Matchwomen's Festival - Free One Day Event including music, talks and activities

Come down for a free day of traditional and contemporary Irish music from Leeson O’ Keeffe (formerly of Shane McGowan’s Popes), poetry from Michael Rosen, Hollie McNish and John Hegley, talks and activities.

Speakers on the day will include Frances O'Grady (TUC leader and matchwoman fan), Tony Benn, Owen Jones and Kate Hardie, who will talk about rule-breaking actresses past and present, and why they could do with a good strike today! Joining her will be Gwyneth Strong (Only Fools and Horses).

Milliner Zena Sullivan will show you how to make a matchwomen’s hat – just bring some fabric, and perhaps some feathers!

THE HISTORY:
125 years ago this summer, 1,400 mostly young women and girls shook the East End – and eventually the world. The Bryant & May matchwomen’s strike was a response to years of starvation wages, management bullying and appalling working conditions. The women had no trade union, and risked the sack by striking. In poverty-stricken East London, unemployment could be a death sentence.

They had blown the whistle on their terrible working lives to Fabian and journalist Annie Besant. Bryant & May were furious when Besant’s hard-hitting expose was published and tried to make the women denounce Besant as a liar. They refused, telling her: ‘Dear Lady… you had spoken the truth and we weren’t going back on you.’

One girl was sacked as an example, but the firm had underestimated the matchwomen’s solidarity. 1,400 of them of them streamed out of the factory gates as one.

Police were rushed into the area, and newspapers initially horrified by their temerity and failure to ‘know their place’. No-one thought the women could win, out-gunned as they were by an employer with friends in very high places, including the Liberal government and the Clergy.

But they held firm, helping each other to survive without strike pay. They marched to parliament and met MPs who, after hearing them speak eloquently, took up their cause.

Pressure mounted on Bryant & May, who were finally forced to give in: with very bad grace. The women returned to work triumphant, and went on to form the largest union of women and girls in the country, inspiring other workers to organise against their exploitation. These were the mothers of the entire modern labour movement, and Labour party. Things would never be the same again…

Author Louise Raw uncovered the truth about the matchwomen, and traced their descendants, over several years. The women she found were nobody’s poor little matchgirls, but famous in the East End well before 1888. They scandalised their ‘betters’ with their fearlessness and independence, and they even threatened Jack the Ripper. Known for their unique image, they paid into ‘feather clubs’ to buy and share communal hats with huge feathers; and could also wield the hatpins to good effect if in a tight spot!

The first ever Matchwomen’s Festival will celebrate them with a proper knees-up.