{"product_id":"9781350340824","title":"The Women in the Room : Labour's Forgotten History by Nan Sloane","description":"In February 1900 a group of men representing   trade unionists, socialists, Fabians and Marxists gathered in London to make   another attempt at establishing an organisation capable of getting   working-class men elected to Parliament. The body they set up was the Labour   Representation Committee; six years later when 29 of its candidates were   elected to the House of Commons, it changed its name to the Labour Party. No women took part in that first meeting, but   several watched from the public gallery. Amongst them was Isabella Ford, an   active socialist and trade unionist who would have been familiar to most of   the men assembled below. She had been asked by her friend, Millicent Fawcett,   to attend and report back on what happened. A few years later she   would become the first woman to speak at a Labour Party conference, moving a   resolution on votes for women but, at the Party's inception in 1900, she and   every other woman in the hall was silent.   Throughout Labour's history, even in its   earliest years, women were present in the room, but they were not always   recorded or remembered. They came from many different backgrounds and they   worked for the causes they believed in as organisers, campaigners,   negotiators, polemicists, public speakers and leaders. They took on the   vested interests of their time; sometimes they won. Yet the vast majority of   them have been forgotten by the Labour movement that they helped to found.   Even Margaret Bondfield, who became Britain's first woman cabinet   minister, often barely merits a footnote. Women made real and substantial   contributions to Labour's earliest years and had a significant impact on the   Party's ability to attract and maintain women's votes after World War I. In   addition to Margaret and Isabella, in many of the rooms in which the Labour   Party found its feet, remarkable women wait to be rediscovered. This book   tells their story.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56298078699893,"sku":"9781350340824","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781350340824.jpg?v=1762782368","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781350340824","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}