‘Plucky lasses’, ‘pea soup’ and politics: the role of ladies’ football during the 1921 miners’ lock‐out in Wigan and Leigh

Abstract

'Pea soup' football matches were played and organized by women from the working-class communities of Wigan and Leigh during the miners' LockOut of 1921. Encouraged by local labour movements and by their menfolk and inspired by the famous Dick, Kerr's Ladies' Football team from Preston, they played on farmer's fields in front of crowds exceeding 5,000
to raise money for the soup kitchens which fed the miners' children. 'Pea soup' football is highly significant in two fundamental areas. Firstly, it reveals how football was regarded as both a vehicle of community cohesion and social emancipation for women, and secondly, it is representative of what Ouditt defines as the 'plucky heroine' ideology contrived during the war effort, where women and girls were thrown into traditional male roles at home, in the work place and on the sports field.' The 'plucky heroine' took up the challenge with relish and extended it into the early post-war years, where it was met with considerable opposition from a society that wished to see a return to pre-war gender roles. In Shaw's play of 1924, 'St Joan' acts as an analogy for the ideology of the 'plucky heroine'. Seaman describes Shaw's St Joan as a 'tomboy' who (like the 'pea soup' players of Wigan and Leigh) rejected established gender roles and traditions. She was rude and disrespectful to her elders and insisted on working within male spheres, rejecting accepted feminine modes of behaviour. Seaman states that 'Whether Shaw's Joan belonged to the fifteenth century or not is uncertain; that she belonged to England in the 1920s is unquestionable'.