For many years, farm workers fought to rescue themselves from bleak, soul-destroying poverty. Their victories and their bitterest defeats, from the cruel treatment of the Tolpuddle Martyrs to the false dawn of the Second World War are recounted in Sharpen the Sickle. "It is the history of the awakening of the exploited rural poor. It shows us the times, the way workers and their families lived. Every page brings alive, the privation and bitterness that made farm workers among the first to organize themselves into a Union and to take on their exploiters. And it does not hesitate to criticize the men who led them and the decisions taken." Jack Boddy, General Secretary of the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers.

Politics constructs gender and gender constructs politics: this is a central theme in this collection of essays which seek not only to write a history that focus on women's experiences but seeks also to analyse those dynamic forces that have shaped that history. It examines the 'making' of the other half of the working class - women - as workers, trade unionists and political activists, and seeks to weave together intricate relationship between class and gender, particular within the process of industrialization. It is because the class/gender relationship has often been either ignored or misunderstood that it has been possible to write general histories of the labour movement in which women are hardly mentioned. It features contributions from leading and up-and-coming women labour historians, essays are in three sections: the labour market/work (typical and atypical); trade unions; and politics.