Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

90 Workplace and Working-Class Women’s Cricket and acted as ‘a soothing syrup to mitigate the growing discontent that the continual worsening of conditions is producing’. The organisation was essentially used as a recruitment tool for the British Communist Party. 51 Alternatively, the co-operative-socialist movement also identified sport as a way of promoting their own social, political and economic vision of Britain. Between May 1927 and May 1936, the CWS established 29 women’s cricket teams in factories across the country, including in London, Cardiff, Reading, Birmingham, Leicester and Bristol. Two leagues were founded, one in Manchester and the other in Leeds. These competitions were purely formed of CWS workshops or sympathetic organisations like Labour Party women’s cricket teams. The Manchester league was heavily integrated into the WCA, while the Leeds league was independent despite the strength of the English Federation in the city. 52 Due to the Co-operative’s mixed commercial and political goals, sport was considered a way of improving employee productivity and promoting moderate left-wing politics. The Co-operative Party signed an electoral pact with the Labour Party in 1927 not to contest seats, and CWS factories and depots were early members of Labour’s sports organisation the National Workers’ Sports Association, which formed in 1931. Their monthly staff magazine, Ourselves , boasted a circulation of 23,000 in 1932 and regularly reported on women’s sport, including cricket which was a popular summer feature. Workplace sport was part of an attempt to nurture a spirit of unity among staff for financial and political gain. In her girls’ gossip column, ‘Mary May’ regularly wrote about women’s sport as a way of creating ‘mutual goodwill’, ‘one big happy family’, ‘friendship’ and the unique ‘social spirit of co-operative employees’. Mary May eagerly Irlam Soap Works Women’s Cricket Club, winners of the WCA-affiliated Co-operative Wholesale Society (Manchester) Cricket League, 1931. Although the WCA banned both leagues and trousers, they were willing to allow exceptions to counter the strength of commercial league cricket in Lancashire. (CWS archive)