Workers' Liberty Workers' Liberty The real story of Made in Dagenham Submitted by cathy n on 14 July, 2008 - 15:13 Author: Becky Crocker London Workers' Liberty is holding a meeting about the story and lessons of the strike on 21 October 2010. Details here . *** In June 1968 women sewing machinists in the Ford car plant in Dagenham took a stand for equal pay in a strike that stopped production for three weeks. They succeeded in getting abolished their lower “women’s rate” of pay and precipitated wider action: there were other equal pay strikes that year and the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women’s Equal Rights (NJACCWER) was formed by women trade unionists, who organised a demonstration for equal pay in 1969. Without the Ford women, there would have been no Equal Pay Act of 1970. Equal pay had been a confused aspiration for the trade union movement since the mid nineteenth century when women’s work was seen as a threat to male employment and bans on married women working were supported by trade unions.

When unemployment rose during the 1930s, increased female employment (from 27% of the total workforce in 1923 to 30% in 1939) fuelled the fear of a female threat and unions renewed their call for marriage bans or a wider gap between male and female wages. The idea of a male breadwinner bringing in a “family wage” institutionalised women’s low pay and influenced the labour movement. The welfare state was established around a conception of society in family units. Beverage said, “The attitude of the housewife to gainful employment outside the home should not be the same as that of the single woman. She has other duties...” It was down to women’s organising to defy these attitudes and fight for a wage that would not allow women to be used as cheap labour to bring down wages as a whole. The demand of the Ford women in 1968 was originally to re-grade their jobs from unskilled B grade to semi-skilled grade C. This demand was not won until another strike in 1984.

Ironically, the Ford women had not been able to use the Equal Pay Act that they precipitated to win their re-grading, as they could not compare themselves to a man in their role; they could only claim that their skill level matched some men. The real cause of the pay gap between men and women was and remains women’s segregation into underpaid and devalued jobs. Just as the Ford women had to fight to prove their worth, fights in low-paid industries such as cleaning are happening and are necessary today. This is the story of the Ford Sewing Machinists’ struggle for equal pay, with extracts from interviews (conducted by the TUC) with the women and trade unionists who took part. The job The sewing machinists at Ford made the car seat covers. It was a skilled job. Assessors inspected them on the job. Sheila Douglas, one of the women involved in the dispute said, “I had to do 30 seat covers an hour, we were watched over and timed”. At Ford there was a skilled male rate, a semi-skilled male rate, an unskilled male rate and a women’s rate, which was only 87% of the unskilled male rate.

With the obvious injustice of the ‘women’s rate’ and the devaluation of the skill they brought to the job, there was a strong feeling, as expressed by Violet Dawson, from the dispute, that, “We wanted C grade, we wanted equal pay”. The women put up with harsh working conditions. The company expanded its premises at the River Plant in Dagenham into an asbestos air craft hanger with holes in the roof. Sheila Douglas recalled, “We used to stuff the seats with wadding. The building was two-thirds brick and above that asbestos. All these little holes used to get drafts in. We used to stuff holes in the ceiling with wadding to keep warm”. Machinists worked without guards on the needles and injuries were common. It was said that you weren’t accepted as a proper machinist until you’d been caught by the machine. The wage was small. On grade B, women earned eight or nine pounds. Sheila Douglas admitted it “seemed like a lot of money, because... I’d been on piece work... if I didn’t work, I didn’t earn.

When we went to Fords we was on time work so whatever you done you got some wage each week…” But the money was already spoken for. Sheila was “living at home, I had to give my mum money and she needed anything I could give up.” Vera Sime, a fellow striker, said, “I gave my sister half my wages. She looked after my children so we had half each, that’s how we worked it”. Violet agreed, “It went in the home didn’t it, and on the children”. Grievances about the women’s rate and their devalued skill were raised through company procedures with no success. The company feared upsetting its entire grading structure and causing resentment amongst male workers. Bernie Passington, convenor for the T & G union who fought for the women at the car plant, said, “They got ignored. I went up with two stewardesses with thirteen pieces for a head rest and said to the company man, ‘Put them together’. He said, ‘Well, what are they?’ I said, ‘You should know. 13 pieces. Give them to a production girl and she knows what to do with them. That girl don’t put all those bits in a jig or anything.

All she knows is she’s got to put all those bits together so at the end of it there’s a neat rolled head rest’. I said, ‘Who else does that? Nobody. ...She has to use her mind’. But you still couldn’t get anywhere with the company...” Sheila recalled, “That’s how it was all sort of kicking off really. About the C grade and for equal rights it ended up. But originally it was for the C grade we were fighting”. Bernie said, “And in the end, like any group of workers, if they’re going to take no notice, better do something what makes them take notice”. The strike Sheila Douglas remembered, “We had a meeting on the shop floor and we had a meeting in the employment exchange to vote whether we would strike or not. And that’s how it happened. I don’t think it was unanimous but it was more for than against obviously because we came out on strike.” The strike by the women sewing machinists brought production at the Ford motor company to a standstill. The impact was huge, especially when the Ford Halewood Plant in Liverpool joined the action. Bernie said “It shook them to the core.

And being women, the mighty Ford motor company got women in dispute… It was something new. It shut the place down, they were laying people off”. Sheila: “It wasn’t the done thing at the time.” Violet: “It frightened them.” When history was made in Dagenham | Socialist Review When history was made in Dagenham Issue section: The film Made in Dagenham portrays the 1968 strike of women workers at Ford. Dora Challingsworth and Sheila Douglass spoke to Sabby Sagall and Sheila McGregor about their experiences during the strikes. Dora Challingsworth (left) and Sheila Douglass (right) On 7 June 1968, 187 women sewing-machinists at Ford Dagenham in east London struck against sex discrimination in job grading. The women had been placed in the unskilled B grade although they did the same level of work - making car seat-covers - as men placed in the semi-skilled C grade. The women, moreover, were paid 85 percent of the male rate. Confronted by Ford's refusal to upgrade them, they walked out and stayed out for three weeks.

They were joined by the 195 women at Ford's Halewood plant in Merseyside. The women had no previous experience of collective struggle on their own issue and, on the face of it, were quite unprepared to take on the mighty Ford multinational corporation which, in 1968, had an annual budget greater than that of India. But the strike brought Ford's entire car production to a standstill. The women faced two initial problems: it was always difficult for one section to win support from other sections on a "narrow" grading issue - Ford had introduced the new grading structure precisely in order to divide the workers. Also, as women, winning support from their male colleagues, who saw them as working for "pin money", was a real problem. For the strike to succeed it needed support from at least one or two of the unions with members among the women. But the official union leaders adopted contradictory and ambivalent positions. The trade union side of Ford's National Joint Negotiating Committee were hostile, regarding negotiations and strike decisions as their preserve. The AEF engineering union executive supported it as a strike for equal pay but refused to fight over the grading grievance.

The National Union of Vehicle Builders (NUVB), of which 135 of the Dagenham women were members, prevaricated, although Fred Blake, the NUVB local district official, now aged 91, played an honourable role in the strike. The Transport and General Workers' Union refused to back the strike. However, the women stood firm, their resolve strengthening by the day. Such was the impact of the action that in the middle of it the strike committee was invited to tea by Barbara Castle, employment secretary in Harold Wilson's Labour government. And the women's confidence had grown so much that during the meeting shop steward Rosie Boland raised the issue of equal pay for the first time. In the end, the Ford women won 92 percent of the men's rate, though it took another 16 years and another strike lasting seven weeks to win the regrading. The women's strike took place in the wake of serious defeats for the unions at Ford, in 1957 and 1962, when 17 stewards were sacked. It therefore represented the resurgence of rank and file trade unionism in one of the most ruthlessly anti-union firms in the world.

It also laid the groundwork for the important all-out strikes of 1969 and 1971. There are many unsung heroines and heroes in the story - the women themselves, but also their rank and file leaders: the two stewards, Rosie Boland and Lil O'Callaghan, and the male convenors Henry Friedman and his deputy Bernard Passingham, who greatly encouraged the women. Sadly, the two women have passed away. But insofar as the Made in Dagenham film revives their memory, it is doing an important job. The strike gave a huge impetus to the women's movement. In the years that followed, women's trade union membership soared and the Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970. The strike also gave rise to the National Joint Action Campaign for Women's Equal Rights. The Ford women's strike was one of the most important since the Matchgirls' Strike of 1888. It was the spark that lit a flame that burns to this day. Their struggle remains an inspiration to millions of women fighting discrimination and poor working conditions. Sabby Sagall What do you remember about the June 1968 strike?

Sheila: We were annoyed about the way that some people had been getting C grade for doing what we did. Why weren't we sufficiently skilled to get C grade? We had two or three votes and convenors had been down to the company management to put our case but they weren't interested. Then we had a vote to come out on strike. We were determined to show we weren't being treated properly. That was the feeling among most of the women? S: Yes, I would say 98 percent of us. You always get one or two who don't want to do something - either for themselves or anyone else - but yes, it was unanimous really. Did you get support from the official unions? S: Not at first. We had to wait for that. But eventually we did, and that's when we started to get a little bit of strike pay. Why didn't the official union support you to start with? S: They probably thought we weren't worth it. We were only a handful of women, so our dues to them were nothing. We were only 187 women; that was like a drop in the ocean to the union.

Dora: Bernard Passingham, the deputy convenor at the time [see interview overleaf] had other areas he always concentrated on, not the women. I always have a go at him about that! But Lil O'Callaghan took it up and she was a good steward. S: Bernard became our convenor and I must admit after a while he was doing a damn good job. D: What I can gather from Bernard is it wasn't just the company - the union was against it as well. They couldn't solve their pay claim because the women wanted grading. Bernard told me that Jack Jones [later general secretary of the TGWU] was there and he said, "What can we give these women to get them back to work?" and then someone said, "Let's get them equal pay," not the grading. That's how we got the equal pay. There were grading grievances everywhere at Ford's so regrading the women would have cost Ford more than giving the women equal pay. What was the attitude of your male workmates? S: Well I didn't know many men anyway, I can only go by my father. He worked across the yard from me.

When we went on strike he said, "You've got to fight for what you want, Sheila. If you want anything no one's going to give it to you. You do what you want to do." So he was out of work as well as me. When did you come to think that equal pay was also an important issue? S: I didn't want to go back to work! I wanted to stay out to get my C grade. I've always been on my own, I earn my own living, and I thought getting C grade would make a great deal of difference if and when I retired. But a lot of the women were married and their husbands and maybe other family members were working at Ford's. They were struggling, and so eventually we got sevenpence more an hour for all women in Ford, but we never got our C grade. Could you say something about the atmosphere of the strike? Did you feel confident of winning at the beginning? S: It wasn't a confident feeling when we came out, no way. But I presume we all felt that we deserved C grade, and we were determined that we weren't going to go back for less.

If you see any bits on television where the girls are talking coming out of the gates they're saying to reporters, "We'll stay out forever!" or as long as it takes. So they were determined. You were taking on the mighty Ford empire and making history. S: But we didn't think we were that important at the time, let's be honest. All we were was a handful of women who thought we deserved a better standard of pay. So we thought we'd try our luck and see what happens. It's not as if we hadn't been out on strike before. We were always in and out for this department or that. It was a known fact that Ford workers were strikers. But you closed down the whole of Ford's! S: Yes, but we didn't think of that at the time. We didn't think that we could do that. We just thought we were coming out to try and gain C grade for ourselves and that's how it started off and it gradually got worse and worse. Because naturally you can't put a car on sale if it's not got a seat in. That's when we realised that we were more important than we thought.

We hadn't really thought that far ahead, so when it happened it was a bit of a surprise. Well, it was to me! People just took it because it had gone from C grade by then to equal pay - or equal rights. That's when it really struck home that what we had done was, you know, a bit naughty really. Did the question of equal pay become as important as the grading issue? S: I must be honest, not in my mind. I thought we should get C grade, so the equal pay wasn't that important. I don't mind it being there but I still felt we should be trying to fight for C grade. For you the C grade was more important, but for lots of people outside Ford's equal pay was more important. D: I understand what you're saying, but the women wanted to be recognised for their skills. To get the job you needed the skills to do it, but you were classed as unskilled. Dora, you were involved in the 1984 strike - how did that develop? D: They kept putting in wage claims which would be thrown out. That happened for two years.

By this time they'd closed down different departments and Bernard Passingham had hardly any men, so he had us, and he stuck in a bit more. The union didn't want to be bothered with it. What, go on strike for women? Ron Todd [the TGWU leader] came down to take a meeting with the women and they booed him out of the plant. Every time he went to speak they booed him, because he was coming in to tell them, "Forget it this time and we'll put it in again in two years time." It took a seven-week strike. The company didn't want to give in because a lot of people were sitting out there waiting to come in for their grade. You'd hear them saying, "I hope the women get it, because it's our turn to go in." But the women were more determined as well in 1984. They didn't get it the first time round. You're not going to be second time losers, are you? How did you organise the strikes? Did you picket and visit other workers to get support? D: No, they just did it themselves.

The stewards at the time were more for the women then, even Bernard, as I said. They had to get people to do evaluations on different jobs. In the end that panel came up with we could have gone in E grade - way past a C grade. They said we could fight on longer and go up to an E grade. That's how badly we had been treated. During the 1968 strike I seem to remember Rosie Boland, another shop steward, and Bernard went up to Halewood to persuade the Halewood women to come out as well. S: I don't think they had any problem getting the women out, it's just that the men up there were really against them. D: In the 1984 strike we just made a phone call [to Halewood] and told them we were coming out and that was it: they were there. "Are you getting your bags now?" they said. We said yes and that was it. They were good up there. We couldn't have done it on our own - that's why our friends in Halewood should be involved in all this. Where are they now?

Did you feel inspired in 1984 by the memory of the 1968 strike? D: Yes, because they weren't treated properly at all. Although they came back with equal pay that is not what they went out for. They were let down. The women were in quite good spirits for the 1984 strike. They were determined and they weren't going to go back with anything less. I went down on the picket and they used to get the lorry drivers in to break up the wooden palettes they put work on so they could be used on the fire on the picket line. The coal people were out on strike at the time too and they had pickets out, we had pickets out and we used to have a right laugh. A lot of the office staff used to come down and give us bottles of whisky to keep warm on the picket line. But no one tried to cross the picket line? D: No. Ford's tried to fetch work in on the railway. They got it in, actually. But the men in the paint, trim and assembly plant wouldn't use it. So they did try. So there was solidarity from the men? D: Yes.

We did get that in 1984. You had a lot of moaners - "Why don't you women get back to work?" - but the majority did back us. The men could have used that work and had they used that trainload we could have been out for months. Why did the men back you in 1984 in a way they didn't in 1968? D: They recognised our skills. And I got to know the other stewards as well and so I did a lot of talking with them and it was only fair that they backed us. We backed them in other things and came out with no argument. Dora, were you a steward then? D: I was ill treated by a foreman and that's the reason I went in as a steward. I went out for a hysterectomy and I came back and he put me on the end of this line where you've got to bend up and down. So I went to see the doctor and he said I'd got to come off that job. But the foreman phoned the doctor up and got him to change his mind to say I could do that job. After I was a steward I got that foreman transferred.

It wasn't only about me. He could have treated other women like it, and it's not on. S: But it's because we were women and he thought he could get away with it. D: You had to be really strong. If you're right you're right. If you're wrong you've got to back away. It was funny because we had a man senior steward first who we voted in and he said, "If you do it with me, Dora, I'll do it," so I said OK. He bloody died in about a year and it was all left to me! But you couldn't do it without the women - there's your backing. The company knew that. If anything was wrong in H-building I'd only have to ask and they would stop. That's where you're strong because you all stick together. S: You've got to be all behind one another because otherwise it's pointless, isn't it? D: The company and the union were against the women. I told the union they were rubbish. One time we went up to the union headquarters at Transport House because no one was taking any notice of us.

So I went up there and sat there and was told Ron Todd was busy and I said I don't care, I'm not going anywhere. In the end he sees me and he says, "I'm not having this. You just come up here unannounced and I've got to see you." And I said, "Well, Ron, if you don't like it then you'd better get your people underneath you to do their job." All men obviously. But it was great after that. Once we were at a conference and Ron had had his knees done and he was on crutches. So I said, "Whatever's up with you?" and he said, "I've had my knees done," and I said, "Well, you should have stopped begging, shouldn't you?" Listening to you talk you really feel the power of women workers who were well organised. Do you have any advice to people today, given the situation we're facing? D: We went to a school a while ago and we were talking to school children, and what I say to them is if they're going to join a union they must have a branch, go every month and hear different stories of people and what they get up to in work.

You get more idea of what's going on in the world, because where else do you find that? I don't want to sell the unions because they're not always all that good, but it's somewhere to go. Otherwise get into politics and sort yourself out. Today you don't get big factories, you don't get lots of women who all work together, but they need to come together. How else do you do that? Do you think women today who still suffer discrimination and sexism at work should look back to the examples of 1968 and 1984 for inspiration? S: Yes. I still think there are lots of women who are not getting their just deserts. There's a law, but who takes notice of the law? Why is it there if people don't take any notice of it? Women are having to fight again to get their just deserts. It's 40-odd years ago when this came in and why is it still not working? What do you think of the new film, Made in Dagenham? D: It's good that they do mention that the women came out originally for recognition of their skill.

People keep saying they came out for equal pay, which isn't what they came out for. S: The film was a fair imitation. You have to give it a bit of poetic licence to make it interesting, like when they ripped their tops off, the ladies, because it's a sweatshop. But that never happened! D: Like Effing Eileen. We had so many Eileens and she was always swearing so that was her name. When Henry Ford came in she made a hat, she wrote "Bollocks" on it, and sat on the front machine. The foreladies were saying, "Eileen, take that hat off!" and she wouldn't. She sat there and he walked past her. Sometimes, it was a laugh. "It was time to dig in" - Bernard Passingham Bernard Passingham Did the strike come out of the blue? The dispute slowly built up. And like most of the battles with women once they make up their mind, they move. In other words they got fed up with being put off and they decided there was only one way - to take action. I know that you and Henry Friedman, the convenor when you were deputy convenor, gave the women a lot of encouragement.

How important was that? Let me put it this way. Here we had a couple of hundred women pretty raw to the question of disputes and it was a question of guidance to make sure they weren't going to go off the track and run wild. So we gave advice, and I think we gave advice correctly, that it was time to dig in, and dig in they did. But the initiative came from the women? Oh, absolutely. What was the attitude of the male workers at Ford's? By and large they accepted the fact that women could go on strike. No one had a go, it was just accepted by the men. The women made their decision - if the men had gone on strike they wouldn't harass the women, and vice versa. Were you surprised when Rosie Boland raised the question of equal pay during that famous tea party with Barbara Castle? No, the question of equal pay had always been there as far as the trade union was concerned. They're working for Ford's, they're doing the job, they should be getting the same money as the men. Obviously, among some of the women, there was an argument that men should be earning the money because they've got a family and so on, but it wasn't general.

What sort of impact did the strike have on the wider movement - in particular on other women workers? I felt it had a great deal of influence. Here we had women fighting for their right to equal pay. As a result of the women's strike obviously other companies started paying equal pay to avoid disputes. Would you encourage women workers to see the new film to derive some inspiration from the Ford sewing-machinists all those years ago? Yes I would, because I think they would learn from it. Bernard Passingham was deputy convenor at Ford Dagenham during the 1968 strike and also a member of the TGWU executive committee. Made in Dagenham is reviewed in this month's Socialist Review . Do you have any memories of the Ford women's strikes? Are you in contact with any of the women who took action in Halewood? If so, please contact Socialist Review. Share article Tea and militancy | World news | The Guardian Feminism Tea and militancy This week saw the introduction of the Equality Act 2010 and the release of Made in Dagenham, a film about the women's strike at the Ford factory in 1968.

How far have we come, ask two leading feminists The Guardian , Saturday 2 October 2010 Barbara Castle (far right), then employment secretary, shares a cup of tea in 1968 with the leaders of the female machinists' strike from the Ford plant in Dagenham, including Rose Boland (far left). Photograph: Wesley/Getty Images/Hulton Archive The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Thursday 7 October 2010 Recalling the 1968 strike by women sewing machinists at Ford (an event brought back into the public mind by the current film, Made in Dagenham ), a memoir mentioned one of the union convenors closely involved at the time, saying: "Bernie Passingham, a genial, clever communist (played by Bob Hoskins) liked and believed in them [the machinists]." Bernie Passingham says this is incorrect: "I'm a life-long Labour party member" We do not hear of women rocking the corporate boat now Germaine Greer Our hearts should leap up when we behold a film like Made in Dagenham.

Director Nigel Cole's film is meant to inspire today's young women to continue their mothers' struggle towards the ever-disappearing will o' the wisp that is equal pay. That struggle has for a generation been sent off at a tangent by the spurious principle enunciated in article 141 of the EU treaty and the Equal Pay Act 1970 and parroted everywhere else – that women and men should earn equal pay for work of equal value. In cases where women and men were doing exactly the same thing, it could be easily determined that the work was of equal value, so as early as 1968 employers and trade unions were studying ways in which women's jobs could be called different names and organised in such a way that they were not directly comparable with men's jobs. For example, cleaners earn much less than janitors. Cleaners are usually women, janitors usually men. The process was called "job evaluation", as if jobs have intrinsic value and are not simply worth what you can get the employer to pay for them by fair means or force. Collective bargaining cannot proceed on the assumption that work has a fixed value or even a comparative value.

By 1968 collective bargaining had secured for an elite class of workers pay and conditions that were not only the envy of nonunionised workers but also of the lower echelons in the labour force in the same trade union. The TUC clung to the distinctions that divided workers, between skilled and semiskilled and unskilled, and between male and female. Clerical workers at the TUC were poorly paid; the lowest-paid clerical workers at the TUC were female. The year before the events in Dagenham the TUC rejected a proposal for a commission to investigate women's status and opportunities in British industry. Because the National Union of Vehicle Builders ran a closed shop at Dagenham, the women machinists were unionised. For women workers this was relatively unusual. Union membership meant that if, after stating a grievance and approaching the management for redress – and being refused – members on the shop floor voted for industrial action, the union had no option but to support them. (Women who did not have the support of a union had no way of taking effective industrial action).

Supporting an action by female members involved the majority male membership, who relied upon the unpaid labour of their womenfolk as well as the money they brought into the household, in a massive conflict of interest. Made in Dagenham makes an effort to deal with this as the strikers struggle to soothe the resentment of their male comrades, but this basic issue is fudged in the overlying story of the suicide of one striker's husband, not an event which has a historical precedent. This is then made the subject of the strike leader's address to her trade union. By this stage of the film, anyone who cares about the marrow of labour politics has her head in her hands. Many of the women involved in Dagenham in 1968 are still alive but the film shows little evidence of their having been consulted. Much is made in the film of the women's stripping off, apparently because of the heat in the workroom, and sitting at their machines in their underwear. The shop steward, beautifully played by Bob Hoskins, has to wait until they cover themselves before he is prepared to talk to them, while the boy who sweeps the floor is teased about having an erection.

Women who worked at Dagenham now say they had far too much self-esteem to sit down to work in bra and panties; they were also rather older than the workforce shown in the film. Rose Boland, one of the most visible women at the time, was heavy-set, double-chinned and middle-aged, as unlike Sally Hawkins as can be. The women downed tools because their jobs had been downgraded from C, semi-skilled, to B, unskilled, with a lower rate of pay. Many of them had worked as dressmakers; what is more they had to take a test of their competence on three different machines before they could be employed. They argued that they were as skilled as male paint spray operators and wanted to be classed at the same level, which did not mean that they would be paid the same. In the film it is the male shop steward who persuades them to make equal pay the object of their industrial action. According to Boland, the issue was never stated in these terms before the meeting of the women with Barbara Castle, who had been banging on at the unions about equal pay for years. Invoking the notion of equal pay proved a very skilful diversionary tactic.

Castle sidestepped the issue of the correct grading of the women's work and entitlements and offered instead to bring their pay as unskilled workers into line with the pay of male unskilled workers. The women's pay would be increased from 87% of the unskilled rate to 92%. It was another 16 years before the machinists of Dagenham could get the status of their jobs upgraded to semiskilled. In other words, the strike failed. The women were bought off with a pittance. Their action cost Ford £40m. It is now 41 years since the machinists of Dagenham took tea (not sherry or whisky) with the employment secretary. Industrial action by auto workers did not slacken, but we do not hear of women rocking the corporate boat again. The British car industry was already preparing for relocation to Europe in 1971 when a long strike at Dagenham resulted in the complete shutdown of the plant for three months. From then on it was all downhill. The last car rolled off the Dagenham assembly line in 2002. And as for equal pay?

Women are still earning 20% less per hour worked than men which is, yes, a greater discrepancy than there was between the pay of women and men at the Ford plant in Dagenham in 1968. A labour movement in the image and interests of women Beatrix Campbell As he was Listening to Radio 4's Reunion series, film producer Stephen Woolley became enthralled by a group of working-class women involved in a historic event he'd never heard about: the Ford sewing machinists who went on strike in 1968. Ford was the biggest car-maker in Britain, one of the most powerful corporations on the planet, and 187 women working in one of their craggy hangars brought them to a standstill. It was a revolutionary year: sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, riots, student sit-ins, protests against the Vietnam war, general strikes, institutions besieged. Even the Folies Bergere's burlesque dancers went on strike in Paris during the May 68 whirlwind.

I wasn't a student and I wasn't on strike, but one May weekend a group of communist women – we weren't yet feminists – sent off a missive congratulating the dancers for their militancy. When Woolley heard the women on the radio he registered that they weren't in his historical memory. They reminded him of his own Islington mother, and together with his producer partner, Elizabeth Karlsen, he decided to bring their story out of the shadows of history. I heard that Reunion broadcast, too: I'd met some of the strikers, but instead of feeling excited, like Woolley, instead of hearing this as a triumphant story, I heard a narrative that has been muted. Woolley's resulting film, Made in Dagenham, shows us unexpected success. Those women almost triumphed. Certainly they triggered the then employment secretary to introduce an equal pay act. But Barbara Castle fixed a deal, she managed a crisis: she didn't honour those women's yearning for respect as skilled women. They never really got what they wanted. They were never really heard. Their convenor, Bernie Passingham, a genial, clever communist (played by Bob Hoskins) liked and believed in them and facilitated their militancy.

But their unions, the government, the Labour party, the men of the left and their own men in Dagenham, weren't actually interested in them. They were foxed by the Ford women. So, they didn't learn from them. Woolley and Karlsen took a strategic decision to mount a comedic Dagenham. They want their film to be popular. I would favour more edge, a touch of House of Cards or Mad Men – though there is an exquisite gesture in that direction: the trophy wife of a boss, Lisa (Rosamund Pike) relinquishes her poise, momentarily, and seeks affinity with Rita O'Grady, the strike leader. "Do you know who I am?" she asks. Her husband treats her like a fool, but she has a first-class Cambridge degree in history and adores reading about people making history. "That's what you are doing," she tells O'Grady. "Tell me what it feels like when you've done it." This is an elegant and clever moment where gender transcends class, and it provokes tears in the audience.

Made in Dagenham stirred my class hatred: we witness the contempt for these women not just in the bosses' tone and voice, but in the peeling, windy, sweating cavern in which they were employed. It doesn't exist now and Ford is reformed. The Ford sewing machinists changed my life. I was a young journalist; I didn't get on to the newsdesk for three or four years, until the retirement in the early 70s of the news editor, fondly known as "the bosun", whose favoured maxim was "My arse is a teacake". He wouldn't let me be a reporter because he already had one woman on the newsdesk and one was enough. This was the Morning Star – formerly known as the Daily Worker. I came alive in the 70s, in the excitement of the women's liberation movement and reporting on a tumultuous decade. In 1976 the Ford unions submitted, with the help of experts at Ruskin College, an annual pay claim that for the first time seemed to embrace not only wages but also life.

It addressed pensions, access to adult education, sabbatical leave – Ford employed workers from India, the West Indies, for whom two weeks off in the summer was no use. In the context of the first phase of the social contract between the government and the unions – which for the first time prioritised the low-paid, ie women – this was interesting. I wanted to write a story about the sewing machinists' reaction – where had they got with their own claim, not just for equal pay (on the bottom unskilled grade) but also for regrading as semi-skilled? One of the convenors spoke to me. "They're great, the women," he said. "Oh yes, and they're militant. But ..." Sucking his teeth: "I dunno, can't explain it ..." More sucking of teeth. They were an enigma. "You'll see," he said. I did see. I asked what were their priorities in this claim? The money mattered, they said, but their greatest concern was control over their time. They wanted paid time to work with, rather than against, the demands of daily life. They wanted "facilities" at the workplace. I wrote their story. The industrial editor read it.

"Crap," he said. "Wrong." Lest we forget: the trade union movement's century-old historic compromise with capitalism was at the expense of women – trade unions fought for the expulsion of women from waged work; even as late as the 1930s they campaigned to ban married women, or all women, from the workplace. During the second world war more than 7 million women worked in factories. They earned 53% of the men's pay. At the end of the war the Labour government, backed by the Trades Union Congress, closed nurseries and resolved that equal pay for women was "inappropriate". Britain did not become a member of the European Union, whose Treaty of Rome affirmed equal pay. Towards the end of the 70s my own women's group, Red Rag, which published a feminist and Marxist journal, advocated an "alternative feminist economic agenda". It was provoked by a crisis. One of us had separated from the father of her young children. How would she manage?

We investigated the ingredients of the pay gap – men's bonuses just for being men, men's hours, men's absence from home and the work of care; we proposed the abolition of the breadwinner (still in those days enshrined in the wages and benefits system) and a child benefit that corresponded to the costs of children; we suggested a new politics of time, instead of the polarisation between men and women's time that institutionalised inequality, a 30-hour week for all, and working time that synchronised with the seasons of daily life and children's time. Fashion an economic strategy around a woman worker, a "part-time" worker, we said, and you've sorted out stuff for everyone. We have the opportunity, on the screen, to revisit those wonderful sewing machinists: to listen to their stories that are never only about the strike and always about life. Woolley and Karlsen have done something important and their film is radiating in the zeitgeist: feminism is stirring again and the chronicle of those nice, dangerous women is being aired all over the place – in cinemas, schools, blogs and on the streets. They are a reminder of what could have been: a labour movement in the image and interests of women.

Revolutionary. Made in Dagenham, a Curtain Up London review "Made in Dagenham. Paid in Dagenham. Laid in Dagenham." — Lyrics to "Made in Dagenham" Cast in Made in Dagenham with the Cortina 1600E (Photo: Manuel Harlan) I didn't see the film of Made in Dagenham (2010) about the women workers at Ford's UK Plant in Dagenham Essex who went on strike for equal pay in 1968. I remember 1968 and the revolutions of that year: the occupation of Hornsey College of Art and the London School of Economics, the anti Viet Nam War demonstrations and the student protests in France. Maybe I was then more interested in student protest than women's employment rights but I do know that the unions were very strong at Ford and there were lots of strikes there, mostly about issues for the male fitters and engineers, not sexual equality. Made in Dagenham has quite some pedigree. Richard Bean has written the book for this musical based on the film. Richard Thomas who was a co-writer of Jerry Springer the Opera is the lyricist and Rupert Goold is the director.

Composer David Arnold has many film scores and television series music including Sherlock to his name, and was responsible for the music at the closing ceremonies of both the Olympic and Paralympic games in London in 2012. Bunny Christie has designed the clever set, the surround of which looks like a giant grey plastic Airfix kit to build a model car, say a Ford Cortina. Although the musical is based on a real life event much of the book is fiction, but comic: the intervention of Harold Wilson (Mark Hadfield with signature pipe and Gannex raincoat) and that of Barbara Castle (Sophie-Louise Dann), once the Minister of Transport who famously couldn't drive, and the flying over from America of the bosses of the Ford USA company, as part cowboy, part Mafia, so sunglasses and stetsons with a bow legged walk and lots of fireworks at the side of the stage. Just as well, as the opening night was November 5th, traditionally Bonfire Night in the UK, commemorating the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605.

And this is part of my beef with this production, the intervention of fiction into a real story especially when the American boss Tooley (Steve Furst) rifles through heroine Rita (Gemma Arterton)'s handbag and destroys the notes for her speech for the Trades Union Congress. As if that happened! Another problem was hearing the lyrics from the women singing as a group. They were probably really witty but you can't laugh if you can't hear them. The men were far better when singing as a group and I think that comment is also true for the men soloists although Sophie-Louise Dann was outstanding as the forceful socialist Barbara Castle. Gemma Arterton is a sweet actress and she has a nice voice but her voice lacks strength and range, which those trained in musical theatre are more likely to have. The side story is of the women's liberation, one of the pressure put on the marriages of the women workers when their husbands (many living in Dagenham worked at Ford) were laid off because the women were not sewing the leatherette upholstery for the Cortina production line. There were two issues, firstly that they were on an unskilled grade and even on that grade they earned less than the men on the same grade.

Rita also bonds with Lisa Hopkins (Naomi Frederick) wife of the English Ford Manager whom she meets at their sons' school and later Mrs Hopkins lends Rita a designer frock for the TUC conference. This seems unlikely and slightly patronising. I did enjoy housewife married to a manager, Lisa Hopkins' anarchic idea of wrecking the household supplies by buying one to the left of what she usually buys. There are many positives: the wonderful set with its swinging conveyor belt and the chassis of a red Cortina above all the body parts. The real Cortina 1600 E driven on stage is iconic. I greatly enjoyed the aplomb with which Detroit bosses arrive in a helicopter to sort the strike. They sing a song about all the words we say differently in Britain to America, for example AW-re-GANO as opposed to o-REG-ANO and Parissian and Pareesian and rise on a platform surrounded by stars and stripes as they claim that Ford Dagenham is a part of America. I also liked the political comedy scenes where Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson is caricatured with his northern accent and his three civil servant advisors in bowler hats and pinstripes.

Sophie-Louise Dann is magnificent as the firebrand, red head Barbara Castle and her lovely strong voice delivers the lyrics with style and clarity. Adrian der Gregorian plays Rita's husband Eddie O'Grady and he is a strong singer and delivers the melodies with clarity and emotion. His emotional song "The Letter" is a pretty love song to his wife. The closing anthem at the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress "Stand Up" is rousing as the congress adopt equal pay after Rita's speech and we see a row of middle aged trade unionist men stand one by one to applaud her. The tunes need to be given a chance to grow on you and the choreography is minimal. Facts. The 1968 women machinists' strike lasted for three weeks. The outcome was not re-grading but getting 8% less than the B grade men, so 92% of the male rate was then paid, rather than the previous 85%. Their action was part of the campaign for equal pay which led to the 1970 Equal Pay Act which came into force in 1975.

In 1973 Britain had joined the European Economic Community which had made differential pay for equal work illegal in 1957. From Blogger Elizanna's account. She lived in Dagenham and many of her family worked for Ford. She is writing about the 2010 film. But the end of the film is not the end of the story. In 1984 there was another strike within Ford over 'grading' issues when it was revealed that the male/female pay divide still operated when women were assigned lower grades for jobs that were the equal of higher paid graded jobs for men. In 1985 the design of the seat/covers was changed so that they were no longer made in the same way and the women lost their jobs to redundancy or transferred to other jobs elsewhere when production was outsourced [for a lower cost] The highlight of the opening night for me was the curtain call where the cast were joined by a few of the women sewing machinists who had worked there in 1968. Subscribe to our FREE email updates with a note from editor Elyse Sommer about additions to the website -- with main page hot links to the latest features posted at our numerous locations.

To subscribe, E-mail: esommer@curtainup.com esommer@curtainup.com put SUBSCRIBE CURTAINUP EMAIL UPDATE in the subject line and your full name and email address in the body of the message -- if you can spare a minute, tell us how you came to CurtainUp and from what part of the country. Made in Dagenham BBC - Made in Dagenham director praises pioneering Ford women Made in Dagenham director praises pioneering Ford women Advertisement Trailer for film Made in Dagenham which is released in October 2010 The director of Made In Dagenham says his film is an official thank you to a group of ordinary Essex women who changed the world of work forever. In 1968, a group of sewing machinists making car seats at Ford's Dagenham car plant, went on strike when their jobs were classified as unskilled. "What amazed me was I didn't know this story," said director Nigel Cole. "I think what is exciting about making this film, is that it is about time we celebrated this story." The film, which is released on Friday, 1 October, stars Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Jaime Winstone and Kenneth Cranham.

Made in Dagenham is set in 1968 and tells the story of a strike at Ford "From the word go, we thought of this as a celebration. Almost a victory parade for these 187 women," said Mr Cole. The Essex director said meeting the women and hearing their story told with such infectious humour and irreverence made a real impression on him. "We thought here's a way we can bring this story to a very wide audience and tell it in such a way that's important and powerful and inspiring, and also funny and entertaining. "The idea of making a popular film that is not afraid to be funny and entertaining even though it is a serious subject, came from them. Because that's the way they tell their story. The factory scenes were filmed in the former Hoover factory in Merthyr Tydfil. "It was obvious from the beginning that we wouldn't be able to use the Ford factory in our film. "The Ford factory in Dagenham doesn't really exist in the same way any more. It doesn't look the same, it's nothing like the same scale. Bob Hoskins plays shop floor worker Alfred in Made in Dagenham Locals were used in parts of the filming.

"We used the Mardyke Estate which was built in the early 60s for Ford workers at Dagenham," said Mr Cole. "A month or so later we went back to get some extra shots and they were pulling it down, so we felt like it had almost been a set and the art department were striking the set for us. "It was very evocative that we were kind of the last people to put this estate on film." Bookmark with: Bechdel Test Canon: Made in Dagenham | Bitch Media Bechdel Test Canon: Made in Dagenham by Alyx Vesey Published on January 4, 2012 at 11:15am Like many, I slept on Nigel Cole's 2010 period drama, Made in Dagenham. Set in 1968, the film fictionalizes a true story about a group of female sewing machinists employed by Ford who were tired of being classified as unskilled labor and went on strike for equal pay. Their efforts ultimately led to the Equal Pay Act of 1970.

They are led by Rita O'Grady (Sally Hawkins), a modest working-class woman who continues to surprise herself and others with her natural aptitude to organize, negotiate, and lead an important political cause that is still relevant. Barring the "for your consideration" trailer, I was interested in the film for a few reasons. For one, I love seeing women kick ass at work. I will stand by Broadcast News' Jane Craig, The Larry Sanders Show's Beverly Barnes, and Mad Men's Joan Harris, or watch 9 to 5 and Beauty Shop with you any day. I'm especially moved by women fighting institutional forces to secure their rights. I was also a huge Depeche Mode fan growing up and, as someone who read Dave Thompson's Some Great Reward several times during adolescence, knew that lyricist Martin Gore was born in Dagenham. My fandom prompted a minor interest in regional geography, with particular interest in Sheffield (The Human League, Pulp), Leeds (Gang of Four, Delta 5), and Manchester (the Factory Records scene, immortalized on vinyl and in 24-Hour Party People).

I was interested in how regionalism opposed London's cultural dominance over the music industry and the prominence of the British heritage film during Margaret Thatcher's administration. Finally, Film Forager's Alex Kittle wrote a great review of the film, singling out its strong ensemble. How often do you get to see Hawkins share screen time with Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, and Rosamund Pike? Dagenham reminds me a bit of Tom Hooper's The Damned United, a British historical drama starring Michael Sheen about Brian Clough's iconoclastic turn as Leeds United's manager. Both films attempt to be sensitive to regional specificity and focus on historical movements and figures who attempted to buck the establishment while preserving British cinema's national identity. Both also could serve as prestige films with a larger international following if they were marketed better. I think both films could be popular, at least to Academy voters, if they were given a wider release. We're not dealing with kitchen sink realism here, but an aesthetic tradition that heightens grain and natural light to represent the limited options for the English working class notably represented by Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life, Ken Loach's Kes, Mike Leigh's early work, and recently Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank .

Essentially both films are biopics that would be palatable to audiences familiar with Stephen Rea's The Queen and Hooper's The King's Speech. Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady, or at least Meryl Streep's performance as Thatcher, is Oscar bait even if some critics argue that the film is sexist. But why must we fixate on British royalty and politicians when a number of films articulate the country's shifting class, gender, and racial politics without upsetting generic and narrative conventions? This film is solid. William Ivory's screenplay may put too fine a point on how high the stakes are for these women, but the fight for gender parity and equal pay (and, I would add to that, the ongoing struggle for equality for women of color, queer communities, disabled communities, and girls within mainstream feminism) has radical connotations and is a big hairy deal. A minor issue, but sometimes composer David Arnold's cues suggest a complex psychological thriller when we're dealing with a historical drama about a group of women who are protesting for worker rights but also frequent dance halls, name-check Mary Quant and Biba, and engage in gossip and locker room talk to get through long days at the picket line.

I think a number of popular selections were more successful, particularly Desmond Dekker's ska classic "Israelites" and the theme song, penned by Billy Bragg and sung by '60s-era pop star Sandy Shaw, who worked as a Dagenham Ford clerk. The film's success resides in its ability to balance the mundane with the revolutionary. I was moved by stolen moments between Hawkins and Lisa Hopkins (Pike), a Cambridge-educated, upper-middle class housewife married to a Dagenham Ford manager (Rupert Graves) whose views on labor politics are ignored. The women meet at their children's school after O'Grady fails to convince her son's teacher to stop abusing him. Despite class differences, they forge a meaningful bond. Hopkins lends O'Grady a dress for her meeting with Secretary of State Barbara Castle (Richardson, taking no guff) and encourages her friend to stay committed to the fight despite considerable adversity. Ford brass constantly puts pressure on the women, most effectively by penalizing their male counterparts. This forces the women to question their values. These women aren't professional politicians.

This is a point a number of the machinists make during the film, particularly Connie (Geraldine James), a longtime Ford employee with a dying husband, and Sandra (Jaime Winstone), who has aspirations for fame and crosses the picket line for a modeling gig. During a heart-to-heart with O'Grady, Sandra admits that equal pay didn't used to mean anything to her but worries that she's letting down her friend. The two renew their investment in the cause and Sandra returns on set with "equal pay" scrawled across her stomach in lipstick like a proto-riot grrrl. I also like that Dagenham includes men in the struggle for parity. Hoskins is known for playing Cockney tough guys in Long Good Friday and Brazil. Though he pulls out the Cockney accent here, he brings a gentle touch to floor manager Albert that reminds me of his performance in Mermaids as Cher's standup boyfriend Lou Lansky. Albert and, with some convincing, O'Grady's husband Eddie (Daniel Mays), understand that the struggle for equal pay isn't exclusively a gender issue.

It's a human rights issue and an economic concern that would ultimately benefit men and women equally, particularly for the working classes whose labor is so often exploited. I wouldn't say that only a man could direct a female-led ensemble like Dagenham, as Pike claims in the film's DVD featurette. I have reservations about such participation, as men still dominate television and film's above-the-line credits. I also can never assume that men are inherently feminist for deciding to take on such projects, as patriarchy may subtly shade or inflect their interpretations. But I am heartened when men like Cole and Ivory feel compelled to work on a project like Dagenham. As the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, union-busting, jeopardized worker rights, and a simmering class war suggest, we're going to need all the help we can get to eradicate capitalist corruption. That's a fight for men, women, and children. Sometimes, as illustrated in Dagenham, white women start the call to action. But it's one we all must heed and solve together in order to defeat institutional disenfranchisement. by Alyx Vesey

Question: What was the occupation of the Ford workers who went on strike in 1968, the subject of the film 'Made In Dagenham'?
Answer: SEWING MACHINISTS