Kate McLean
[married name Beaton], Catherine [Kate] (1879–1960), trade unionist in Glasgow
Catherine McLean known as Kate McLean and later Kate Beaton (6 January 1879 – 21 October 1960) was a British trade unionist and councillor in Glasgow. She led the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW) and several disputes including the six-month-long networkers strike in Kilbirnie in 1913.
Life
McLean was born in Glasgow in 1879. She was the fourth of six children and she attended school until the age of twelve. She began her association with socialist causes when she joined the Women's Labour League. The following year she was in the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW). She was one of their delegates to the important Glasgow Trades Council. In 1911 she was one of the first six women to attend the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Dundee as delegates (rather than wives). She was involved with the STUC until 1914 when she married.
The cotton-thread workers of Neilston struck on 25 May 1910 and McLean and Esther Dick quickly signed up the strikers into the NFWW. The strike grew as the employers were unwilling to talk to the NFWW and by June it was a lock-out with hundreds of new (striking) NFWW members.
The public source identifies “Kate McLean” as [married name Beaton], Catherine [Kate] (1879–1960), trade unionist in Glasgow. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kate, McLean and married.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q19325208. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1960, 1913 and 1911.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kate McLean” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.