Margaret Bondfield first woman Cabinet Minister. Commemorated on a Blue Plaque in Chard, Somerset.

All the recent media reporting of bullying and harassment of women staff and MPs in Parliament reminded me of a Blue Plaque on a wall next to the entrance to The Guildhall in Fore Street in Chard, Somerset.  It commemorates Margaret Bondfield who was born in Chard and became the first woman cabinet minister.

The Blue Plaque next to The Guildhall in Chard commemorating Margaret Bondfield, the first woman Cabinet Minister.

Margaret Grace Bondfield was born on 17 March 1873 in Chard, Somerset.  She was the tenth of eleven children born to William Bondfield, a foreman laceworker, and his wife Anne Taylor.  She became a shop assistant working in Brighton at the age of fourteen and joined the National Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks and progressed to hold prominent positions in the Trade Union Movement.  She was elected as MP for Northampton in 1923, after two previous attempts, to become one of the first three woman Labour MPs.  She failed to retain her seat in the 1924 General Election but returned to Parliament after winning the Wallsend by-election of 1926.

After Labour’s 1929 election victory she became Minister of Labour, the first woman cabinet minister and privy councillor, a position she held until 1931.  After losing her Wallsend seat in the 1931 General Election she never returned to Parliament, but continued to play an active role in public life including undertaking speaking tours in North America for the British Information Service between 1941 and 1943.

Feeling “no vocation for wifehood or motherhood”, she devoted her life to the Trade Union Movement and died unmarried in 1953.

The Guildhall, Fore Street in Chard, Somerset.

Margaret Bondfield must have been a remarkable woman having succeeded in public and parliamentary life long before “women-only short lists” and “gender equality” were ever thought of.  

Source:

https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/31955