you ended up being half an hour late for clocking on, and of course you'd get docked. And they did it with just a notice on the wall, they didn't talk to anybody about it ... Well, one person got caught and of course all hell broke loose. When the shop steward went up to talk to the management, he was rude to him, so ... it was 'Right, everybody is out' and we just dropped our tools and walked out, and we were all standing out on the pavement. And I think we were out for about a week over that. While the Monthly Journal (and former officials like John Halfpenny) might attribute successful militancy to the "splendid leadership" provided by union officials, it was much more often the case, as the journal's own pages attest, that strike action occurred spontaneously. One of the best indicators of this phenomenon in the metal industry was the letters sent by union organisers to the higher echelons on the trade union movement, asking for endorsement of disputes that had already taken place and been won at the workplace. Reflecting a common class position across the gender divide, this tradition of militancy was shared by women workers, and was not confined to issues such as equal pay. In the same period in which overt sexism was common in the Monthly Journal , there were also reports which in some senses contradicted that sexism. For example, a strike at Iplex Plastics in Elizabeth, South