Bolton Socialist Club - Days of Hope 1908 - 1914
16 Wood Street
'Here there was a community of young and old, lively and provocative, imbued with visions of a new society..' (Alice Foley; A Bolton Childhod)
Intent on owning their own building, Tom France, Sarah Reddish and others set up an Industrial and Provident Society (Bolton Socialist Hall Ltd) and issued One pound shares. By May 1905 they had raised enough money to purchase 16 Wood St (ironically the birthplace of Lord Leverhulme) for 800 pound and in October of the same year the Socialist Club moved in. We are still here and Bolton Socialist Hall Ltd are still the owners of the building.
The Clarion Movement
Started by Robert Blatchford, a Manchester journalist, in 1891, The Clarion quickly grew from being a popular weekly newspaper into an entire movement and way of life built on the ideas of socialism. Its readers formed cycling and rambling clubs, choirs, and handicraft guilds. Clarion Vans toured the countryside spreading the message of socialism and womens suffrage. 'We followed in the wake of the missionary Clarion Van…where the van halted we cyclists loyally dismounted and formed the nucleus of a gathering for the speakers; we distributed literature at wayside corners and on village greens disturbed the sabbath quiet with our socialist hustings'. (Alice Foley; A Bolton Childhood).
The Socialist Sunday School
The Socialist Sunday School movement began in Glasgow in 1896 and remained in existence for more than 60 years. Bolton Socialist Sunday School was started at 16 Wood Street soon after the Socialist Club moved here. Meetings included hymns with words by socialists such as Edward Carpenter, William Morris, and Bolton writer Allen Clarke - 'we seemed forever to be marching somewhere, even if we often failed to reach the destination' (Alice Foley; A Bolton Childhood). The children also learned to recite the Socialist Ten Commandments.
England Arise, the long, long night is over,
Faint in the east behold the dawn appears;
Out of your evil dream of toil and sorrow
Arise, O England, for the day is here.
Edward Carpenter
Mass meetings
The biggest halls in town were hired for public meetings - the Temperance Hall (which held 2000), the Hippodrome Theatre, the Coop Hall, the Theatre Royal. Thousands of song sheets were printed, the Clarion choir performed, 'Red Flag Toffee' and 'Marseilleise Cocoa' were sold, and huge posters were put up around town to advertise celebrity speakers like Keir Hardie, Victor Grayson, Ben Tillett and James Connolly. From a meeting addressed by Tom Mann in 1912 the Club managed to make a profit of 11 Pounds 3 Shillings and 11 Pence from tickets sold at 3d and 6d each.
Votes for Women
Central to all the activities at the Club at this time was the women's suffrage campaign. Women like Sarah Reddish, Cissy Foley and Alice Collinge campaigned tirelessly and although divisions between militant 'suffragettes' and law-abiding 'suffragists' became more marked after 1905, allegiances in the club seem to have been fairly fluid. Sarah Reddish and others saw themselves as radical suffragists but they invited Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst to speak at the club in August 1906 and even as late as 1911, when the militant campaign was at its height, suffragette Annie Kenny was welcomed here and spoke to an audience of women members.
Women's Cooperative Guild
The Women's Cooperative Guild was formed in 1883 and by 1910 had 32,000 members. It supported wome's suffrage and argued that women should have full equal rights with men. Sarah Reddish, a trade union organiser in Bolton’s cotton mills, was regional organiser for the Guild in the north of England from 1893 to 1895 and its national President in 1897. She went on two delegations to parliament in support of votes for women. She toured the country as a speaker on the Clarion van and in March 1900 was the first woman to be elected to the Bolton School Board, striking a blow for both socialism and feminism. She died in 1928 and her grave is in Overdale Cemetry.