On this day, 13 June 1992, around 20 mostly South Asian women workers at a metal finishing plant in Burnsall, Smethwick, walked out on strike. They were demanding union recognition, equal pay and basic health and safety. The employer retaliated by sacking all of them. There were several disagreements between the union, GMB, and the strikers about the form and nature of the strike action, with the strikers increasingly resisting the union’s attempts to take control of the strike action. Though the women had had strong community support, the strike was eventually called off after a year by union officials, who decided it was unwinnable. Here is more info about what happened: https://libcom.org/history/burnsall-strike-glimpse-future-sarbjit-johalhttps://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1144905989027883/?type=3
It’s incredible how much women do behind the scenes. I know a realtor who relies strongly on his girlfriend’s charisma, beauty and personality to gain clients.
I’ve just been reading The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel, about the Harvard women who supported the bulk of astronomy research there over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While many of them did receive public and academic credit as well as pay - although the university always resisted making any of them faculty until the 1950s - almost all the male astronomers featured were married to accomplished women in their own right, many of them scientists, and you can bet their husbands weren’t putting them on all their papers.
Which has bled into the modern academic world, where many people are expected to do what was essentially a two-person job (filled by male academic + wife) by themselves, or while married to someone else trying to do the same thing. The lack of acknowledgement of women’s work fucks everybody over.
#people who want a return to the mythical prior era #when women did not work #do not want women to stop working #they want them to stop getting credit and pay for it
This reminds me of how early film history, it was always the male director’s wife who did the editing of the films, because the cutting and connecting of film strips was considered a lot like sewing. Of course, anyone who knows anything about film and editing can tell you it changes how good a movie is very easily.
Don’t believe me? Look at the differences between the famous Jaws as the public’s release of it (insisted upon by the female editor) and spielberg, the male director’s version of it (missing basic suspense methods, shows the phony shark too much, etc). Same goes for almost every tarantino film. Editing makes or breaks a film and even today, you can bet your socks editing “the invisible art” was pioneered and is still pushed by women.
^^^^^^ This is so true! And once film editing began to be recognized as an actual art form, women were shoved out of the editing room so that men could be artistic or whatever.
Also Tarantino referred to his favorite editor as being kind of like his mom or something and I swear to god the more I see of him, the less I like him.
The “female editor” for Jaws was Verna Hellman Fields, who cut many other notable films, including American Graffiti along with Marcia Lucas.
Tarantino’s “favorite editor” was Sally JoAnne Menke who edited all of Tarantino’s films until she died.
Because naming and credit is important, especially when you’re talking about women not getting credit and recognition of their work as named individuals.
If you want to know more about women in early filmmaking (emphasis American) and the sociology of how different roles were divided, gendered, and re-gendered in the first decades, I highly recommend Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood by Karen Ward Mahar.
There are a number of other books to follow that, but it’s 2am and I’m tired so hit me up later for them.
You know what happens when women type? They EDIT. It is a service they are expected to provide invisibly - not to let a mistake or imperfection show to their husband’s audience, but also not to intrude upon his sense that this is all his ideas and his labor. Wives are the unacknowledged story and script doctors, and often co-authors for so many supposedly male-authored works.
Also, I second Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood. Mahar was my history prof for three or four courses and she is incredibly knowledgeable and engaging.
In the early 20th Century, historians Charles and Mary Beard tried to actually get her contributions to their common work acknowledged and the male establishment kept “politely” ignoring her existence no matter how hard Charles tried to advocate against that.
Men refused to believe John Stuart Mill when he openly credited his
long-time friend and then wife Harriet Taylor Mill with her
contributions to their work too.
Men knew exactly what they were doing and that allowing another man to break ranks would limit their own ability to exploit their own wife’s labor.
“Which has bled into the modern academic world, where many people are expected to do what was essentially a two-person job (filled by male academic + wife) by themselves, or while married to someone else trying to do the same thing. The lack of acknowledgement of women’s work fucks everybody over.“
Marcia Lucas is literally the reason Star Wars turned out good. She took George’s footage and created a classic. His original cut was *terrible*
Fascist Tommy Robinson gets a milkshake shower for the second time in two days on his campaign trail in the north.
FASCISTS ARE VULNERABLE TO DAIRY PRODUCT BASED WEAPONRY
Resorting to acts of violence doesn’t change anything or anyone. Act to cause change.
Hold up. Are you saying spilling a milkshake is an sct of violence? I would say Tommy was acting the most violent, he approached this man in the street and got defensive against him surrounded by his goons. He’s out promoting violent beliefs and his desire to impliment that violence.
Fascists and non-fascists want incompatable worlds, fascists will not be happy until all groups they dislike are dead, that is always their end goal. Acting out against them stops them, you disrupt their attempts to consolidate power. If you want change you need to deal with fascism that will always oppose your change and type of world.
So yeah. When they say “LOL libturds call everything Nazis”
Remember this.
They literally want Adolf Hitler’s face on money.
They want to bring back concentration camps.
They want to purge the ‘undesirables’.
And they want to divert attention from these points until it’s too late, until all of a sudden it’s the middle of kristallnacht 2.0 and there’s no one left to speak out for you.
They are, literally, absolutely goddamned Nazis. They are as Nazi as the Nazis who worked under Adolf Hitler, who were really into being Nazis, who incidentally are their heroes. They’re fuckin Nazis.
Which is of course what POC, Jewish people, and black people have been saying, but nah you all want to go on about how both sides have points.
No they fucking don’t.
And saying so is an act of violence.
I hope this gentleman remains safe too. The fact that’s he’s even come out with this puts him in a lot of danger. A whole lotta kudos to him and I sincerely hope he’ll stay safe.
