Margaret Grace Bondfield was born on 17 March 1873 and died on 16 June 1953.
A trade unionist, women’s rights activist and Labour MP, she was the first woman to chair the General Council of the Trades Union Council and the first female Cabinet Minister and Privy Councillor.
Born in Chard, Somerset, she was apprenticed at 14 to a draper’s shop in Hove, then worked in a series of shops in Brighton. There is a Blue Plaque to commemorate her achievements outside what was then a drapers shop, and is these days a small supermarket at 14 Church Road, Hove.
While working in Brighton she was befriended by women’s rights activist Louisa Martindale and her daughter Hilda Bondfield described Louisa Martindale as “a most vivid influence on my life … she put me in the way of knowledge that has been of help to many score of my shop mates”. In 1894 Margaret moved to London.
When Clementina Black asked Margaret to investigate working conditions of women shop workers – who then worked between 80 -100 hours a week for 51 weeks in the year – she began a career which took her to the top of Labour politics. Her accounts of squalor and exploitation were published under the name Grace Dare in The Shop Assistant and the Daily Chronicle, providing the basis for the 1898 Women’s Industrial Council report on shop workers’ conditions.
Thereafter Margaret worked in the Trade Union Movement and the Women’s Labour League becoming MP for Northampton in 1923. She became Minister of Labour in MacDonald’s administration, losing her seat in 1931 when Labour lost the election. She campaigned for women’s and workers’ rights for the rest of her life.
