Conclusion

Abstract

As Mary Macarthur prepared to entrust the Federation to the safe keeping of the NUGW, she acknowledged that ‘our influence has been enormous’ and that ‘there is hardly a committee, local or national, concerned with the welfare of women on which [the Federation] is not represented’.¹ This was no exaggeration; in its 15 years, it strengthened women’s organisation more effectively than the WTUL had done before, by uniting individual branches, giving them a more robust financial footing and encouraging a more permanent union presence in local areas. Its emphasis on partnership working with TCs and women’s labour organisations ensured that, by the time war was declared, its name was familiar enough to be called upon to assist in disputes across the country. Its message was further spread by its response to strikes and by the involvement of its leaders in national campaigns that raised public awareness of the position of women workers. The reputation of its national leadership, and particularly of Mary Macarthur, gave it a wartime prominence and distinctiveness which it used to claim, with considerable authority, that it was the voice of women munitions workers.