Beatrice Green

A highly-regarded orator and writer, she became a leader in the labour movement in South Wales and was a prominent member of the Labour Party in Monmouthshire.

Beatrice Green
Green c. 1920s
Born	Beatrice Dykes (1894-10-01)1 October 1894 Abertillery, Monmouthshire, Wales
Died	19 October 1927(1927-10-19) (aged 33) Aberbeeg, Monmouthshire, Wales
Resting place	Blaenau Gwent Church, Abertillery
Political party	Labour
Spouse	Ronald Emlyn Green ​ (m. 1916)​
Children	2

Early life and entry into activism

Beatrice Dykes was born on 1 October 1894, in the town of Abertillery in Monmouthshire, Wales. The seventh of eight children of William and Mary Dykes, her father was a tin worker and coal miner. One of her brothers was killed in a mining accident in 1910. After attending the local church school, she enrolled at Abertillery Grammar School. She later became a teacher and was active in the Sunday school at Ebenezer Baptist Church. On 22 April 1916, she married coal miner Ronald Emlyn Green, and despite being a well-regarded teacher, she was forced out of her job due to the United Kingdom's marriage bar.

 

With her husband's parents able to care for their two children, Green was able to become involved in labour activism beginning in the early 1920s. She gave her first known speech in January 1921 to the women's branch of the local Labour Party, in which she contested women's traditional roles in society, stating: "For too long the idea has been allowed to circulate that woman's place is in the home, and man's in the world. With the inadequate measure of franchise, woman is realising that politics have a direct bearing upon her home, and that she has to get out in order to put things right". The speech, titled "Women in the State", was later published in the local newspaper and garnered significant attention. Similarly to other female Labour activists in South Wales, Green "did not call for radical transformation of gender roles in society. She did, however, believe that women should gain control over those areas of life which most concerned them and that, to this end, they should engage in public work on the same terms as men".

In 1922, Green became the secretary of the local hospital's "Linen League", which consisted of a group of forty women who volunteered to wash and supply the hospital's linens. With much of its success attributed directly to Green, the league had organised into a social club by the following year, with an annual membership subscription and regular events. A "fervent campaigner in favour of birth control", Green and Marie Stopes led a successful push to establish a birth control clinic at the hospital, though it was forced to close after sixteen months due to "intense opposition" from the local clergy. During this period, she also began contributing to a French socialist magazine – she was proficient in the language – and wrote for the periodical Labour Woman in Britain.

1926 miners' lockout

 

Named president of the Monmouthshire Labour Women's Advisory Council in 1926, Green played a significant role in that year's labour uprisings. After miners across South Wales began demanding better wages and a decrease in working hours, a lockout was initiated. In May 1926, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress declared a nationwide general strike to show solidarity with the miners. Though the general strike only held for nine days, the lockout continued for another six months. During the lockout, Green began fundraising for the Women's Committee for the Relief of Miners' Wives and Children (WCRMWC), which was later described as an "industrial Red Cross". A skilled orator, Green held several fundraising rallies in London on behalf of the WCRMWC, becoming a well-known public speaker. A significant portion of the organization's fundraising also came from miners in Canada and the Soviet Union.

 

Because there were few jobs in Abertillery outside of the mining industry, the town was devastated by the lockout, which plunged it "into economic misery". As part of the effort to relieve the economic strain on the town, Green and Elizabeth Andrews headed a program which temporarily fostered 2,500 vulnerable children from communities across the South Wales Coalfield for the duration of the lockout, easing "the financial burden on their parents". The pair personally led a group of fifty children from Abertillery, as well as the nearby towns of Dowlais and Merthyr Tydfil, directly to foster families in London. In addition, Green operated a soup kitchen in Abertillery, which fed up to 1,600 people per day. She also founded the Abertillery Maternity Relief Committee, which provided supplies for pregnant women and mothers, and advocated for maternity relief for imprisoned women. In July 1926, Green gave an interview to Labour Woman, in which she described "what it was like to be a mother of a large family without a waged income coming in". Due to her orations and writing, she became well-known among political circles across the United Kingdom.

Soviet Union tour, later activism, and death

From 27 August until 16 October 1926, Green was part of a nineteen-member delegation sent by the Miners' Federation of Great Britain to the Soviet Union; the trip was intended to cement relations between British and Soviet trade unions. The group travelled thousands of miles via rail between Leningrad and Tbilisi, visiting "workplaces, clubs, hospitals and schools and exploring many aspects of Soviet life". Green took particular interest in the coal mines of the Donets Basin, comparing the state-owned enterprises favourably to the privately-owned mines of Britain; they also visited the oilfields of Grozny. Large crowds received the group at every train station, with Green giving speeches to onlookers regarding the labour struggle in Britain.

Though she was not a communist, Green highly praised the Soviet system in two reports published in Labour Woman, in which she "wrote particularly about women in the Soviet Union and was eager to draw favourable contrasts between Czarist Russia and what was happening in the workers' state". Green also wrote that women in the Soviet Union had been emancipated and "possess an absolute equality of rights with man". Though she conceded that there were serious issues in regions like Azerbaijan, where "male opposition to the new equality laws created serious tension and violence", she also broadly praised the Muslim-majority areas, claiming that Muslim women had gained their own identities. These reports were later described as being "somewhat naïve" in retrospect by historian Sue Bruley.

According to fellow labour activist Marion Phillips, the Soviet trip was "a crowning happiness in [Green's] life during which she blossomed as a speaker, writer and activist". In November 1926, a month after her return, the lockout had largely ended, as the miners were "deprived and starved into submission". Despite this loss, Green continued her activism, writing frequent columns in the Labour Woman, particularly about issues relating to child care and motherhood. The Dictionary of Labour Biography praised her writing style, stating: "Her articles were written in a simple and accessible style in order to reach her intended — predominately working class — audience. Her approach was informative rather than preachy, practical rather than patronising. The words were those of a working-class woman who knew of the problems surrounding child rearing at a time when economic difficulties ensured there were shortages of all kinds". In September 1927, she was the presiding officer of the Monmouthshire Labour Party women's conference, which was attended by over 800 delegates.

Green died of ulcerative colitis on 19 October 1927, at the hospital in Aberbeeg, aged just 33. Her young death was attributed to stress caused by the "harshness and uncertainty" of the period. She was buried at Blaenau Gwent Church in Abertillery. Despite the brevity of her political career, Green had "established an impressive political track record and would have had a promising future ahead of her in the labour movement", while biographer Lowri Newman stated that her leadership and oration skills "would have ensured her a place in Parliament".

• Green, Beatrice at Dictionary of Welsh Biography
• Video of the memorial service for Beatrice Green held in 2018

Citations