_Early Efforts at Organisation._--It is probably not worth while to spend a great deal of time in the endeavour to decide what part women played in the earlier developments of trade unionism, very little information being so far obtainable. It seems, however, not unlikely that some of the loose organisations of frame-work knitters, woollen weavers, etc., that existed in the eighteenth century and later, may have included women members, as the Manchester Small-Ware Weavers certainly did in 1756, and Professor Chapman tells us that women were among the members of the Manchester Spinners' Society of 1795. At Leicester there appears to have been an informal organisation of hand-spinners, called "the sisterhood," who in 1788 stirred up their male friends and acquaintances to riot as a demonstration against the newly introduced machines.[22] We find some women organised in the unions that sprang up after the repeal of the Anti-Combination Act in 1824. The West Riding Fancy Union was open to women as well as men, and although the General Association of Weavers in Scotland expressly excluded female apprentices from membership it added the proviso, "except those belonging to the weaver's own family." In December the Lancashire Cotton Spinners called a conference at Ramsey, Isle of Man, to consider the question of a national organisation. The immediate motive of the conference was the failure of a disastrous six months' strike at Hyde, near Manchester, which convinced the leaders that no local unions could succeed against a combination of employers. At the Ramsey Conference, after nearly a week's discussion, it was agreed to establish a "Grand General Union of the United Kingdom," which was to be subject to an annual delegates' meeting and three national committees. The Union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the women and girls being urged to form separate organisations. The General Union lasted less than two years.[23]