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Dare to be Free: Women in Trade Unions, Past and Present

by Bernadette Hyland and Michael Herbert - £3.95  Mary Quaile Club (2016)
   ISBN 13: 9780993224713 | ISBN 10: 0993224717

This pamphlet explores the role of women in trade unions, both in the past and in contemporary Britain.
 
This publication has been made possible by a grant from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust and the General Federation of Trade Unions. It has 42 pages and is professionally designed.
 
In the first part Michael Herbert tells the remarkable story of Mary Quaile (1886-1958). An Irish migrant to Manchester, Mary rose from working as a waitress to fame as one of the most active women trade unionists in Britain. She organised women workers through the Manchester and Salford Women’s Trades Council, and later as a national officer in TGWU. In 1925 she led a TUC delegation of British women trade unionists to the Soviet Union to see this new society for themselves. In 1926 she was on the General Council of the TUC during the General Strike. For fifty years Mary never wavered from her belief that trade unions were the key to women achieving proper pay and decent working conditions.
 
In the second part Bernadette Hyland interviews ten women of today from different unions about how and why they became active in the trade union movement. Working in both the public and private sector, and of different ages, they too are united in their belief that trade unionism can make a real difference to the lives of working women and men. The women she interviews are Jane Stewart (UNITE), Annette Wright (PCS, Manchester Trades Union Council), Bernie Gallagher (UNISON), Rachel Broady (NUJ), Linda Mercer (GMB), Lorna Tooley (RMT), Sarah Woolley (BFAWU), Beccie Ions (GMB), Nilufer Erdem (UNITE) and Jade Clarke (BFAWU).

(Price & availability last checked: May 2016)