Margaret mcmillan theory in practice today

Primary Sources

(1) In 1927 Margaret McMillan later recalled her first experience of schooling in Inverness.

Our mother was possessed by one aim - to give us children a proper education. She spared nothing in the pursuit of this end. The first experience of school was a little disconcerting and in some ways even alarming. The children sat in large room with a desk that looked like a pulpit. This desk contained, as we afterwards learned with horror, a tawse, or leathern strap, with four tongues, which the masters used with energy, not indeed for the punishment of girls, but only of boys. In spite of our immunity, we were filled with anxiety and distress, and had a deep sympathy with the unruly boys.

There were other things that were disturbing. The schools of that day, even for well-to-do children whose parents paid high fees (our mother paid them with difficulty), had a low standard in respect of hygiene. Dusty walls, greasy slates, no hot water and no care of the physical body.

(2) In 1888 Rachel and Margaret McMillan began teaching working class children in London. Later Margaret wrote about how the children reacted to her.

At Whitechapel I held a class for factory girls. I taught them singing, or rather I talked to them while they jeered at me. We sat in a dim room with a sawdusty floor, which we reached by climbing up some rickety steps from a muddy court.

The girls led a dreadful life. All of them came to the class after a long day's work in the factory. They came, as I soon found, merely for a lark. They crowded in, some big and brawny, some small and pale and anemic. They took the penny books, did not tear them up at once, and even made a feint of paying attention, but this only to make sure of a better joke. They were terrible lessons. My hat was never on my own head, and my coat was often missing when I wanted it. Squirts of water reached me and worse things, everyone amused herself as she chose.

One evening there was a lull. The girls were sobered by some rumours of a new reduction in wages. Rose, a ringleader, a big stout rope girl, with a thick fringe and swinging brass ear-rings, sat on the platform, red arms akimbo, and red face grave.

"What do you come down here for anyway? she said. "What's your game? You're losing your chances, you know, coming down here. Ain't you got a chap? You ain't bad looking, you know. You're hair done comical and that! and no ear-rings, nor nothing, but you ain't bad-looking. I say chuck it," said Rose earnestly. "These lessons of yours ain't no good to us. What do you take us for? Kids? We ain't going to learn no more. Get a chap for yourself, my girl: that's what you got to do.

(3) In a book published in 1927, Margaret McMillan wrote about the different socialist leaders she met in her youth. This included H. H. Hyndman and William Morris.

H. M. Hyndman, the great apostle of Karl Marx, was a rather corpulent, long-bearded man of fifty-five. He had an astonishing gift of oratory and was at once provocative and convincing. He spoke with the vehemence of a great soul and the simplicity of a child. Above all, he had vision. He saw the new society. His party, the Social Democratic Federation stood for Adult Suffrage. It worked for the Nationalization of Land and the instruments of production. These were to be administered for the good of all the people, not for the profiteering or benefit of a small class.

We were invited to meet William Morris at Kelmscott House. Mr. Morris received us with patient cordiality. Dressed in navy blue, and with his hair much ruffled, he looked like a sea captain receiving guests on a stormy day, but glad to see them. He wanted to hear about his Edinburgh friends, especially John Glasse, with whom he could discuss handloom weaving as well as literature or Socialism. He lighted his pipe and talked, sitting upright in a high chair. We listened to his copious, glittering talk. Morris belonged to a rich, radiant, present world. He created it. He was practical as well as impatient.

(4) In 1892, F. W. Jowlett of the Social Democratic Federation, asked Rachel and Margaret McMillan to move to Bradford. Rachel wrote about her experiences in her book, The Life of Rachel McMillanthat was published in 1927.

We arrived on a stormy night in November. Coming out from the entrance of the Midland station, we saw, in a swuther of rain, the shining statue of Richard Oastler standing in the Market Square, with two black and bowed little mill-workers standing at his knee.

Next morning we awoke in a new and quite unknown world. It was a Sunday, and the smoke cloud that usually enveloped the city had lifted. Tall dark chimneys reaching skywards like monstrous trees, made dark outlines against the faint grey of the sunny morning. On weekdays these big stone monsters belched forth smoke as black as pitch that fell in choking clouds.

The condition of the poorer children was worse than anything that was described or painted. It was a thing that this generation is glad to forget. The neglect of infants, the utter neglect almost of toddlers and older children, the blight of early labour, all combined to make of a once vigorous people a race of undergrown and spoiled adolescents; and just as people looked on at the torture two hundred years ago and less, without any great indignation, so in the 1890s people saw the misery of poor children without perturbation.

(5) Fenner Brockway, a member of the Independent Labour Party, later recalled the contribution that Margaret McMillan and Fred Jowett made to the social reforms in Bradford.

Margaret McMillan is a figure closely associated with Bradford's pioneering contribution to child welfare and education, with whom Fred Jowett worked closely and revered. Her coming to Bradford was characteristic. Accompanied by her sister Rachel, she travelled from London to lecture at the Labour Church in 1893, and they found themselves among men and women whom they recognised at once as their natural comrades.

Margaret McMillan remained in Bradford, devoting her whole time to the ILP, addressing meetings tirelessly in schoolrooms and at street corners, travelling all over the North to spread the socialist gospel. A year after coming to Bradford Margaret was elected to the School Board and began the educational work for which she is famed. Among other things, school baths and medical treatment were introduced, a physical care unknown in schools at that time, and for which, indeed no legal provision existed.

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

During my work in the district I met large numbers of the comrades who told me stories of the transformation in the borough council's attitude to the child health problem as a result of the work of Margaret Macmillan, who came to live in Bradford in 1893. From 1893 to 1902 Margaret had led the fight for the communal spirit in the town, where the Cinderella Club was started by the Socialist paper The Clarion, edited by Robert Blatchford. The Cinderella Club initiated the feeding of school-children in 1894, and in that year Margaret was elected to the Bradford School Board.

(7) In 1913 Rachel and Margaret McMillan attended a meeting called to protest against the Cat and Mouse Act.

When the Cat and Mouse Bill came into operation we joined a committee formed by Sir Victor Horsley, and went with many other women in the House of Commons, with a protest signed by a great number of people. It was a beautiful day in August when we set off, all full of zeal, across the paved lawns about St. Margaret's, till we reached the House and mounted the steps leading to the foyer in front of the ante-room, whose swinging doors were closed to us. There we stood a long time. An old lady was on the step above us - she was dressed very daintily in amethyst silk, her hair swathed in lace, among whose fold gleamed a thin gold chain. I was looking admiringly at her when suddenly a force of policemen swung down on us like a Highland regiment. We were tossed like dust down the steps. A moment later I was on the floor, the crowd behind flung over me in their wild descent. There was a big meeting that night at which I was to speak, but, of course, I did not speak at that meeting, nor at any other - for weeks.

(8) On 26th August 1916, Rachel and Margaret McMillan's house in London was bombedby a Zeppelin.

Looking out from my bedroom window, we saw something bright and sparkling in the sky.

"What can it be? I said to Rachel.

She looked at it steadily. "A Zeppelin"

Two or three of our friends ran upstairs to warn us. "It's a Zeppelin dropping bombs, or going to." We all gazed at it if fascinated.

A terrific blast struck the house as we went downstairs. I looked up and saw that Rachel had not followed us. In the same moment, an awful explosion shook the little house to its foundations. I called, and she appeared on the last landing carrying blankets. She had just time to join us when a third crash sent all our windows in, and the ironwork along the outer wall, which served as a ventilator for the lower room.