Abstract

While historians of women's politics concur that the majority of their activity took place at the local level, the history of political movements is still largely a national one. Women's under-representation has been challenged by research on the twentieth century, but the history of their involvement in fin de siècle politics, especially on the left, remains largely unknown. This article explores organisation among Liverpool's ropemakers in the 1890s with the duel intention of restoring their activity to the historical record while at the same time using a close local focus to suggest some reasons why women's collective action was often short-lived and sporadic.