(1) Margaret Bondfield, A Life's Work (1948)

When I first went to Brighton for a holiday in 1887 I had the chance of a job as apprentice to Mrs. White of Church Road, Hove, a friend of my sister Annie. I eagerly grasped this opportunity of earning my living. I did not see my home again for five years.

Mrs. White successfully ran one of those old-fashoned businesses where the relations between the customer and assistant were of the most courteous and friendley, and the assistants, of whom I was the youngest, were treated like members of the family.

(2) In her book From One Generation to Another, Hilda Martindale described her mother's relationship with Margaret Bondfield.

My mother kept open house for another set of women whom she began to think were oppressed, as undoubtedly they were in the eighties - shop assistants. Among them came an eager, attractive, and vividly alive girl of 16, Margaret Bondfield. She was working in one of the large draper's shops in Brighton and was not happy. She needed sympathy and was ready to talk when she found her hostess really wanted to listen. She told her about "living in" and all that it meant - sleeping in bare, dingy, stuffy dormitories, intolerably hot in summer, miserably cold in winter; never being alone, even to wash; no place to keep one's things except a box under the bed, fines for entering the dormitory in the daytime, nights spent with a poor consumptive girl who coughed and coughed… My mother gained not only a friend who has always remained faithful to her memory, but an insight into the conditions under which shop girls were employed.

(3) Mrs. Louisa Martindale died in 1914. On hearing the news, Margaret Bondfield wrote a letter to Mrs Martindale's two daughters, Louisa and Hilda.

Your mother is one of the great immortals who cannot die as long as memory lasts. She was a vivid influence in my life, the first woman of broad culture I had met, she seemed to recognise me and make me recognise myself as a person of independent thought and action… my first talk with your mother was the great event of that period of my life…. She put me in the way of knowledge that has been of help to many score of my shop mates. She lent me books on social questions, which prepared me to take my proper place in the Labour movement.

(4) In her book, A Life's Work, Margaret Bondfield described her views on the outbreak of the First World War.

I shared the views of those who blamed secret diplomacy, and in particular Sir Edward Grey, who had failed to make it clear which side Great Britain would take. The shots at Serajevo did more than kill an Archduke and his Duchess. They gave the signal for a blood bath in Europe; and yet our Foreign Secretary dallied on the fence until the invasion of Belgium had actually begun. THere was a big demonstration in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, 1st August. A great Woman's Demonstration against war was held in the Kingsway Hall on Tuesday, 4th August, and when we came out the Guards were on the way to Dover. The die was cast. We were at war.

(5) Margaret Bondfield signed this Independent Labour Party statement issued in April, 1915.

In each of the countries at war, the Militarist Jingoes declare that they will not rest content short of smashing and dismembering enemy countries. Even if such a policy, instead of setting at defiance the clearest lesson of history, were just and expedient, nine months of war under modern conditions have demonstrated that the possibility of attaining this result is exceedingly remote. But so long as this fear of dismemberment and crushing humiliation holds a nation in thrall, it will go on fighting to the last ounce of resistance and the last drop of blood.

Just as mutual distrust and fear and misunderstanding helped to cause the war, so they may now operate against all efforts towards an honourable and lasting peace, and the great crime against the people will continue unchecked, bringing ruin to all lands and desolation and murning to countless homes.

(6) Margaret Bondfield, A Life's Work (1948)

In March 1915 the Board of Trade issued a proclamation asking every woman, who was able and willing to take employment, to register at the Labour Exchange. This ill-considered action threatened to flood the labour market with volunteers willing to take employment on any terms, regardless of the consequences to the normal wage-earner. The Workers' War Emergency Committee held a conference presided over by Mary Macarthur at which a number of resolutions were adopted.

We pointed out that in the interests of the higher patriotism no emergency action should be allowed unnecessary to depress the standard of living of the workers, or the standard of working conditions. We therefore asked: (1) That all women registering for war service should join the appropriate Trade Union; and that this be a condition for their employment for war service. (2) That men and women should receive equal pay for equal work.

(7) In her book, A Life's Work, Margaret Bondfield explained her opposition to conscription.

In January a special National Conference urged the Labour Members of Parliament to oppose conscription. When it met, the Annual Conference condemned conscription but declined by a small majority to demand the repeal of the Act which had just been passed, setting up Conscription for the first time in modern English practice.

The Conscription Act was passed within a few months of the opening of the great military offensive of 1916, which revealed to the world the appalling scale of of the losses that the nation would have to endure. One of the great scandals of the First World War was the attitude of mind (an old one coming down from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) which regarded human life as the cheapest thing to expend. The whole war was fought on the principle of using up man-power. Tanks and similar mechanical help were received with hesitation and repugnance by commanders, and were inadequately used. But man-power, the lives of men, were used with freedom.

(8) Margaret Bondfield was opposed to the British involvement in the First World War. In March 1917 she faced a hostile crowd at a meeting arranged by Selina Cooper in Nelson.

I know there is not one member of this howling crows that would willingly send their men-folk to an unnecessary death, but that is what you are doing by your attitude… Russia has shown us the way out, and has asked the people of this country to take our stand on the side of democracy and peace… The people who are asking us to save our children today because there is a war on are the people who have doomed us to live under conditions which cause our babies to die.