ABSTRACT
It is evident from even a cursory review of the history of the WCG that Margaret Llewelyn Davies (1861–1944) was the dynamic force behind its most progressive achievements. During her years as General Secretary, from 1889 to 1921, it grew from the relatively modest role envisaged by its founders to gain a national reputation as an autonomous women’s section of the working-class movement. Those who took her work seriously, and attempted to give an account of it, found themselves reaching for superlatives that would do justice to her. ‘In personal quality and in disinterested idealism’, wrote G.D.H. Cole in 1944, ‘Margaret Llewelyn Davies is, to my thinking, by far the greatest woman who has been actively identified with the British Co-operative Movement. From the moment when she assumed control of the affairs of the Women’s Guild it began to become a really progressive force.’ 1 Leonard Woolf considered her ‘one of the most eminent women I have known’, who had ‘created something of great value – and at the same time unique – in the Guild.’ 2
