Julia Varley
Julia Varley, OBE was an English trade unionist and suffragette.
She worked in a mill from the age of 12. At 15, she became the secretary of the Bradford Weavers' and Textile Workers' Union.
In 1909 Varley moved to Birmingham and established a branch of the National Federation of Women Workers at the Cadbury factory at Bournville. She was also involved in the Cradley Heath women chainmakers' strike of 1910 and the Black Country strike of 1913, and later sat on the General Council of the Trade Union Congress.
She was made OBE in 1931, and retired in 1938. She continued to live in Birmingham, before returning to Yorkshire, where she died in 1952.
In May 2013, she was commemorated by the erection of a blue plaque at her former home in Hay Green Lane, Bournville, by the Birmingham Civic Society.
