Everyone's Poor Relation

This article highlights the complexity of factors that may be seen to have adversely affected the career of a working‐class woman municipal councillor in interwar Britain. It examines the effect that poverty had on the political position of Alice Arnold, Labour councillor in Coventry from 1919 until 1955, and in addition considers whether, despite her popularity with the electorate, her isolation within the Labour Party and on Coventry City Council was also the result of gender, social status and radical politics. Whilst many Labour councillors moved away from the poverty of their upbringing, either through employment or marriage, Arnold, who was single, carried hers with her throughout her life. I argue that a consequence of this, along with her unflinching socialist stance, made Party and Council colleagues unable to ‘place’ her. The feeling that she was ‘everyone’s poor relation’ was widespread enough to have been preserved in historical accounts of her life that repeatedly refer to her as a poor, eccentric woman, whilst her political achievements have been forgotten. Notes [1] K. Richardson (1972) Twentieth Century Coventry (London: Macmillan). [2] G. Letherby (2003) Feminist Research in Theory and Practice (Buckingham: Open University Press), p. 22. [3] There is an account of Arnold by J. Druker in J. Bellamy & J. Saville (1977) Dictionary of Labour Biography, Volume 4 (London: Macmillan). [4] S. Davies (1996) Liverpool Labour: social and political influences on the development of the Labour Party in Liverpool 1900–39 (Keele: Keele University Press), pp. 168–172. [5] N. Evans & D. Jones (2000) To Help Forward the Great Work of Humanity: women in the Labour Party in Wales, in D. Tanner, C. Williams & D. Hopkins (Eds) The Labour Party in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), p. 226. [6] M. Savage (1987) Dynamics of Working Class Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 152–156. [7] P. Graves (1994) Labour Women: women in British working class politics 1918–39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). [8] See P. Hollis (1987) Ladies Elect: women in English local government 1865–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press). [9] G. Mitchell (Ed.) (1977) The Hard Way Up: the autobiography of Hannah Mitchell, suffragette and rebel (London: Virago Press). [10] Davies, Liverpool Labour. [11] J. Liddington (1984) The Life and Times of a Respectable Rebel: Selina Cooper 1864–1946 (London: Virago Press). [12] P. Hollis (1993) Jennie Lee: a life (Oxford: Oxford University Press); B. D. Vernon (1982) Ellen Wilkinson 1891–1947 (London: Croom Helm). [13] See, for example, Vernon, Ellen Wilkinson and A. Howard (1990) Crossman: the pursuit of power (London: Pimlico). [14] Coventry Workhouse Admissions and Discharge Book 1877–1882, Coventry Archives SLA/6/13/6. [15] P. Thane (1978) Women and the Poor Law, History Workshop Journal, 6, pp. 30–51. [16] Red Lane Social History Project, Coventry Archives PA1235/8/1. [17] Richardson Collection of Audiotapes (Lanchester Collection), Coventry University Library. [18] Richardson, Twentieth Century Coventry, p. 202. [19] Ibid. [20] Ibid., p. 205. [21] Memorandum re Salaries and Allowances of Officials of the Workers’ Union Group 1931, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS.126/TG2/1931–40. [22] R. Hyman (1971) The Workers’ Union (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 145. [23] Transport & General Workers Union GEC Finance and Emergency Committee, Volume Xl, 1931, Modern Records Centre MSS. 126/T&G/1/1/6–9. [24] F. Carr (1986) Municipal Socialism: Labour’s rise to power, in B. Lancaster & T. Mason (Eds) Life and Labour in a Twentieth Century City: the experience of Coventry (Coventry: Cryfield Press), p. 198. [25] Richardson, Twentieth Century Coventry, p. 202. [26] Midland Daily Telegraph (MDT), 29 October 1919. [27] MDT, 30 March 1920. [28] MDT, 20 April 1920. [29] MDT, 2 February 1921. [30] F. Carr (1978) Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry 1914–39 (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick), p. 156. [31] J. Yates (1950) Pioneers to Power (Coventry: Coventry Labour Party), p. 70. [32] Richardson, Twentieth Century Coventry, p. 205. [33] Ibid., p. 203. [34] Ibid., p. 205. [35] J. Jones, interview with author, 21 February 2001. This and similar phrases cropped up in several conversations and informal interviews with the author about Alice Arnold. [36] Savage, Dynamics of Working Class Politics, p. 156. [37] Carr, Engineering Workers, p. 367. [38] Richardson, Twentieth Century Coventry, p. 201. [39] MDT, 11 October 1919. [40] See J. Marchbank (2000) Women, Power and Policy: comparative studies of childcare (London: Routledge), p. 24. [41] MDT, 26 February 1926. [42] MDT, 20 March 1928. [43] Women were able to be co‐opted onto such committees before they became eligible to stand for local councils. [44] MDT, 25 June 1936. [45] MDT, 18 May 1920. [46] B. Harrison (1987) Prudent Revolutionaries: portraits of British feminists between the wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 129. [47] Ibid., p. 135. [48] Guardian, 13 May 2003. [49] MDT, 6 November 1936. [50] MDT, 9 November 1936. [51] See, for example, B. Castle (1993) Fighting All the Way (London: Macmillan), pp. 75–78. [52] Richardson, Twentieth Century Coventry, p. 203. Additional informationNotes on contributorsCathy Hunt Cathy Hunt was awarded her doctorate on ‘Alice Arnold of Coventry: trade unionism and municipal politics 1919–39’ in 2004. She is a senior history lecturer at Coventry University and has published articles on women workers and trade unionism in Women’s History Magazine (2003) and Labour History Review (2005). Her biography of Alice Arnold is due to be published by the Coventry Historical Association in the summer of 2007

Biography · Economic history · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Sociology · Working class · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

• ‘To Keep It in the Family’

  Open Access•Eleanor Lowe•Open Library of Humanities•2020

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