Caroline E.D. Martyn, 1867-1896
Dundee Trades Council have helped
keep alive the memory of Caroline Eliza Derecourt Martyn by tidying up her
grave in Balgay Cemetery and restoring the granite column memorial. This was
originally paid for by subscriptions from the Dundee branch of the Independent
Labour Party and the Dundee Textile Workers’ Union.
Carrie Martyn was born in Lincoln
and was an early organiser of trade unions in the UK. Originally active in the
Conservative Party, she became a radical when she lodged in Reading with her
maternal aunt, Mrs Bailey, who held progressive views. After joining the Fabian
Society, she devoted herself full-time to socialism after being forced to give
up work due to ill-health.
She had many articles published and
also toured as a lecturer. Large crowds turned up to hear her speak. In 1896,
she was elected to the executive council of the Independent Labour Party and
became the organisations trade union organiser for North Scotland. It was
whilst she was organising female workers in Dundee that she contracted
pneumonia and died at aged 29. Keir Hardie wrote that she was the leading
socialist of the day.
There is an 1895 article – ‘Women
in the World’ by Caroline E.D. Martyn at:-
Taken from ‘The Labour Prophet',
journal of the Labour Church, Martyn argues that “the real freedom of women”
will be achieved by overcoming the wrongs “inflicted on them as a class rather
than a sex.”
Many thanks to Mike Arnott, Dundee
Trades Union Council secretary and chair of Dundee GMB local authority apex
branch, for supplying the photograph for this article, which appears on the Rebel Road site of Unite education.
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