On this day, 5 July 1888, 1,400 women and girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in east London walked out on strike in solidarity with a group of workers who had been sacked.
Journalist Annie Besant had published an article in her newspaper, The Link, about the conditions in the factory, stating: “Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because under-fed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on to the streets provided only that Bryant & May shareholders get their 23 per cent and Mr. Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks?… Girls are used to carry boxes on their heads until the hair is rubbed off and the young heads are bald at fifteen years of age?”
To try to salvage their reputation, the company tried to force their employees to sign a statement praising their working conditions. A small group of women refused, and were fired. The remaining workers at the plant immediately walked out in their support. They quickly formed a union and chose Besant as their leader.
Management quickly offered to reinstate the worker, but the strikers refused to return to work, demanding in addition the abolition of a system of fines for things like talking or going to the toilet without permission. Right-wing newspapers like the Times attacked the women, falsely claiming they were “egged on to strike by irresponsible advisers… pests of the modern industrialized world”.
But the workers held out for three weeks until eventually Bryant & May agreed both to reinstatement and the abolition of fines. The dispute helped spur a huge wave of self-organisation of non-union workers in Britain, particularly amongst east London dockers who walked out themselves the following year.
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Pictured: Annie Besant and the strike committee https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/2027213290797144/?type=3
