The London Docks may have been the gateway to the wealth of empire but the men who worked here were some of the poorest in Britain ... They were paid little and only by the hour. On average a doctor worked three hours a day. Resentment ran high. But all this was about to change. On August 12th 1889 the London dockers fought back ... Within a week 30,000 men were on strike ... For the strikers the suffering was intense; but not only for the dockers, for their families too ... In London the dock strike took to the streets. Thousands of dockers and their families marched carrying huge banners, their children holding signs saying please feed us. Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians: Having it All
On 4th May 1926 more than two million ... downed tools ... in solidarity with Britain’s one million miners. Ian Hislop’s Stiff Upper Lip: An Emotional History of Britain III: Last Hurrah? BBC 2012
The [Brentford] Trico women went out on strike ... After twenty-one weeks with production lines at a standstill Trico gave in. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s III: Goodbye Great Britain 75-77, BBC 2012
The Day of Action was extended into weeks of action – dustmen, ambulance drivers, caretakers, bus drivers, road-gritters and many more – began a series of rolling strikes that caused total chaos. Dominic Sandbrook, The 70s IV: The Winner Takes It All 77-79
The thing to do is to get organized; keep separated and you will be exploited, you will be robbed, you will be killed. Get organized and you will compel the world to respect you. Marcus Garvey
It’s a fight we knew all too well in Flint, Michigan. For it was here that my uncle and his fellow workers first brought down the mighty corporate interest that dominated their lives. It was the day before New Year’s Eve 1936 and hundreds of men and women took over the GM factories in Flint and occupied them for forty-four days. They were the first union that beat an industrial corporation, and their actions eventually resulted in the creation of a middle class. Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story, 2009
My uncle Vern was in something called the Great Flint sit-down strike. Just hours before the year’s end in 1936 he and thousands of other GM workers took over the Flint factories and barricaded themselves inside refusing to budge for forty-four days. The National Guard was called in. Michael Moore, Roger & Me 1989
The owners of Bryant and May threatened the girls with instant dismissal if they didn’t sign a document repudiating the article [White Slavery in London] and the journalists ... A strike committee was formed ... George Bernard Shaw volunteered as the cashier of the strike fund ... Annie Besant and the girls were triumphant. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s3e2: Victoria and Her Sisters, BBC 2002
Damned devilish dreams the horror show of deep-frozen Saturday nights fronting the gates of Hades at Murdoch’s Wapping. Snorting leviathan lorries smashing down the hill at the barbed wire and the purple-faced protesters, rage-red front covers of The Sun plastered like pirate flags the windscreens. See how from habit the bobby-boys in blue finger like lover’s their bully-sticks. esias
Ford of Britain can produce 3,100 cars a day. Made in Dagenham 2010 starring Bob Hoskins & Miranda Richardson & Sally Hawkins & Geraldine James & Rosamund Pike & Andrea Riseborough & Jaime Winstone & Daniel Mays & Richard Schiff & Phil Cornwell et al, director Nigel Cole, Ford advert
Now occupy more than seven square miles. ibid.
‘Those for industrial action hands up.’ ibid. Albert
‘Machinists threatening strike action – they couldn’t believe it.’ ibid.
‘That is not unskilled work.’ ibid. Rita convenor
‘Everybody out.’ ibid.
‘26,000 strikes in the United Kingdom.’ ibid. Barbara Castle
‘Because they can. They’re allowed to pay women a lower wage than men. All over the country women are getting less because they’re women.’ ibid. Albert
‘It’s a glimpse innit of what it could be.’ ibid. woman
‘This strike is about one thing and one thing only – fairness.’ ibid.
‘In six months’ time your union won’t exist. Industry cannot afford to pay women the same rates as men ... It will collapse under the weight of the extra wages.’ ibid. Ford boss
Ford Women Fight On ... Tide Turns Against Dagenham Women. ibid. newspaper headline
‘Rights is not privileges.’ ibid. Rita
‘It was a matter of principle. You had to stand up and do what was right otherwise you wouldn’t be able to look yourself in the mirror ... When did we in this country decide to stop fighting? ... We are the working classes, the men and the women ... Equal pay for women is right.’ ibid. Rita at conference
‘What’s worth fighting for?’ ibid. Rita to Barbara Castle
‘The government is in full support of the creation of an Equal Pay Act.’ ibid. Barbara Castle
‘Nobody expected us to come out on strike.’ ibid. Striker
But OILC never achieved across-the-board union recognition. The cost of the industrial action was high, around 1,000 contract workers were sacked and blacklisted. The strikes cost the operators £200,000,000. Crude Britannia: The Story of North Sea Oil 2/3, BBC 2009
The miners are not broken – they continue to fight; their destiny is in your hands. An embargo on blackleg coal and a levy on all workers must be adopted to save the miners from defeat.
And to the miners who are fighting I say: Every honest worker in the world admires your courage and loyalty in the fight which was forced upon you by the rapacious mine-owners, who have at their service the banks, the press and the resources of the press. A J Cook, foreword to The Miners Struggle and the Big Five Banks
You know as well as I do the terrible conditions in the coalfields, and the suffering of the women and children. I have been compelled to do the most unpleasant tasks of begging for food, money, boots, and cast-off clothing. Practically every day young men, stranded, call for food, clothing and shelter at my office. I have done my best for them. Every day the post brings letters to me and Mrs Cook begging for help, especially from expectant mothers, terrible epistles of agony and despair.
I have heard their cry for help, and have done all I can to give assistance. I have helped all I can, begged all I can, till I have been almost demented and in despair, because I hate charity and reliefs which make us all beggars ...
I now want remedies instead of relief. The more poverty increases, the more our people sink into despair and become the hopeless prey of all the most reactionary influences and movements. A J Cook, open letter to Arthur Horner
Workers marched on Whitehall for better wages and lower prices. Around seventeen million working days were lost to strikes in Britain between 1915 and 1918. There were strikes by miners in south Wales, engineers in Coventry, Sheffield and Manchester, and shipbuilders on Teeside, Tyneside and the Clyde. The First World War: Revolution, Channel 4 2003
Join the Union, girls, and together say, Equal Pay for Equal Work! Susan Brownell Anthony, 1820-1906
You can’t do it unless you organize. Samuel Gompers
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other – above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labours of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received. Albert Einstein
I consider it important, indeed urgently necessary, for intellectual workers to get together, both to protect their own economic status and, also, generally speaking, to secure their influence in the political field. Albert Einstein
The problem was they intended to close the yards ... Us shop stewards we took a decision that we were going to fight to keep the shipyards on the Clyde. Sammy Barr, shop steward UCL & ship-building industry
6,000 SACKED PRINT WORKERS: SOGAT AUEW HGA NUJ UNITED WE WILL WIN. Wapping Union protest banner
In the summer of 1973 the men at the Brookside Mine in Harlan, Kentucky, voted to join the United Mine Workers of America. Duke Power Company and its subsidiary Eastover Mining Company refused to sign the contract. The miners came out on strike. Barbara Kopple, Harlan Country USA ***** 1976
He died of black lung ... I was beginning to hate the company. ibid. Lois Scott
Organise the unorganised. With organisation you have the aid of your fellow men; without organisation you are a lone individual, without influence and without recognition of any kind. And exploitation of you and your family when it pleases some industrialist to make money out of your misery. ibid. John L Lewis, president UMW, televised address