'As we came marching, marching in the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us sing ‘Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses.'
I first became aware of the song Bread and Roses when it was included in the repertoire of East Lancashire Clarion Choir.
On doing research into the song and its origins, and its significance as an anthem for women’s solidarity and aspirations, I was struck by how appropriate the song and slogan was for the region of my birth, the former cotton weaving belt of East Lancashire.
My mother was a mill girl
My own mother was a ‘mill girl’ from her teenage years until her forties, and most local families had a member, usually a female member, who was employed in the textile industry. I well recall going into the deafening weaving shed on my way home from school to visit my mother and being welcomed and amused by her fellow weavers mouthing silently with exaggeration, “Is that your lad ? He looks like you”.
Often at Sunday afternoon lunch with the extended family – salad and cold meat – the women would communicate across the table and kitchen in this manner with accompanying gestures “Would you like another cuppa tea ?” without having to interrupt the men’s exchanges about the local football teams Burnley and Blackburn Rovers.
Bread for All and Roses, too
The slogan ‘Bread for All and Roses, too’ originated from a poem by American James Oppenheim, published in 1911 and was taken up and used by the suffragette movement in the North West of the USA. It was first reported in a speech by suffragette Helen Todd, herself a factory inspector.
Particularly, it is associated with the strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which lasted from January to March 1912, for it symbolizes not only the demand for better pay and conditions, but also the aspiration for a share of the finer things of life, especially for women.
The Lawrence strike became known as the ‘Bread and Roses Strike.’ The strike involved the participation of many immigrant workers and gathered support across the region and eventually won improved pay and conditions for over 150,000 textile workers.
There are several versions of the song which can be heard at street choir festivals, concerts and on demonstrations in the UK. The song has been recorded by Joan Baez and Judy Collins.
The fight for better pay and working conditions
The women textile workers’ fight for pay and better working conditions has been linked to the suffragette movement and chronicled in the excellent pioneering research into the Lancashire women mill workers.
Jill Liddington’s and Jill Norris’ ‘One Hand Tied Behind Us’ describes the brave and admirable battle on two fronts, for the vote and for better pay and conditions. The title captures the struggle for working women, frequently the only bread-winners in the times of depression. The campaign for the ‘vote’ came after a day’s hard labour in the noisy, dusty mills and then an evening doing the housework and tending the children.
Lancashire textile workers have a magnificent record of solidarity beyond their immediate concerns, most notably during the American Civil War (1861-65). When supplies of cotton were disrupted causing a rise in prices from the American South this led to some support for the Secessionist cause among cotton barons. Redundancies and lay-off followed across the textile belt. But many textile workers took the side of the Emancipation Movement, identifying more with the slaves working in the cotton fields, than their own bosses’ profits.
During the severe depression in the cotton industry (1931) ,Gandhi visited the Lancashire textile of town Darwen to observe the effects on Lancashire workers of the Indian trade tariffs on British made cotton, which were put in place to revive the Indian cotton industry; and to his pleasure and many people’s surprise, he was welcomed with sympathy, showing once again that the Lancashire women had an acute sense of solidarity beyond self-interest. The visit is commemorated with a frieze at Blackburn station.
Lancashire women have a fine heritage to recall and celebrate.
First published on Substack
