Female Political Union of the Working Classes

The Female Political Union of the Working Classes was established in 1833 by Mary Fildes and Mrs Broadhurst.^[1]

The organisation sprang from the wider labour movements of the early 19th century, influenced by Chartism and campaigns for women's enfranchisement.^[2] Fildes, who had been present at the Peterloo Massacre, had previously been president of the Manchester-based Society of Female Reformers (itself a response to Blackburn Female Reform Society).^[3][4]

Little is currently known of the workings of many of these societies, but they are evidence of a highly organised and committed group of working class activist women, at a time when culturally such participation was socially discouraged. Katrina Navickas writes about groups like those set up by Fildes that 'Northern working-class women challenged the middle-class notion of separate spheres not simply by entering the political public sphere, but conversely by asserting domestic concerns as public and political.'^[5]