Matchgirls Strike Touched Off Explosion

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It is a great disappointment that the National Museum of Labour History gives such inadequate treatment to such an important event as the Matchgirls' strike.

Their earlier pamphlet on the Dublin General Strike led this reviewer to expect some what better from an institution which ought to inspire to authoritative status in the labour movement.

: There is no shortage of scholarship in Beer's pamphiet. His 46 pages include six of references, predominantly to local contemporary : material which would otherwise be little known. (Curiously however it omits any mention of Annie Besant's autobiography). On the contrary, the complaint to be made of Beer's piece is that its focus is too fine.

New Unionism - The pivotal role of the 1888 strike in the development of the 'New Unionism' and the reawakening of the labour movement is almost entirely omitted.

Without it the whole story is no more than a stirring tale of oppression and revolt in a historical vacuum.

The analysis of the fitful growth of the labour movement. in the nineteenth century is beset with difficulties and contradictions.

In the second half of the century, trade unionism and socialism both took their first uncertain steps into the world, sometimes together and sometimes reeling apart.

The difficulties ..of understanding this growth flow from the difficulties of understanding the economic history of the 19th century, and its last quarter in particular-the period of the "Great Depression'.

The British economy had reached the limits imposed upon it by its own empire as a market and a source of raw materials.

Outside the Empire it was challenged increasingly by Germany and the USA for the markets of the world.

Feared competition

Contrary to the Thatcherite vision of the dynamic entrepréneur, the capitalist classes of the world reacted with fear and loathing • to the threat of enforced competition. Investment declined and world trade stagnated.

The British trade union movement was not robust enough to stand against this ebb, but the process was complex and contradictory.

One effect of the unification of the imperial market was a substantial reduction in food prices, which offset the stabilisation, in some cases fall, in money wages.

At the same time, successive governmerts were not ignorant of the threat to their power represented by the relentless growth of the urban proletariat.

Reforms such as stato education and the extension of the right to vote were designed to deflect this threat.

In this aim the ruling class was only partly successful.

State education was eventually to produce generations of articulate labour leaders against whom new techniques of absorption would be needed.

The manhood suffrage itself brought into being demands for such leaders to act independently of the Liberal reformers.

In trying to assess conditions in a particular area, such as the East End of London, we are faced with another range of problems.

As Beer makes plain in his pamphlet, East London suffered from the first effects of industrialisation and did not recover fast enough to be hit by the second.

That is to say, mechanisation destroyed the silk weaving industry before the Great Depression even began, and the area's second major industryshipbuilding-suffered a disastrous crash in the late 1860s when the speculative shipbuilders ran against the brick wall of a limit to world trade.

Thus East London entered the Great Depression already depressed, with anything up to half a million dependent on public charity for their survival.

A minimal level of resistance persisted-evidenced by the bread riots of 1860-61 and 1867, but a systematic policy of atomisation, directed against any generalisation of welfare assistance, served to block major revolts developing on the City's doorstep.

In early 1888 even Engels had to admit that he saw the workers of East London as more passive, more accepting of oppression than those in any other part of the 'civilised world'.

It is in this context that the explosive strike of the matchgirls at the Bryant and May factory in Bow must be understood.

The origins of the socialist agitation around the Bryant and May factory can be traced to a meeting of the Fabian Society in June 1888.

At this meeting Clementina Black read a paper on 'Female Labour'. '. H.H. Champion afterwards presented information on Bryant and May's dividends and their exploitation of the workforce.

The meeting resolved to call for a boycott of the company. Annie Besant set out to research the question for her paper, the Link, and travelled to Bow the next day to discuss with the factory girls.

Annie Besant was a remarkable personality. Originally a devout and inspired christian and the wife of a clergyman, she was unable to reconcile herself to the poverty and misery in which her husband's congregation lived.

She was to break from the church and her family on the occasion of her publishing a pamphlet rejecting the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth.

She threw herself into the work of Bradlaugh's National Secular Society, writing regularly for the 'National Reformer' and conducting extensive lecture tours.

The struggle of 1880 for Bradlaugh's right to sit in Parliament as an atheist brought her LET INTEL Bryant and May strikers into contact with Aveling and others in Marx's circle. become However Marxist, and under she was never to the baleful influence of Shaw, joined the Fabians in 1885.

Her brand of socialism however was ill matched to that of the Fabians. She took a leading role 11 the Trafalgar Square ins of 1886 an 1887, and organised a defence fund to bail out the arrested.

Her position in the socialist movement of the time is reflectec chosen as one of Linnell's pallbearers after Bloody Sunday of November 1887.

girls strike sim af the dy el known as a regular orator at dock gate meetings.

Beer's pamphlet documents the problems that Besant found the factory and among outworkers who matchboxes.

The wages themselves were Were Relate Fined for go wretchedy low of 'offences was the widespread necrosis of the jaw, "phossy jaw', resulting from regular handling of phos phorus.

A particular irritation to th workers was that the compan had docked their wages to erect a statue of Gladstone.

On 23 June, Besant A revie w of 88" by Reg Beer. Reg Histo published her first article expos match factory under the title White Slavery in London'. Although Bryant threatened legal action, a visit by the Factory Inspector confirmed the fact that the illegal fines were taking place.

The company began to seek out which of the women had given Besant the information for her article, and three were dismissed early in July.

After a further sacking on July 5 the women walked out. The Fabians were forced to take responsibility for the strike that their publicity had brought about.

Defeat

This was not in fact the first industrial action at the Bryant and May factory.

Beer reports the earlier strike of 1885 over a wage cut and the phossy jaw problem; which won no general support, and was The memory still lived of this strike and also of the great demonstration of 1871 against the match tax. Obviously there was some tradition of collective action among the matchgirls, no doubt buoyed up by. the intermittent bread riots in the locality.

The difference in 1888 was the active intervention by the socialists.

Besant took up the task of organising a strike fund and giving a lead to the campaign. Although a large number of the women went to the country for the seasonal fruit picking work, some 800 were left in London dependent on strike pay.

As a result of appeals in The Link and other papers public donations began to flow in.

The main factor however which gave the strike the strength and determination to continue was the decision of the London Trades Council, led by John Burns, to give active An independent investigation into the factory bore out all of Besant's charges, and also made clear that the workers werę charged for their working materials, which Besant had never understood.

This was published in full in The Times, and Bradlaugh tabled parliamentary questions which promised more publicity.

ilable from WSL, 31 Dartmouth R, price 15p including postage. The Matc eer. Natio pamphlet hgirls nal Mu No. 2.

Besant kept up the momentum of the campaign: with rallies, meetings and deputations to Parliament.

By mid-July the pressure on the company was enough to force them to meet the strikers and the Trades Council.

The company agreed to abolish the fines and charges for materials, which was no major concession since both were illegal. It did however mean a big increase in real pay. A canteen would be provided away from the phosphorus and some other saftey improvements would be made.

On this basis the women returned to work. The 'phossy jaw' persisted however, until the development of the safety match effectively rendered the phosphorus match obsolete.

The matchgirls however retained their organisation after the return to work, and the following year sent a delegation to the TUC.

The matchgirls victory transformed the industrial situation in East London.

Tram ways

Besant and Tom Mann became involved in the unionis ation struggle for the London Tramways Company, and the example of the Bryant and May strike was powerful in winning the men over.

Although there were no strikes in this case, the union won a series of court cases over the company, and conditions improved greatly:

A much more important breakthrough followed at the Beckton Gas Works, where in 1889 Will Thorne unionised the unskilled to win an eight hour working day.

This in turn had a tremendous effect on the dock workers and led to the great dock strike of 1889. This wave of unionis ation of the unskilled was to change the face of trade unionism in Britain, breaking the hold of the older craft unions and the labour aristocracy on the TUC.

It was this change in the character of the TUC which was to make the formation of the Labour Party possible.

ien's paper of the iers Socialist League.

Articles *Chile *Textile *Meccano *NUPE and the cuts

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NOOSERIAL REM Stewards and workers at St. George's Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London, decided last week to move into occupation to prevent any further rundown of the hospital, which specialises in heart surgery.

St. George's has been listed for complete closure by June 30. The casualty department has been closed for some time as the first part of the plan by Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth AHA to move the facilities from St. George's to Tooting-which they claim will save £ 1½ million.

The stewards have decided to occupy at this point to prevent a ward closure scheduled for next week, and rundowns in the London area is growing to frightening proportions.

Another recent addition is the casualty department at the Royal Northern Hospital in Islington, due for closure on 1 March.

Opposition to the plan is strong. An action committee is being formed in the hospital, and Camden ambulance NUPE branch has joined other the Royal Northern depend very much on the support of consultants-not the most principled and reliable anti-cuts fighters!

Workers of St. Mary's Hospital, Harrow Road-also due for complete closure-are having problems fighting the AHA tactics of gradually reducing manning levels.

Over 400 Ealing teachers participated on January 22 in a half-day strike and mass meeting to oppose the sale of Twyford comprehensive school to the Church of England.

Ealing's Tory council has proposed that the sale, for £1.78 million, should take place by September. It provides backdoor route to the reintroduction of a selective, grammarschool set-up in a largely working class area.

The sale-part of a package of £2.5 million in education cuts that attack other aspects of the school service-has : been vociferously opposed by the majority of parents, teachers and school students, local community organisations and the 1,600-strong Ealing NUT.

No cover A well-supported policy of Wednesday 30 January turgid 15 minutes of waffle from NUT vice-president Peter kennedy, an equally vacant speech from school governor Moira Cyriaux, and a call for a "publicity campaign" -including a deputation to the Archbishop • Canterbury!-from local Labour left' councillor Hilary Benn..

In contrast Neil James correctly urged that the fight must be taken up through the organised labour movement and linked . to strike action to stop the cuts.

"Your jobs and our futures are a common goal to be defended" , he stressed.

The demands must include a restoration of the cuts, a policy of protecting education by linking expenditure to inflation as assessed by elected union committees; and occupation and strike action to halt the cuts.

To warm applause he also called for NUT recognition of the NUSS and for motions to this effect to be moved at the

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WOMAN WORKER