Women have to unite to tackle the obstacles they continue to face in the workplace, a former sewing machinist at Ford in the 1960s has said on the 50th anniversary of the epochal Dagenham strikes that changed the face of history.
It was a normal day like any other when female employees at Ford’s Dagenham plant, who felt increasingly frustrated by an unequal pay structure, walked out.
The strike, regarded as a watershed moment in the fight for equality, paved the way for the Equal Pay Act of 1970, and has been retold on stage and on screen including in the 2010 movie Made in Dagenham.
But the role of females working at Ford’s plant in Halewood on Merseyside, who downed tools in solidarity with their southern colleagues, has been largely overlooked.
Frances Kerwin is one of those forgotten heroines. She had only been working at Ford for two weeks when union conveners Bernard Passingham and Rose Boland paid Halewood a visit to discuss the strikes hundreds of miles away.
“Our supervisors were saying ‘You can’t do this, you have to stay’ – because women didn’t go on strike then,” she recalled. “But I wanted to join them because we’re all women. My family were union-orientated. My grandfather worked on the docks.”
Though there was a real fear that they might lose their jobs, the women of the north voted to walk out of work because “it’s crucial for women to work together,” Kerwin, now 76, said, before jovially comparing herself and her colleagues to “the Yanks that came in at the end of the war to help us win”.
Asked if women had come a long way since then, she said “not really”, but pointed to the significance of tennis players winning the fight for equal pay.
“In workplaces people are still struggling,” she said. “Women have to unite. When we went on strike, the unions were very strong. At this moment they’re not. They need to recruit women, who can – like us – stand up and be counted.
“But young people are now saying: ‘They did that years ago, why can’t we do it?’”
In 1968, the female machinists at Ford were classified within the company pay structure as grade B. That meant they were officially unskilled, despite having to pass tests in order to gain their employment.
After years battling for recognition as skilled workers, they finally walked out, bringing car production to halt and becoming the focus of national news stories.
It was a meeting between eight strike leaders and Barbara Castle, who was then employment secretary, that ended the three-week strike and resulted in the new regulation. The women returned to work for 92% of the male rate, instead of the 85% they were receiving before the strike.
Since then they have given talks and appeared at film premieres. Earlier this year, some of them even walked down the Baftas red carpet with British actor Gemma Arterton, in support of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. These conversations, Kerwin said, are “definitely important”.
She added: “Fifty years ago we were the minions. Women had to know their place.”
She said she was was infuriated when the Dagenham film came out and did not show the role of the women of the north. “The strike’s success would not have been possible without us. They would have been on their own,” she said.
But on Thursday she is travelling down to London to meet the London women she campaigned with 50 years ago, some of whom she is still in touch with. “We made a little bit of history. A lot of them have passed away. Fifty years, it’s a long time, girl, isn’t it?”
Kerwin and other former colleagues from Halewood will be joined by Steve Rotheram, the mayor of Liverpool City Region. Rotheram said he led a search to track down the Halewood women so their efforts could be given the recognition they deserve, and thanks to thousands of people who spread the word through social media and local newspaper coverage, he found them.
“Without the stand taken by women working at Ford’s plants in Dagenham and Halewood in 1968, the Equal Pay Act would not have followed. The fight has not yet been won, but we owe them an awful lot,” he said.
“Those who walked out of the Halewood plant have, in recent years, become a forgotten part of the story … we will be taking a coachload of former Ford workers and their families down to Dagenham to celebrate their achievements on the 7th of June. It should be a special day for all involved.”
Danielle Flynn, an apprentice from Jaguar Land Rover’s Halewood plant, thanked “these amazing women from the Halewood plant in its Ford era” for paving the way for women “to forge a successful career in a traditionally male-dominated industry”.
The University of East London, which is hosting a separate event with Gwen Davis and Eileen Pullen, two of the original Ford Dagenham strikers, on Thursday, emphasised the strike action was a key moment in the history of women and work.
“Not only did the actions of the Ford sewing machinists initiate the 1970 Equal Pay Act but also a period of increased gender equality,” said Elaine Yerby, a senior lecturer at the Royal Docks School of Business and Law.
“In this era of #MeToo and the recent gender pay reporting figures that revealed the existence of gender pay gaps in every sector, knowing that the women didn’t realise how brave they were being at the time provides the impetus for those committed to equality at work to continue their fight.”
