By Mari Takayanagi.
Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, many people lived and worked in the Palace of Westminster. Some worked for the House of Commons or House of Lords, some were family members of office holders, and others were servants in households. This included many women. Indeed, at times female residents outnumbered male residents by nearly two to one: the 1911 census, for example, lists 67 women and 36 men living in the Palace of Westminster in addition to the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison who hid there in a cupboard overnight. There were also of course many staff who did not live in, an enormous variety of roles from Clerks to cleaners.
The presence of so many staff may be surprising, as Parliament is always equated in the general public mind with MPs and Members of the House of Lords debating in their chambers. Although some staff might play visible roles, such as the Doorkeepers in their uniforms and the Clerks sitting at the table, they appear almost as part of the furniture – blending in with the Gothic architecture, ritual and ceremony, rather than as individuals. Even more overlooked are the staff in less visible roles, including many women.
But staff not only work in Parliament, they are also subject to the same kinds of employment and social issues as workers outside Parliament. Recent research by Rebecca McKee has examined ‘unsung heroes’, staff who work for MPs. The staff who work for the House of Lords and House of Commons are similarly unsung. My new book Necessary Women, co-authored with Elizabeth Hallam Smith, uses new archival research to provide the first ever history of women working in the Palace of Westminster. This approach helps reframe Parliament from a solely political workspace to a place of work more generally, highlighting women from all classes working in jobs reflecting gender roles in wider society.
I was delighted to share some of this research at the PSA Parliaments Annual Conference 2023. In this blogpost I’m going to focus on three pioneering women for whom the Second World War brought new opportunities in Parliament: Kay Midwinter, Monica Felton, and Jean Winder.
Kay Midwinter
In May 1940, shock rang around the House of Commons as a woman walked in and stood calmly on the floor of the House, looking around at her new workplace. This was Kay Midwinter, the first female Clerk in the House of Commons. Appointed to free up a man for war service, the ‘Girl Clerk’ as she was termed in the press –she was aged 32 – worked for the House of Commons National Expenditure Committee during the Second World War. Previous experience of working with committees in the League of Nations in Geneva helped her to get the job. Highly praised by her managers and by Irene Ward and Joan Davidson, the female MPs on the committee, Midwinter worked particularly closely with Ward and Davidson on two reports, on the women’s armed services and women factory workers.
Midwinter later reflected on her time in the Commons as follows:
During the war I was standing behind the Speaker’s Chair about 5 or 6 yards from Churchill while he made all his famous war speeches. He used to glare at me as much as to say “What’s this woman doing?” but he never challenged me…. when it came to laying the Report on the table of the House – you know, my male colleagues said “Oh you’d better not do that, you know, it has never been done by a woman before!” So I said “Well, for that reason I’m going to do it!” So there we are. But really one was up against male prejudice throughout. Absolutely. There was never any question of promotion.
[Oral history recording, United Nations Career Records Project, Bodleian Library]
Not only promotion but pay, for Midwinter was paid less than half the rate of her fellow male Clerks doing the same job as her. Ward and Davidson expressed their opinion that she was ‘inadequately paid’ and she did receive a pay rise, although only to the ‘women’s equivalent’ of the male grade. She moved to the Foreign Office in 1943. After the war she went to work for the United Nations, first in New York and then back in Geneva, where she died in 1996.
Monica Felton
Like Kay Midwinter, Dr Monica Felton worked for the National Expenditure Committee in the House of Commons during the war as a fairly small part of a wider public career – but there the similarities end. Felton was as an elected Labour member of the London County Council, most unusual; Parliamentary staff would not usually have such a public party-political affiliation. She was appointed to the Commons as an economic advisor on the recommendation of Lewis Silkin, a Labour MP on the committee who had also previously been an LCC member. He and Felton had a strong shared interest in town planning; her significance as a woman town planner has been studied by Mark Clapson. Felton had a doctorate from the LSE and was previously a lecturer for the Worker’s Educational Association, where she was remembered by students as a Marxist. She worked in the Commons for 18 months before resigning with permission.
After the war, Silkin appointed Felton to be chairman of first Peterlee and then Stevenage New Town Development Corporations between 1949 and 1951. However, she was fired from Stevenage after going on an unauthorised trip to North Korea for the left-wing Women’s International Democratic Federation in 1951. It was a very controversial visit; on her return, she accused American, South Korean and even British troops of involvement in massacres of the Korean population and other atrocities, on Radio Moscow and in the Daily Worker, and was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. The episode made her infamous and ruined her career in the UK. She made a new life for herself in India, where she died in 1970.
Jean Winder
Jean Winder was the first woman Hansard reporter. She fought a long battle for equal pay, and like Midwinter, was also assisted by Irene Ward MP. In August 1951, Ward stood up in the House of Commons chamber and said:
The House of Commons is run on the basis of equal pay… but there is one woman on the HANSARD staff in the Gallery, Mrs. Winder, who has not got equal pay… I have got Mrs. Winder’s permission to draw the attention of the House to what I consider is an intolerable constitutional position…
[House of Commons Debates, 2 August 1951, col 1710]
Jean Winder was appointed to House of Commons Official Report, known as Hansard, in January 1944 when the Editor was desperate for staff and unable to find a suitable man. Like Midwinter, Winder was an immediate success in the Commons, highly rated, and performing exactly the same job as her male colleagues who were paid more than she was. Despite support all the way up to the Speaker, the Treasury refused equal pay. It took years of advocacy by Irene Ward before Winder finally achieved equal pay in late 1953. Ward supported Winder in private and in public over many years. This undoubtedly influenced Ward’s politics and relationships with political colleagues as she lobbied inside and outside Parliament.
In conclusion, the stories of Midwinter, Felton and Winder illustrate various themes of Necessary Women including opportunities brought by war, important relationships between staff and MPs, and struggles for equal pay. Sadly, these innovative Second World War appointments had no direct successors in the House of Commons. The next female Hansard reporter was not appointed until 1968, and further female Clerks did not follow until 1969. The indirect and direct contribution of these pioneering women to Parliamentary life and work deserves to be better known.
About the author
Dr Mari Takayanagi FRHistS is Senior Archivist at the UK Parliamentary Archives and a historian of women and Parliament. Her first book, ‘Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women’, co-authored with Elizabeth Hallam Smith, was published in June 2023 by History Press.