Fight to Save Historic East End Matchgirl’s Grave

"We have written to the Secretary of State for Justice and await his reply. Please rally your MP to help us at least pause this brutal mounding process...

The Matchgirls Memorial

Patrons: Anita Dobson, Diana Holland, Barbara Plant

www.matchgirls1888.org

The Matchgirls Memorial: Registered Company Number 11858820
87 Brookvale Road, Highfield, Southampton, Hampshire, SO17 1QY

NEWS RELEASE

Fight to Save Historic East End Matchgirl’s Grave

Support from Parliament to Theatre

MPs, Peers, Unions, and Academics are fighting to save a Matchgirl’s grave from JCBs. Manor Park Cemetery is the resting place of working women’s rights campaigner, Sarah Dearman (née Chapman) but the private Cemetery want hers, and other graves, brutally levelled and ‘mounded’ with additional soil to make way for new money-making plots.

Sarah Chapman was a leader of the famous 1888 Matchgirls Strike in London’s East End. The women worked at the Bryant and May factory in Bow and are seen as the founders of modern unionism and inspiration for the Dockers Strike. The Matchgirl’s story has been told in plays and musicals around the world and was commemorated at the 2012 London Olympics.

Historians, women’s groups and unions have joined Sarah’s family to stop the destruction of this important heritage site. However, the Cemetery Directors will not speak to the family or campaigners and intend to cover her paupers grave within weeks. The family have now written to the Secretary of State for Justice and are supported by MPs, Peers, Academics and Unions. Newham Council has asked the Cemetery for discussion. A petition has 7,000 supporters, including star of stage and screen Anita Dobson, herself a Stepney East End girl.

Anita Dobson said “Sarah and these women fought for our workings rights and to destroy her resting place is abhorrent. People want to come here to pay their respects and remember what she and the Matchgirls achieved for us all”.

Mounding is not recommended by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management. They normally offer advice on alternative methods to increase burial space. In the past, skulls and bones have been visible at the Manor Park site after similar destruction work. The grounds also contain WWII civilian graves including some from the 1943 Bethnal Green tube disaster.

If you have concerns, have family buried at Manor Park, or just want to help, please
CONTACT: Sam Johnson 02380 552 009 matchgirls1888statue@gmail.com

Lyn Brown MP Commemorates the Match Women Strike of 1888

Great speech by West Ham MP Lyn Brown on this famous strike and her family connections with the East End, the strike and trade unions.  Important recognition by Lyn that this strike was organised by working class women and not wealthy middle class radicals.  I have worked within walking distance of the factory for the past 20 years and use to manage the housing estate Annie Besant Crescent. The reasons for this 125 year old strike is remarkable modern - low pay, health & safety, insecure employment, corruption and victimisation.

"Lyn Brown MP sponsored a debate in Westminster Hall to ask for further Government recognition of the Match Women's strike of 1888. 1,400, mainly women workers at the Bryant and May factory in the Bow area of East London went on strike to protest against poor working conditions in the match factory, including fourteen-hour work days, poor pay, excessive fines and the severe health complications of working with white phosphorus.

Modern research by the historian Louise Raw has proved that the strike was instigated, organised and led independently by the match women themselves and then supported by others. The match women's strike in 1888 led directly to the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in the same part of London and, therefore, set in train the historic events from which the Labour Party was created in 1900.

The match women's victory was also an inspiration to the Suffragette movement and for all those campaigning for equality today.

Match Womens Strike Festival 2013: 125th Anniversary

I have worked near the former Bryant & May Match Makers factory in Bow, East London for 20 years and knowing how difficult it is to organise and represent workers nowadays, never mind 125 years ago, I would take my hat off to the Match Women who led the way and showed us all since what is possible.

Bow Missile Site Home of Match Makers Strike

There has been a huge amount of publicity recently about the plan to possibly mount a "surface to air" missile system to protect the Olympic stadium  from suicide bombers on the top of a residential complex.  I drove past the proposed  site this morning and TV cameras were still outside.

I even saw the story featured on "Russia Today" television.

What hasn't been mentioned widely is that the site is actually the old Bryant and May factory in Bow where the famous "matchworkers strike" of 1888 took place.

Hat tip to Mick Hartly for this photo of a helicopter next to the Lexington Tower where the missiles are thought likely to mounted (if the plan goes ahead).

Battling Belles of Bow

This walking tour “The Battling Belles of Bow” is organised by SERTUC who ask colleagues to: “follow in the footsteps of Sylvia Pankhurst who chose east London as the starting point for her campaign for women's suffrage and seeing the plight of the working women and mothers also established a crèche, restaurant and model toy factory in the area. East End women were key to the success of the Suffragette movement and the route highlights their supporters and their workplaces including the Bryant & May Match Factory, site of the famous Match girls' strike of 1888”

I’ve worked as an Estate Officer in Bow, East London - for nearly 20 years. Firstly at a local housing office in Malmesbury Road where I once managed George Lansbury House and was also responsible for a time for the maintenance of Minnie Lansbury clock in nearby Electric House. Our estate also had properties in Fairfield Road where the privately run “gated community” called “Bow Quarter” is on the site of the original Bryant & May Factory.

Then I worked 300m away in another estate office in Armagh Road which was only around the corner from 1915 Sylvia Pankhurst clinic at “Gun Makers Arms “and the Suffragette meeting point now called the “Lord Morpeth “pub. I am now based right in the centre of Bow near the famous Roman Road Market.

This walk seems well worth a fiver!

A Celebration of the 1888 "Matchgirls" Strike

Next Saturday 18 October 2008 the GLATUC are holding an event at Congress House to mark the 120th anniversary of the 1888 Bryant & May “Matchgirls” Strike.

“In July 1888 1400 women and girls walked out on strike at the Bryant & May factory in Bow, East London. The demands of these female workers included the reinstatement of a fellow worker, higher wages, a proper dining room and the freedom to form a trade union...the strikers marched to the House of Parliament where they met MPs; they gained support for their grievances. Public pressure and the falling price of Bryant & May’s shares encouraged this bullying employer to meet the women’s demand in full....The strike gave a massive boost to trade unions organising in London and across the country” (pdf flyer).

I have posted on the strike briefly before - here and here. I work very close to the old factory where the strike took place and walk or drive past it most days (Fairfield Road). The factory itself was rebuilt in 1911 and is now converted into expensive private flats (a so-called gated community). This is a shame but it is still quite an inspiring historical monument to the birth of trade unionism and also the suffragette movement.

Match Women’s Strike 1888-2008

I was sent a press release about an event to mark the 120th anniversary of this landmark East End strike. I have mentioned this dispute before. I work very near to the old Bryant & May Factory building which still dominates the locality.

Even if many people who either drive past it on the Bow flyover or while on the train into Liverpool Street, probably don’t have a clue about its importance in trade union and organised labour history.

“Celebration of the Bryant & May Match women’s Strike in the summer of 1888. 120 years ago fourteen hundred women workers walked out of Bryant & May’s Bow factory.

This meeting will discuss with a panel of speakers how the strike was organised; who led them; what impact did it have on new unionism as it developed from the 1880’s and particularly the strike of the London Dockers in 1889."

Saturday 26th July 2008 1.30 pm for 2.00 pm (provisional) starting with buffet lunch at TUC, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3S

Speakers invited: Include:
·1 Louise Raw (researcher at London Metropolitan University)
·2 Professor Mary Davis (London Metropolitan University)
·3 Teresa Mackay (TGWU/Unite)

Greater London Association of Trades Union Councils Supported by: SERTUC; other trade union organisations are being invited to support

Birthday Night Out at Matchmakers

Last night we went out to celebrate George Woznicki’s birthday with beer and a curry. Sadly, George, who was a good comrade and fellow trade unionist, is no longer with us.

We started off with a toast to George (see below) at the Matchmakers in Roman Road, E2. The pub is named after the huge Bryant and May factory which is just a few hundred yards away. This was the scene of the famous “Match Girls strike” of 1888. The strike was about appalling health & safety, poor pay and excessive “fines”. By coincidence on Monday it is the start of European Health and Safety Week (I’ll post separately about this). At the time it was a famous victory. The socialist reformer Annie Besant lived locally and helped support the strike. There is a nice housing estate near by named after her.

The Bryant & May buildings have now been turned into expensive flats, a so called “gated community”.

I doubt that many of its modern day residents frequent the “Matchmaker” on a Friday night, which is a pity since its cheap prices make for an interesting cliental.

Eventually we finished off in the Bengal Classic in Westferry, E14 – top nosh. George would have loved it.