Recently, we have been informed that the article by Matthew Thomas, “Anarcho-Feminism in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, 1880--1914”, in International Review of Social History, 47 (2002), pp. 1--31, contains a number of pieces of text, in particular in the section “Motherhood, Childcare and Housework” (pp. 15--17), copied from an article by Judy Greenway, “Sex, Politics and Housework”, in: Christine Coates et al. (eds), The Diggers and Dreamers 94/95: Guide to Communal Living (1993), pp. 39-45, without the author having given any proper acknowledgement or reference to this article. Although our Instructions for Contributors clearly state that an author is fully responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material in which they do not hold the copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included, we deeply regret this incident, for which we would like to apologize to Judy Greenway. In the light of this information, the editors have decided, in agreement with Matthew Thomas, to withdraw the electronic version of the article from CJO. The original pagination of the issue, however, is preserved.

This article seeks to interpret the synthesis between anarchism and feminism as developed by a group of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century British women. It will demonstrate that the woman who embraced anarchism made a clear contribution to the growth of feminism. They offered a distinctive analysis of the reasons for female oppression, whether it was within the economic sphere or within marriage. The anarcho-feminists maintained that if an egalitarian society was ever to be built, differences in roles – whether in sexual relationships, childcare, political life or work – had to be based on capacity and preference, not gender. By combining these questions they developed a feminism that was all embracing at a time when the struggle for the vote was becoming the main question for women.

Clara Zetkin (1857–1933) remains one of the most famous figures in the history of the German and international Left. She rose to prominence as a social democrat beginning in 1890 and became a Marxist and, as of 1919, a member of the high-ranking cadre of the KPD; she was an activist of the Second International, starting in 1889, and belonged to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI) in the 1920s. She is known in history primarily as the leader and chief ideologue of the socialist, and later the international communist, women's movement, but is also a popular figure in the leftist women's movement of the twentieth century. Zetkin, the founder of International Women's Day, is still widely depicted as a heroine. However, in light of recent research conducted in Berlin and Moscow and from the perspective of the history of mentalities, the tendency to mythologize her needs to be questioned. This essay on Clara Zetkin's constructs of femininity is part of a biography oriented toward a history of mentalities, in which the socialist and communist Zetkin is presented in the entire societal context of her times, perceived as a contemporary of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From this perspective, it is precisely Zetkin's comments on the women's issue that mirror the influences of Social Darwinism and biological discussion at the turn of the century in Germany. The ideas held by the leader and theoretician of the international socialist women's movement on the “liberation of women” from “gender slavery” and “class bondage” were not aimed at pursuing an autonomous process of emancipating women for their own sake, but at pursuing a well-structured and directed process of educating them that would end up turning them into a new physically and mentally improved “consummate woman” who would efficiently serve the socialist society.

In 1900, Western Australia, a self-governing British colony, adopted compulsory conciliation and arbitration legislation, the first Australian colony to do so. This article focuses primarily on the roles the colonial state and capital played in the adoption of the legislation and proposes a broader, more complex explanation for the introduction of the legislation than current mainstream Western Australian historiography, which, mostly, constructed the event as an unproblematic regional labour triumph. This article argues that the legislation was passed to prevent disruption to gold mining, the industry driving the development of the colony, and to revive the flagging political fortunes of the colonial government. It asserts that the timing of the legislation pre-empted a more effective bill being introduced under conditions less favourable to capital. Organized labour, which, through its lobbying, had created consensus about the desirability of introducing the legislation, was unable to influence the shape of the legislation significantly.