Co-operative Women's Guild

The guild was founded in 1883 by Alice Acland, who edited the "Women's Corner" of the Co-operative News, and Mary Lawrenson, a teacher who suggested the creation of an organization to promote instructional and recreational classes for mothers and girls.

[1] It began as an organization dedicated to spreading the co-operative movement, but soon expanded beyond the retail-based focus of the movement to organizing political campaigns on women's issues including health and suffrage.

Maternity benefits were included in the National Insurance Act 1911 because of the guild's pressure.

The guild became more politically active, and expanded its work beyond the British Isles; their objectives included the establishment of minimum wages and maternity benefits, and in April 1914 they were involved in an International Women's Congress at The Hague, which passed a resolution totally opposing war: this Conference is of opinion that the terrible method of war should never again be used to settle disputes between nations, and urge that a partnership of nations, with peace as its object, should be established and enforced by the people's will.In July 1931 the Women's Co-operative Guild at their conference passed a resolution advocating compulsory sterilisation for the mentally or physically unfit.

The guild continued with several local branches, although it did not have the visibility within the co-operative movement that it once did.