Article on Bradford Fire Disaster from Labour Briefing

Ellen Strange article from Labour Briefing

Labour's first majority government

Go to:-

http://unitelive.org/labours-first-majority-government/

Leeds Pride 2015 was a success

See: -

http://unitelive.org/unite-pride-of-leeds/

Oldham's Robert Ascroft statue commemorates a Tory MP who was a trade unionist.

Robert Ascroft Memorial Statue, Alexandra Park, Oldham.

Taken from the Rebel Road project of Unite education at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/rebelroad/statues/

A bronze statue of Ascroft was erected in 1903 by public subscription in memory of 'The Workers Friend' who acted as the legal advisor to the Association of Operative Cotton Spinners * (AOSC) that represented male mule spinners between 1870 and 1970 and which had 18,000 members at the time of Ashcroft's sudden death in 1899 at aged 51. The high density of union membership amongst cotton spinners meant AOSC members could negotiate significantly better wages and working conditions than other British industrial employees such that mule spinners became known as the Barefoot Aristocrats. 

Ascroft was a skilled negotiator who ensured that the 1892 Brooklands Agreement - one of the earliest and most famous of the agreements between capital and labour for the purpose of providing machinery for the settlement of disputes without having recourse to strikes or lockouts - that emerged out of a bitter dispute helped place industrial relations in the cotton industry on a more balanced footing. 

Ascroft was also a leading campaigner for better working conditions and between 1895 and his death he was one of Oldham's two Conservative MPs. 

Many thanks to Alan Bedford, a Unite safety rep at BAE Systems in Middleton, Manchester for information on Ascroft. "I can't imagine in years to come that anyone in a trade union will want to put up a statue to the current lot of Conservative MPs," said Alan.   

Mary Macarthur statue and plaque, Cradley Heath

Mary Macarthur, Cradley Heath

Taken from Rebel Road project of Unite education at http://www.unitetheunion.org/growing-our-union/education/rebelroad/statues/

The successful strike by women chainmakers at Cradley Heath in the Black Country in 1910 is commemorated by a statue of Mary Macarthur, who led the strike, and a monument to the strikers in a park named after Macarthur.

It took artist Luke Perry more than two years to create the statue which stands at 10ft and weighs nearly three-and-a-half tonnes. It was unveiled in 2012.

Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland next to the
Mary Macarthur statue in the Mary Macarthur Park.

The strike is celebrated at an annual Chainmakers Festival that is organised by the Midlands Trades Union Congress. There is live music, comedy, stalls, speeches, street theatre re-enactments and fun fair rides along Cradley Heath High Street where many of the women lived and worked over a century ago.

Cradley Heath High Street during the 2015 Chainmakers Festival

Chainmakers were highly skilled and badly paid. Writer Robert H Sheard described their lives in his ‘The White Slaves of England’ book.  'At Anvil Yard...I could see nothing but sorrow and hunger and grime, rags, foul food, open sores and movements incessant and laborious.'

Non-union women workers, who earned less than the unionised men doing the same jobs, were especially poorly paid, earning well under 10 shillings (50 pence) a week. 

Trade union organiser Mary Macarthur started the fightback by establishing in 1906 the Hammered Chain Branch of the National Federation of Women Workers. 

There was further progress when the Chain Trade Board - established by the Trade Boards Act 1909, which created the first boards legally able to set a minimum wage - agreed a 100 percent pay rise.  Many smaller companies though sought to avoid paying up and exploited their female employees illiteracy by tricking them into signing contracts that started the new rates six months later. 

Realising they had been duped around a thousand women, inspired by Mary Macarthur, began strike action to force their employers to pay the newly agreed minimum hourly wage of 2.5d (1 p). 

Strike funds were collected and when MacArthur, aware of the media's power, encouraged Pathe News to cover the strike this produced worldwide public sympathy and donations. The £4,000 collected maintained the struggle for 10 weeks at the end of which a famous victory was achieved when all the employers agreed to pay the minimum rate.

Actor Lynn Morris 

At the 2015 Chainmakers Festival, Macarthur’s victory speech was wonderfully recaptured by actor Lynn Morris. ”You no longer need a Mary Macarthur. You will find your own leaders and voices, but a word of warning on this glorious day, take heed for that which has been so hard won can be so easily lost. So keep the unity, keep the union and keep together.” Morris said today’s young women should use Macarthur as inspiration.

The Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland told the crowd the women Chainmakers are being replicated today by “women workers in hotels, who after decades of campaigning are beginning to make gains because they are getting organised through Unite.

“The Cradley Heath women Chainmakers show that if you are organised and in a union you can win in the most difficult of circumstances. They also by helping found the national minimum wage showed unions are not going to allow a race to the bottom. 

“It is important that we keep alive the memory of those brave women of over a century ago and this Festival is a marvellous way of doing so.” 

For more information on the strike go to http://www.cradleylinks.co.uk/1910strike.htm

See also The Cradley Heath Women Chain-makers’ Strike of 1910 by Margaret Bradley 

Monument to the women chainmakers  in the Mary Macarthur Park.

All photographs are copyright Mark Harvey of ID8 photography, Sheffield. 

Plaque to Annie Kenney in Lees, Oldham

Annie Kenney - Oldham, Lancashire 

There is a blue plaque to Annie  Kenney at Leesbrook Mill in Lees in Oldham where the working class suffragette started full-time work in 1892 as a weaver's assistant. She later suffered a serious injury when one of her fingers was ripped off by a spinning bobbin. 

Kenney became involved in trade union activities but she is best known for her involvement in the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). In October 1905, Kenney and Christabel Pankhurst interrupted a politician meeting to ask Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey about their views on whether women should be allowed to vote. 

When neither man replied and the women then got out a banner declaring 'Votes for Women' they were thrown out and arrested for obstruction. Kenney went to prison for 3 days. She was later involved in many other similar acts and suffered imprisonment on many occasions and during which time she was often force fed after participating in hunger strikes.  

Kenney was unusual in that unlike many of the leading WSPU members she was working class and when the organisation decided to open a branch in the East End of London she agreed to leave the mill and work full-time for the WSPU. 

When Christabel Pankhurst fled to France in 1912 to avoid arrest it was Kenney who was put in charge of the WSPU in London.  After the WSPU began destroying the contents of pillar-boxes and attempted to burn down the houses of two government members opposed to women having the vote, Kenney was again arrested and sentenced to 18 months in gaol for 'incitement to riot.' She became the first suffragette released from prison under the provisions of the 'Cat and Mouse Act' that released women on hunger strike in order to prevent them becoming martyrs and then re-arrested them when they recovered. 

Kenney escaped to France and when the First World War was declared in 1914 she returned home after the WSPU ended their campaign and backed the military conflict with Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst helping recruit men to the armed forces. 

Kenney later lost interest in politics and she died on 9 July 1953 with her husband, James Taylor, claiming his wife had never properly recovered from her hunger strikes.

Rebel Road would like to thank Oldham's Alan Bedford, a Unite safety rep who is a technician at BAE systems in Middleton, Manchester, for information on the plaque to Annie Kenney.

"I am a life long socialist and my local area of Oldham has a great working class heritage that should be celebrated and brought to the attention of the current generation so they can be inspired to emulate the great people of the past," said Alan.    

Photographs copyright Mark Metcalf.