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Women chainmakers remembered

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The 2016 Women Chainmakers' Festival, strike, living wageCelebrating the women chainmakers who downed their hammers and stood up for their right to earn a living wage.

This year the Women Chainmakers’ Festival, to be held on 2 July, will again take place on Cradley Heath, in the West Midlands.

The first trade festival dedicated to female trade unionists and has been running for over a decade, it was inspired by the 1910 struggle for a minimum wage for the mostly female chainmakers of Cradley Heath which was led by Mary Macarthur.

In 1910 there were 3,500 chain makers working in small shops in the Cradley and Cradley Heath district. Two thirds of them were women.

Tired of working day and night for starvation wages, the women chainmakers downed their hammers and stood up for their right to earn a living wage.

In March 1910 the Chain Trade Board agreed a minimum wage of 2½d an hour to replace the old piecework system. Although this was low it meant a 100 per cent rise for most of the women, giving them 10 to 11 shillings (50 pence) for a 55-hour week.

Many companies did not keep to this and tricked women – many of whom could not read or write – into consenting to a contracting out of this agreement.

The women, led by the founder of the National Federation of Women Workers, Mary Macarthur, began a 10-week strike and successfully established the right to a minimum wage.

Macarthur was born in Glasgow in 1880 and moved to London in 1903 where she became Secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League.

She is perhaps best known for founding the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW) in 1906.

She was especially concerned about the relationship between low wages and women’s lack of organisation. She sat on the executive of the Anti-Sweating League and gave evidence to the select committee on homework in 1908.

The chainmakers’ landmark victory changed the lives of thousands of workers who were earning little more than starvation wages.

Small chain making was the first industry to obtain minimum wage legislation, and local people, rightly, look back on the part they played in this campaign with pride.

Thanks to the arrival of Pathé news in June 1910, the scandal of the women’s sweated labour attracted world-wide interest and sympathy from influential people who gave their support to the cause.

Macarthur was the trade unionist who led this fight for better pay, and said that “women are unorganised because they are badly paid, and poorly paid because they are unorganised.

Mary Macarthur also campaigned for a legal minimum wage and she stood as a Labour candidate in Stourbridge in the 1918 General Election but was defeated.

The TUC‘s Midlands Regional Secretary, Lee Barron, said: “We are delighted that we have leading trade unionists and politicians joining us for this year’s Women Chainmakers’ Festival.

“It is absolutely right that we celebrate the role of female trade unionists and to use events such as the Chainmakers’ Festival to continue to raise awareness of the challenges facing women today.

“In 2015 we brought the Chainmakers’ Festival home to the heart of the dispute – Cradley Heath High Street and it proved a real hit.

“I am really looking forward to another fantastic street festival, right in the heart of the community again this year.

“There is a superb line up of entertainment so I urge people to come along and have a great day.”

The day will be a packed family fun day of music, comedy, street theatre, speeches, stalls, children’s activities and a fun fair.

Activity will be split between two sites, with activities taking place on Cradley Heath High Street and the day culminating in a ‘Workers’ Picnic’ in Mary Macarthur Gardens.

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