive Committee, Hotel Club Restaurant and Catering Employees Union (HCREU), T12/1/3 1923–1935, NBAC, Canberra.

17. Lofland's identification of the workplace as the parochial sphere was noted earlier (1998, 10–11, 45–47). In social capital terminology, we might also label the workplace as the meso, or middle, sphere. This ‘middle-place’ concept defines the nature of familiarities and relationships at work. Taksa's historical project on the Eveleigh Railway Workshops in Sydney underpins much of the current discrete research by demonstrating how complex workplace and social relations were modified by the spatial practices of the workplace, this being the context for a shared industry experience modified by space as well as time (2001).

18. Katznelson (1992) shows how these factors come together to maintain and nurture working-class identity, and the way in which social spaces overlap and intersect to ensure continuity of class consciousness beyond immediate physical proximity. An Australian context is provided by, for example, Ellem and Shields (1999) and Strachan, Sullivan, and Burgess (2002). For a seminal study outside Australia, see Massey (1995, 56–58, 191, 210, 280–82). Germane to this study is Massey's insistence that locality provides a means to analyse women's place in the labour movement and workplace (1995, 191, 210). John Shields explains the workplace as ‘an important site for the formation of social identity’, underpinning relationships, and influence. It serves to consolidate class identity, fundamental to interpreting women's industrial networks and the shared motivations and connections of individuals (1992, 2).

19. In 1920 the ASP, based in Liverpool Street, was defeated in the bitter struggle to be recognised as Australia's Communist Party. For correspondence between the parties during this battle, including Marcia Reardon's caustic responses to the Sussex Street-based Communist Party, see CPA (Search Foundation) records in the Mitchell Library, (ML) Sydney, at ML mss 5021, Box 83 (155).

20. Ranald's work remains an important analysis of the role of feminism in the CAEP, including the role of that organisation in the confrontational relationship between Street and Heagney.

21. This union was known as both the PIEU and the PIEUA NSW.

22. For more details, see Jollie-Smith Case notes regarding Sydney Evictions, generally P15/8-13, and regarding Rothbury Appeals (file cover 1281), P15/10/A, all in [Phil Thorne Collection, P15] NBAC, Canberra.

23. As well as Street's autobiography (1966), Radi (1988, 1990), Ranald (1982), Coltheart (2004, 2005) and Sekuless (1978) are generally seen to be at the forefront of documenting her life, although the Sekuless biography notably almost omits her politically left activities. In contrast, both Radi and Ranald focus on Street's feminist activities, but at the same time provide ample evidence of her strong labour commitment.

24. The ‘May Matthews’ entry by Brignell and Radi in the Australian Dictionary of Biography (1986) now concisely outlines her life and activities (see http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A100438b.htm. Accessed 13 October 2006). Note that I have maintained the usual spelling of her name, although some contemporary references cite her as ‘Mathews’.

25. Sisters Kate Dwyer, Annie Golding and Belle Golding were born in the 1850s and 1860s.

26. Also see Stevens (1987, 122).

27. See Fischer (1977, 61) for an analysis of such dynamics in urban environments.

28. Baldock's table uses data derived from census figures by Richmond (1974, 269).

29. Heagney (1935, 13).

30. The Printing Trades Journal, 17 September 1918, Box 1, S354, NBAC, Canberra. Cashman also wrote a monthly column for The Printer, which was the monthly journal of the union's New South Wales Branch.

31. Caption printed with photograph of Lena Lynch, JP. Publication located in Heagney Papers, 1163/2 (b), Latrobe Manuscripts, SLVic.

32. See, for example, archival records, especially union and industrial/arbitration files, journals, in the Noel Butlin Archives holdings (NBAC) in Canberra.

33. Muriel Heagney, for example, entered the Defence Department in Melbourne as its first female clerk in 1915. Bremner. In Radi (1988, 148)

34. New South Wales had appointed Annie Duncan in 1896 and Belle Golding in 1900 (Whitehead 2001).

35. For an early and succinct account of the struggles for women's citizenship achievements, see Allen (1979).

36. For contemporary comment on the professions, see Heagney (1935, 77–78).

37. Laura Bennett (1994) offers an excellent synthesis of the anti-industrial climate of the 1920s. Lake (1992) argues women's collective gendered response to the patriarchal political/industrial economy of the period. In one example of combination, Mel Cashman (for the Trade Union Secretaries’ Association), Mildred Muscio (NCW) and Emily Bennett (Australian Federation of Women Voters) were Joint Presidents of the Committee of Combined Women's Associations, formed in Sydney in 1936 ‘to Protest against the Reduction of Women's Basic Wage’ (see the Heagney Papers, MS9061/1163/5(c)).

38. Malcolm Saunders (1996) describes the First World War peace movement networks and gives some clues to the nature of successful networks.

39. NCW Minutes, Rose Scott Papers, ML MSS 38/45-50, CY3513. CY 2641, ML, Sydney.

40. By early September 1917 the Women's Finance Committee of the LWCOC had collected £600 (Taksa 1983). Many labour women belonged to Women's Strike Relief Committees, addressing meetings of strikers and supporters, and engaging in fundraising.

41. See, for example, New South Wales Labor Council Executive minutes (undated but possibly 1924) and Minutes of General Meeting 25.7.1929. Labor Council (Loose Papers), ML A3845 item 2, 1-38, CY roll 2202, ML, Sydney. On the first occasion, Lena Lynch for the HCREU asked for Council's opinion on equal pay for trade union organisers in her union. On the second, members of the Labor Women's Organising Committee gained Labor Council endorsement for Childhood and motherhood endowment and discussion of child endowment.

42. See, for example, Allen (1994, 232) regarding passage of the (Women's) Legal Status Act 1918.

43. New South Wales Labor Council (loose) papers, ML A3845 item 2, CY roll 2202—1-38 pt 4 including: Joint Conference of ALP Executive, ALP Women's Organising Committee and Labor Council Executive, 2 October 1927, ML, Sydney.

44. For an example of earlier doubts, see Jelley (1977). For Commission evidence, see Royal Commission into Childhood Endowment or Family Allowances (1929).

45. Heagney's commitment to motherhood endowment was for its potential to advance women's ‘economic independence’, a commitment sorely tested by her deploring any reduction of the living wage. She held that child endowment should not have been awarded separately from motherhood endowment: the combination would have given the economic independence for women to which she was so committed. ‘Wages for Wives: Opinion’, in Muriel Heagney Papers, MS9061/1170/3(a).

46. Kate Dwyer addressed the first inter-State Conference of the NCW: see below, as cited in Reekie (1993, 153). Cashman also talked with the NCW. When Margaret Watts, who by 1926 was Convenor of the NCW Trades and Professions Committee, lobbied the Labor Council for support for the establishment of Vocational Guidance in the State, she told Council: ‘Miss Cashman suggested writing to you’: see Papers re Trade Unions: Subject Folders, Industrial Conference 1926, in Labor Council Further Records 1906–1982, ML Mss 2074 Add-on 1877, ML, Sydney.

47. Here, Reekie is quoting from Dwyer's address to the first inter-State Conference of the NCW describing proceedings at the 1918 Board of Trade Hearings.

48. Margins allowances here were supplementary wage top-ups for skill: workers qualified through apprenticeships, which in most industries were available only to boys. Hence, female pay was restricted both through gendered award wages and also through females being locked out of the primary avenue to qualifying for wage margins.

49. For a succinct discussion of the legal management of female wages within State arbitration in Australia, see Scutt (1992).

50. Labor Council Minutes 1924–35 Accession ML fm 1132, ML, Sydney. The CPA's Mary Lamm told Audrey Johnson that this appeal followed a letter to Workers Weekly from a woman concerned because men were being laid off and replaced by cheap labour: women (Johnson 1990, 18).

51. Labor Council meeting, loose papers, part of Minute Book, 5 December 1921–30 January 1922 (item undated but located with other, similar, papers dated 1929), CPA Sydney Branch (Goulburn Street), Accession A3844, ML, Sydney.

52. NCW Executive Council, Sydney meeting, National Council of Women, 29 October 1920, Rose Scott Papers, ML MSS 38/45-50, CY3513. CY 2641, ML, Sydney.

53. Carmel Nyhan made this comment to Edna Ryan in the 1920s. Edna Ryan, September 1996. Private communication: interview with author, Canberra.