As a proponent of women holding local offices, believing that would help in their claim for the larger vote, she ran as a member of the Bolton School Board in 1897 but was defeated. When a board member resigned in 1899, she expected to be appointed to fill the term based on the custom that the defeated candidate who had received the most votes in the prior election filled unexpired terms. Though the board refused to appoint her because she was a woman, Reddish ran successfully later that year for the post. She continued serving until at least 1907. Reddish joined the
Clarion Movement and the
Independent Labour Party in 1896, travelling with the first women's Clarion van tour. The tours allowed Reddish to use her public-speaking skills at public meetings where women discussed the value of
socialism. Two years later when the Independent Labour Party fused with the
Social Democratic Party, Reddish urged members to join the Bolton Socialist Party. As with her politics, Reddish believed in equality throughout the public sphere for women. She urged in her union reports for men to become more active in home duties and for women to develop their civic roles. She belonged to that group of radical feminists who pushed for full equality, classifying their sex as a disability. By 1899, her concern for providing support for women workers led her to become an organiser for the
Women's Trade Union League. Her focus with the Trade Union League was to improve both wages and conditions for working women. Between 1900 and 1901, Reddish helped circulate petitions for
women's voting rights among factory workers and she was the one chosen to present the final compiled petition, which contained nearly 30,000 signatures, to
Parliament. The campaign spurred wool workers in
Yorkshire, as well as cotton and silk workers from north
Cheshire to hold a similar petition drive. Reddish pushed the Guild to support enfranchisement and in 1904 at its annual conference, the Women's Co-operative Guild voted in favour of backing the pending franchise bill. She served as an organiser for the
North of England Society for Women's Suffrage between 1903 and 1905 and occasionally worked as a paid organiser for the
National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies in London. In 1903, Reddish became a founding member of the
Lancashire and Cheshire Women Textile and Other Workers Representation Committee, along with
Selina Cooper,
Sarah Dickenson,
Eva Gore-Booth and
Esther Roper. The group, for which she would later serve as treasurer, was formed evaluate parliamentary candidates and select those who would fight for voting rights of women workers. She wrote articles, including
Women and County Borough Councils: a Claim for Eligibility (1903) and
Women and the Franchise: A Claim for Its Extension (1904) which put forward her views and were distributed in local newspapers. In 1905, Reddish ran for office as a
Poor Law Guardian, having served on the committee of the Bolton Association for the Return of Women as Poor Law Guardians since 1897. She won the election and served as a Guardian until 1921. Reddish ran for borough council for the Halliwell Ward of Bolton in 1907, though she was unsuccessful. Later that same year, she went to
Ghent and
Brussels to study child care initiatives being launched in Belgium and upon her return, established the School for Mothers in Bolton. In 1911, she became president of the Manchester and Salford Women's Trade Society. She served as a delegate to the 1915
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom conference in
The Hague and then in 1919 Reddish organised the Bolton Women's Citizens Association. In the 1920s, illness forced her to curtail her activism. Reddish died on 19 February 1928 at Townleys Hospital of
Farnworth, Lancashire and was buried in the Heaton Cemetery on Bolton Wood Road. ==Posthumous recognition==