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Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

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Speaker 1: Our guest today is Dr Louise Raw. Dr Raw is

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Speaker 1: a labor historian with a background in the trade union

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Speaker 1: movement and political campaigning. She has spoken across the world

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Speaker 1: telling the story of the Match Women's Strike of her

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Speaker 1: book Striking a Light set a new direction for British

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Speaker 1: labor history. In addition to organizing an annual festival in

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Speaker 1: the Match Women's Honor, Dr Raw has served as a

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Speaker 1: historical consultant for the BBC and appeared on camera in

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Speaker 1: series like The Victorian Slum which is available in the

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Speaker 1: US as Victorian Slumhouse. She has written regularly for British

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Speaker 1: newspapers including The Independent, of The Morning Star and New European.

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Speaker 1: She drops in on BBC Radio London and contributes to

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Speaker 1: programs on BBC Radio Four. It's a privilege to have

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Speaker 1: her here on Unobscured. Researcher Karl Neelli sat down virtually

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Speaker 1: and talked with Dr Raw for this season of Unobscured,

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Speaker 1: and you'll hear that a storm rolls in part way

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Speaker 1: through their convert station, but Louise couldn't be stunted I'm

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Speaker 1: grateful for that, and I think you will be too.

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Speaker 1: Carl and Dr Raw begin their conversation with the winding

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Speaker 1: route into studying and writing forgotten stories from the past.

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Speaker 1: This is the Unobscured Interview series for season three. I'm

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Speaker 1: Aaron Minky. I'm a historian, but I like to call

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Speaker 1: myself an accidental historian because that's really accurate in terms

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Speaker 1: of what happened. I'm not an academic historian who always

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Speaker 1: thought they would do that. I'd lass school of fifteen

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Speaker 1: and I've done. You know, the jobs you do when

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Speaker 1: you leave school of fifteen really pubs and restaurants and shops.

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Speaker 1: And I really, through being involved in the trade junior movement,

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Speaker 1: fell into becoming the historian, in particular of a strike

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Speaker 1: that happened in the East End of London in that

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Speaker 1: big year of the strike of the Branton main match

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Speaker 1: from him and I really started as an essay on

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Speaker 1: a trade in Labe, a history course about Oh, I

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Speaker 1: don't like to say how long ago, but twenty plus

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Speaker 1: years shall we say. And I'm still writing that essay

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Speaker 1: Coal really because I'm still researching the match and I'm

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Speaker 1: still finding out new things about them and They were

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Speaker 1: my teachers. They really were. They may be dead, but

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Speaker 1: let's not hold that against them. They were my best teachers.

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Speaker 1: Through them, I learned so much about how history, as

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Speaker 1: I don't need to say to you or your listeners,

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Speaker 1: isn't just a neutral record of everything that happened. It's

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Speaker 1: incredibly political. It can be incredibly biased. It's also very

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Speaker 1: very powerful. We need it. We as human beings, need

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Speaker 1: stories of where we come from. We need stories of

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Speaker 1: people like us. That's really important, whether we're black, or

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Speaker 1: working class or female. We need stories about people like us,

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Speaker 1: our achievements and our importance to our country. That's so

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Speaker 1: vital to a sense of our identity. And I learned

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Speaker 1: from my research that British history, of course, is incredibly

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Speaker 1: bad at that it is a forgetting machine, really that

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Speaker 1: forgets all the bad things. Well, the Britain's done all

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Speaker 1: the bad things about the empire. Americans may need to

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Speaker 1: be told that Britain did do some bad things historically.

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Speaker 1: You know, we've not been wonderful through the years. You

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Speaker 1: will be stunned, I know, to hear this. But it's

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Speaker 1: not just about the empire. All the achievements of anyone

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Speaker 1: who's not the kind of great white individual, really preferably

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Speaker 1: a great white man. We allow a few women to

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Speaker 1: sneak in as well. Anyone who doesn't fit that mole

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Speaker 1: gets really excluded from the narrative. We just can't believe

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Speaker 1: they kind of achieved anything. I realized how important that was,

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Speaker 1: and it became my obsession really to be a collector

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Speaker 1: of those stories and a teller of those stories, because

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Speaker 1: I think history should do something. It's not just there

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Speaker 1: to be interesting and fascinating, just about who we are

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Speaker 1: and what we're capable of, and it's so important to

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Speaker 1: inspire us today in terms of what we can achieve.

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Speaker 1: People like the match women were supposed to be powerless.

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Speaker 1: They were supposed to be completely irrelevant. Although they're part

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Speaker 1: of the majority of the country, the working classes, they're

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Speaker 1: supposed to be completely irrelevant to it. They're just toiling away.

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Speaker 1: We don't need to know their names. There are kind

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Speaker 1: of undifferentiated blob of the masses, and we don't need

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Speaker 1: to know anything about them because they're not really people.

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Speaker 1: Of course, that's the humanizing. Of course, it's very dangerous

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Speaker 1: politically to go down that route, and we need these stories.

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Speaker 1: So I'm trying to really turn the spotlight of history

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Speaker 1: onto those stories that have been kept in the dark

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Speaker 1: or pushed into the dark. So part of the way

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Speaker 1: that you have shined a light on some of these

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Speaker 1: stories is with a fantastic book called Striking a Light

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Speaker 1: that tells the story of the brandon a Match Women's Strike,

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Speaker 1: what they won, the durable union that they built. UM,

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Speaker 1: that had kind of all in victim to that forgetting machine.

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Speaker 1: As you say, UM, can you describe you mentioned the

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Speaker 1: amount of time that you've spent learning their story. Can

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Speaker 1: you describe some of the process of what it took

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Speaker 1: to learn their story? What did that take? As a

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Speaker 1: loving description, it really was like wrestling with this beast

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Speaker 1: of history and trying to get it to give up

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Speaker 1: these stories that it was obscuring. It was a bit

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Speaker 1: like who done it? When you know who done it,

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Speaker 1: but nobody wants to believe you about who done it.

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Speaker 1: So I had to prepare a case, and of course

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Speaker 1: I had no witnesses. That was the first problem. The

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Speaker 1: first thing that I did was to go to the archives.

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Speaker 1: I kind of toddled down in my lunch break. I

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Speaker 1: remember from work, I happen to be working quite close

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Speaker 1: to where that Brian to Make Company archives would then kept,

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Speaker 1: which was in the basement of a to local history museum.

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Speaker 1: And I had not been in an archive. I had

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Speaker 1: to tell you, I did not know what that entails

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Speaker 1: at all. So I was completely fronting it out. Oh yeah, hello,

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Speaker 1: I'm here to look at it. I know exactly what

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Speaker 1: I'm doing. And they took me down to this basement

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Speaker 1: and they brought me loads and loads of enormous cardboard boxes.

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Speaker 1: Now this is not how archival work is done. Now

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Speaker 1: you're ordering one document at a time if you're lucky.

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Speaker 1: But then they just left me with these boxes, and

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Speaker 1: I thought, I have no idea what to do here.

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Speaker 1: So I opened the boxes started routing through papers in

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Speaker 1: there from the sixties, the nineteen sixties. It's all jumbled up, fascinating.

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Speaker 1: So I just had a route through and very quickly

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Speaker 1: came upon some evidence that the strike was not at

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Speaker 1: all as I've been taught it. Those historians who had

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Speaker 1: written about it, the mainly manly historians, the mainly manly Marxists.

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Speaker 1: That you had written about the strike, I've only done

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Speaker 1: so very briefly. There would be the odd line about it,

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Speaker 1: or this strike happened, but it wasn't very important. It

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Speaker 1: was just a few girls. It was a big deal.

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Speaker 1: And crucially that the strike was led from the outside

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Speaker 1: by a socialist called Abbescent. She's chiefly pushing to the

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Speaker 1: role of strike leader because she was middle class. That

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Speaker 1: meant it's not a real, proper worker organized strike. So

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Speaker 1: that means immediately it's downgraded. It's not an important fact

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Speaker 1: of labor, of working class history, because what are the

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Speaker 1: match girls in that scenario. Puppets? They're just puppets. They

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Speaker 1: have been told what to do. So I'm in the archives.

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Speaker 1: I quickly come upon a note the foreman had made

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Speaker 1: the formula a factory saying these are the women who

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Speaker 1: we think are the troublemakers and the ring leaders of

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Speaker 1: this strike. And I thought, oh, hello, Well, if this

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Speaker 1: is a strike that was completely organized from the out side,

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Speaker 1: how can there be ring leaders from inside? So I

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Speaker 1: started to draw up a timeline to prove I suppose

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Speaker 1: I was trying to prove myself wrong, because I'm not

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Speaker 1: an academic at this point at all. As I say,

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Speaker 1: I'm less called at fifteen, and you know, men have

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Speaker 1: written in books that this was not an important strike

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Speaker 1: and that this was led from the outside. Who am

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Speaker 1: I to question that? And yet I'm a trade unionist.

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Speaker 1: I didn't know at the time that, you know, my

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Speaker 1: whole life really had been a preparation, and that I

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Speaker 1: had the advantage of not being an academic, of having

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Speaker 1: been involved with strikes, that having been involved with workers

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Speaker 1: a bit like this. So I had to prove it,

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Speaker 1: and I started drawing up a time and my goodness,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'd love to say I was following some

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Speaker 1: kind of classical academic tradition, but I kind of made

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Speaker 1: it up as I went along, just to pursue this story.

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Speaker 1: How do you do it? There's no timeline of events.

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Speaker 1: We only have a few lines on it. Though some

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Speaker 1: girls went on strike, wasn't a big deal. Nothing to

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Speaker 1: see here, and move along until some men do it

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Speaker 1: with the ducks strike the next year. So I'm thinking, right,

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Speaker 1: I need a timeline. So I literally done in the

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Speaker 1: middle of my front room, put a line of papers,

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Speaker 1: wrote dates on them, and then got every bit of

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Speaker 1: evidence I possibly could, from newspapers, from people's journals, from

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Speaker 1: any kind of commentary. I could find local papers, national papers,

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Speaker 1: you know, George Bernard Shaw's diary, any Besson's journal, William Morris,

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Speaker 1: any of the celebrities socialists who were around at the time,

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Speaker 1: and working through these I managed to piece together. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so it seems to have this seems to have been

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Speaker 1: what really begun the strike. This seems to have been

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Speaker 1: what happened next. And I went to the Colindale newspaper library,

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Speaker 1: absolutely wonderful. Ruined my eyesight, you know, looking at microvision

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Speaker 1: micro film of reports in local papers, because local papers

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Speaker 1: did carry the strike. Actually there was a paper called

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Speaker 1: The Star that was very interesting, sent reporters down there.

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Speaker 1: But and from that I did manage to come up

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Speaker 1: with a good, solid timeline which told a completely different

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Speaker 1: story from the orthodox version. This is a proper strike.

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Speaker 1: It's a spontaneous strike. It's a reaction to management bullying,

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Speaker 1: and they're brilliantly organized. They're not just these little girls

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Speaker 1: who are who are being told you have. The orthodox

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Speaker 1: version would suggest that any Vescent, who was a journalist

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Speaker 1: at the time, went down to the factory and sort of,

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Speaker 1: for no apparent reason, told the match girls they were

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Speaker 1: going on strike. I say, girls who know you don't

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Speaker 1: know me, but George Bynature and I who don't know

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Speaker 1: either have had a vote, and we've decided for no

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Speaker 1: real reason. You know, it's a Wednesday, we're board, we've

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Speaker 1: decided you're all going on strike. I mean, how ludicrous.

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Speaker 1: And supposedly the women just said, oh god, Bleshamama, certainly,

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Speaker 1: whatever you say, we'll be there. This is not how

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Speaker 1: strikes happened. This is not how real life happens at

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Speaker 1: all all. So I had to really claw back, and

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Speaker 1: once I had the timeline, I had immensely contradictory accounts,

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Speaker 1: you know, orthodocs history, and he bessn't led the strike,

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Speaker 1: and he besn't Oh my god, the match wouldn't have

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Speaker 1: gone on strike, and paraphrasing obvious legion actually said that,

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Speaker 1: and she's thinking, oh no, this is a disaster. Why

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Speaker 1: are they gone on strike? We can't afford to support

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Speaker 1: these people financially. Oh shit, or the Victorian equivalent to that,

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Speaker 1: not knowing the strike has happened, And I'm thinking, my goodness,

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Speaker 1: if I can find this out, what the hell is

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Speaker 1: happening here? How have historians who have looked at this

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Speaker 1: strike managed to conclude that this woman who's who's who's

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Speaker 1: like sort of that shaggy song. It wasn't me, that's

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Speaker 1: Sammy Best. She's running around and I did not stop

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Speaker 1: that strike. That was not my idea, she said. I

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Speaker 1: think it's a terrible idea that they've gone on strike.

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Speaker 1: Why did they have to do it? And yet historians

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Speaker 1: have looked at that and gone yet finitely started by

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Speaker 1: this middle class woman. That's how blinkered we are, isn't it?

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Speaker 1: In terms of class? We just can't accept anything else.

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Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, I've got these accounts, but

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Speaker 1: they're mostly middle class accounts. They're from journalists or as

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Speaker 1: I say, from your Morris Is and your George Burnit shures,

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Speaker 1: and there's this kind of hilarious incomprehension of middle class

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Speaker 1: people observing what working class people are doing. Is if

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Speaker 1: there are another species. Really, And one journalist goes along

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Speaker 1: to the picket line and he says, well, is it

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Speaker 1: really extraordinary looking women? Gosh, they are strange. They seem

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Speaker 1: to have this sort of style where their clothes they've

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Speaker 1: got wear patches on their clothes and they have very

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Speaker 1: broken boots and it's very odd. Yes, this is not

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Speaker 1: a fashion fella. They are poor. You know, there's complete

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Speaker 1: the class is just there's such a gulf between a

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Speaker 1: middle class journalist and a working class match battery woman.

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Speaker 1: There's complete incomprehension. So I thought, I'm trying to put

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Speaker 1: a case here without the witnesses, without the real witnesses,

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Speaker 1: who are of course the women themselves. What do we

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Speaker 1: do about that when they are very, very dead by

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Speaker 1: the time I'm researching this, And I thought, well, the

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Speaker 1: closest I'm going to get, isn't it is to get

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Speaker 1: to their descendants, if possible, if I can possibly find grandchildren,

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Speaker 1: maybe even great grandchildren by this point, that's as close

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Speaker 1: as I'm possibly going to get. And goodness, lots of

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Speaker 1: historians advised me not to do this. That's a terrible idea.

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Speaker 1: It's very hard to trace women forward through history, to

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Speaker 1: trace their families. It is hard, by the way, that's

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Speaker 1: completely true. But also again I felt, there was this class,

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Speaker 1: and why would you want to talk to their descendants?

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Speaker 1: They probably won't know anything about the strike. They might

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Speaker 1: be a bit old and perhaps a bit do dally

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Speaker 1: by this stage. Would they even would they know? Would

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Speaker 1: they understand the importance of it? And you sort of

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Speaker 1: think more to be just there, probably working class still,

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Speaker 1: I mean, who knows. They may not be at its point,

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Speaker 1: doesn't mean they won't know anything about this event. But

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Speaker 1: to me, that seems to be the impression that I

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Speaker 1: was being given a really really bad I did to

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Speaker 1: do that, but I persevered. I wrote a little piece

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Speaker 1: for the Irish Times because I thought a family that

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Speaker 1: have gone back to Ireland. I knew that a lot

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Speaker 1: of these women were Irish or Irish heritage, and I

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Speaker 1: didn't really get me anywhere. Got me a lot of

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Speaker 1: interesting letters, but nothing that really connected me. And then

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Speaker 1: I was doing a talk at the Docklins Museum in

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Speaker 1: London and I was saying, oh, I'm talking about the match,

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Speaker 1: and I was saying, oh, and I'm looking for descendants,

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Speaker 1: but it's so difficult to find. And at the end

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Speaker 1: a woman came up to me, a woman called Joan Harris,

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Speaker 1: and she said, oh, sorry to bother you love. I

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Speaker 1: know you're trying to probably get away, but I think

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Speaker 1: the photograph you showed of the women, I think that's

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Speaker 1: my grandmother in there in the back, and probably her

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Speaker 1: sister as well, my great aunt. And I was sort

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Speaker 1: of like, lock the doors, did not let this woman escape.

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Speaker 1: You are going nowhere, madam, until I have your address.

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Speaker 1: And I immediately went around to interview her like like

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Speaker 1: an arrest. I've been drained by as quickly as I could.

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Speaker 1: That's where it all began, fascinating story of Mary Driscoll,

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Speaker 1: who was her grandmother. There I spoke at another museum,

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Speaker 1: the Ragged School Museum, and I was talking about that.

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Speaker 1: I was saying, and would you believe I got so lucky.

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Speaker 1: I met this woman who was a descendant and two

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Speaker 1: bloats at the back where we'll actually love. Yeah, our

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Speaker 1: our grandmothers were matched with it as well. And again

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Speaker 1: I was like, go nowhere, oh nowhere. And I met

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Speaker 1: Jim Best and Ted Lewis. These were so valuable, so valuable.

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Speaker 1: You know, all history can be looked down on a

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Speaker 1: little bit is not not quite proper, not quite documentary.

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Speaker 1: But these people taught me so much. I would walk

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Speaker 1: around the East End with Ted Lewis and he was

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Speaker 1: a historian. You know, he might not have been a

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Speaker 1: professional one, but he was a historian, that man to

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Speaker 1: his bones. Because he could take me around the modern

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Speaker 1: East End and make me see past the concrete and say,

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Speaker 1: well over there, girl, there was a music all over there.

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Speaker 1: Over there, that's the pub where my grandma used to go.

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Speaker 1: That's where she used to buy her jelly deals. That's

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Speaker 1: where she used to go to the market. And suddenly

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Speaker 1: you see it. You see it, and it's real, and

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Speaker 1: those people are brought closer to you, so that but

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have happened without those descendants, and they are I

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Speaker 1: was learning from them, you know, there was none of

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Speaker 1: this thing of the historian goes to interview the informants

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Speaker 1: who were very minor in the process. I learned everything

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Speaker 1: really from them about how it really was and about

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Speaker 1: how how events were remembered in the East End, which

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Speaker 1: runs parallel but separate from how their grandmothers have been

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Speaker 1: remembered in conventional history. They don't have this Annie bess

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Speaker 1: at this top down version of this story. They have

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Speaker 1: that was my grandma and her mates, and they were

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Speaker 1: pretty proud of it. They were quite pleased about their story, Lave. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they were pretty pleased about that. Didn't have much time

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Speaker 1: to think about it because they were straight back to work,

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Speaker 1: so they didn't have time to sit around and write

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Speaker 1: your books like you're doing. But they were Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: used to talk about it and they were pretty pleased,

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Speaker 1: and that's amazing. That's a you know, an uncorrupted, sort

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Speaker 1: of preserved in amber version, and that's just close to

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Speaker 1: the horse's mouth as you're going to get m hm.

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Speaker 1: And I love reading the book because you can see

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Speaker 1: their stories shining through. I mean, I think I'm so

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Speaker 1: glad that you that you met up with them and

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Speaker 1: talked with them, because it gave so much life to

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Speaker 1: your book. So I hope we'll spend especially a few

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Speaker 1: more minutes talking about Mary Driscoll later on. Um, but

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Speaker 1: let's let's go now. Can you take us a little

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Speaker 1: bit back to that London of the late eighteen hundreds. Um,

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Speaker 1: let's start with getting oriented in the place. What's the

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Speaker 1: geography of London like from the big picture to the

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Speaker 1: East End? Well, we really only have an East End

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Speaker 1: from around this period. Of course, London's always had an

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Speaker 1: Eastern basis. It's not new. They don't suddenly stick it

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Speaker 1: on in the eighteen eighties, but it only starts to

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Speaker 1: be talked about as the East End around this period.

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Speaker 1: And London is such a separate collection of communities and

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Speaker 1: such disparate areas, it's it's hard to conceive really of

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Speaker 1: how cut off different bits of London are from one another,

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Speaker 1: and particularly along a class line. This is really really crucial.

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Speaker 1: You can't look at London without that, and people start

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Speaker 1: to talk about east End to West End, worst End

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Speaker 1: to best End, and that's what we're talking about. We're

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Speaker 1: talking about posh London and disreputable London, which is what

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Speaker 1: the East End becomes. Everything really changes with industrialization. London

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Speaker 1: becomes much more divided. Before that, you've had rich and

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Speaker 1: poor living fairly cheap by gewl So imagine a typical

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Speaker 1: London square if anybody's ever seen EastEnders, You've still got

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Speaker 1: some of those old houses facing onto a square, and

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Speaker 1: the rich people are living in those lovely big houses,

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Speaker 1: and then behind them rows and rows of sort of

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Speaker 1: service streets really where people live who are perhaps working

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Speaker 1: for them, but people are close together. And then we

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Speaker 1: have industrialization. Everything changes. People come in from the countryside

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Speaker 1: from working in you know, perhaps on farms or working

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Speaker 1: in a very feudal set up really perhaps the lord

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Speaker 1: of the manner in some capacity. They come flooding into

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Speaker 1: the new towns and cities in especially London to work

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Speaker 1: in the new factories. Nothing's ready for them. Nothing's prepared,

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Speaker 1: so they just come rowding into London and the rich

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Speaker 1: get the hell out as soon as they can, and

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Speaker 1: scheme trains, of course make that possible. Suddenly we have

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Speaker 1: new suburbs, so you can get out, you can come

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Speaker 1: back into London for work, and then you can get

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Speaker 1: away from all the dirt and the dust and the

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Speaker 1: disorder of industrialization. And you know, it's a pretty stinky process, industrialization,

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Speaker 1: particularly in the East n where you had a lot

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Speaker 1: of slaughter houses as well, absolutely dank on Sundays. So

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Speaker 1: they could get out, and they left the poor, particularly

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Speaker 1: in the East End, just to get the hell on

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Speaker 1: with it. They had very little infrastructure, you know, forget

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Speaker 1: about social services or really good schooling or any sort

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Speaker 1: of help. Of course, there are no welfare benefits at

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Speaker 1: all in those days. They're just left to get on that.

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Speaker 1: They haven't even got street lighting in the East End

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Speaker 1: when you read about you know, the darkest East and

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Speaker 1: the dark streets where they really were dark because they

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Speaker 1: were unlit a lot of the time. And we start

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Speaker 1: to find that people even who live quite near to

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Speaker 1: the East End claim they don't know where it is.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds so bizarre, but literally Jack London

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Speaker 1: finds this. He asks people. I think he asked some shopkeepers. Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to find this place called the East End.

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Speaker 1: Can you tell me sort of where does it start?

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Speaker 1: Where does it begin? How do I go? And these,

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Speaker 1: you know, quite well, quite respectable shop teams, I've heard

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Speaker 1: tell of it, But I am afraid I couldn't tell

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Speaker 1: you where such a place as I would never go there.

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Speaker 1: One one simply would never go there. And people would

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Speaker 1: pretend they couldn't find the East End on a map.

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Speaker 1: Of course they could, but it became this embodiment of

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Speaker 1: sin and depravity and disreputable policy. So you were not

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Speaker 1: respectable if you had connections in the East End, if

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Speaker 1: you had friends there, if you went there apart from business.

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Speaker 1: So it's so bizarre, isn't it. We have this area

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Speaker 1: which is producing a lot of the wealth of the country,

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Speaker 1: that we have all these important factories there, we're unloading

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Speaker 1: the wealth of empire at the docks there. It's crucial,

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Speaker 1: crucial to the glittering success of the Victorian Empire. And

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Speaker 1: we're pretending it doesn't exist, We're pretending we don't know

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Speaker 1: it's there, and we're calling it the Darkest East as

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Speaker 1: orientalist language, as if it's a strange terror incognito, this

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Speaker 1: weird place completely cut a drift, sort of culturally and mentally,

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Speaker 1: cut a drift from the rest of London. So London

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Speaker 1: is a divided place. And if we say what was

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Speaker 1: life like in London, we'd have to say, well, whose

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Speaker 1: life and where? It completely depends on how much money

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Speaker 1: you have, I mean doesn't it always, but particularly at

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Speaker 1: this time and in this place, and what kind of

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Speaker 1: life are you doing and where are you? Completely different

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Speaker 1: to the extent that there are events in history, there

399
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:07,520
Speaker 1: are marches and protests, and the match Women Strike is

400
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Speaker 1: one of them, where the poor leave their district, you know,

401
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:16,040
Speaker 1: and that wasn't allowed at all. People were horrified knowing

402
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Speaker 1: your place literally keeping in your place is geographical as

403
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:25,399
Speaker 1: well as cultural, and people would throw things. I mean,

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00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:30,320
Speaker 1: we have protest marches in theies where the servants of

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Speaker 1: the posh clubs in Palman, you know, the gentlemen's clubs

406
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Speaker 1: in Palma come out on the door sorts and throw

407
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Speaker 1: things at the poor who were marching past them. They

408
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:41,280
Speaker 1: throw heavy glass asteries, they throw shoes, you know, they're

409
00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:43,399
Speaker 1: cleaning the gentlemen's shoes and they get their carrier, they

410
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:46,200
Speaker 1: throw them at the poor. You know, go home, what

411
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Speaker 1: are you doing here? Get out of here? So who's

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Speaker 1: London for the poor? They were told this is your

413
00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: part of London. The rest of it does not belong

414
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:58,760
Speaker 1: to you, and you shouldn't even be there. When the

415
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:02,840
Speaker 1: match women during this marched Parliament, it literally stopped the traffic.

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00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:07,920
Speaker 1: People stopped and stead and cat called and hurled abuse

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Speaker 1: at them because the poor were, yes, supposed to be

418
00:24:11,720 --> 00:24:14,760
Speaker 1: preferably not seen as well as not heard. You were

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00:24:14,880 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 1: supposed to be invisible. That was a lot more comfortable,

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00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,480
Speaker 1: of course, for the rich if you were invisible. So

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Speaker 1: it's just this hugely divided place at this point. And

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Speaker 1: you've mentioned that you've started to bring in the context

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Speaker 1: of London as the largest city in the world at

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Speaker 1: the time, the nerve center of a global empire. How

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Speaker 1: would you describe the conditions of working people? You know,

426
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: do you have a few more comments on the relationship

427
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:46,959
Speaker 1: between the conditions of working people to London's financial significance

428
00:24:47,000 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 1: to its imperial significance at the time. As somebody said

429
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:57,040
Speaker 1: on observing the doctors at work, there's this huge contradiction

430
00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 1: because they're unloading the wealth and the riches and the

431
00:25:02,560 --> 00:25:06,399
Speaker 1: silks and the spices and the teas and all this wonderful,

432
00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 1: luxurious stuff, and they're touching all things and tasting none.

433
00:25:11,600 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: They're dealing in these goods they can never ever afford

434
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:19,240
Speaker 1: them their unloading tea that they will never taste, their

435
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: unpacking spices, that they will never be able to enjoy,

436
00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: silks that their wives will never be able to wear.

437
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 1: So there's this immense and it seems to modernize immensely

438
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:38,600
Speaker 1: hypocritical division. Here we are this incredibly rich, I mean

439
00:25:38,680 --> 00:25:40,919
Speaker 1: mostly because we stole and stuff from other people around

440
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: the world. But you know, that is how the British

441
00:25:42,880 --> 00:25:45,639
Speaker 1: do things, as a little tradition of ours to do that.

442
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,600
Speaker 1: But we have become incredibly rich off the backs of

443
00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 1: other people, including our own poor people. So they are

444
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: the engine of our prosperity, and they're not getting to

445
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:01,560
Speaker 1: share in it whatsoever. We treat them almost like machinery.

446
00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:05,400
Speaker 1: You can process things, you can produce our wealth, there's

447
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 1: nothing to do with you. You don't get a share

448
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:14,680
Speaker 1: in it whatsoever. And yet we have this jingoistic sort

449
00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:19,280
Speaker 1: of flag waving narrative that's in the music halls at

450
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,960
Speaker 1: the time, and in all the songs, everyone in Britain

451
00:26:22,080 --> 00:26:24,920
Speaker 1: is doing well. We're also incredibly proud to be British.

452
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: And yet most of Britain is being excluded and might

453
00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:31,840
Speaker 1: let him wave a flag occasionally, but they're being excluded

454
00:26:31,920 --> 00:26:35,400
Speaker 1: from any of those benefits. Huge wealth is being made

455
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: and people are working twelve sixty nowadays and starving to death.

456
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:44,040
Speaker 1: How do you square that? How is that in any

457
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:50,560
Speaker 1: way fair? Even according to the fairly simplistic christian Ish

458
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: Victorian narrative that everyone's in their place, and God puts

459
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: you in your place, and you know, the rich man

460
00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 1: in his castle, the poor man at the gap, be

461
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:04,040
Speaker 1: happy with your place in life. Even then, it's a

462
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:08,080
Speaker 1: little bit hard to argue that the people making the wealth,

463
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 1: helping to make the wealth, should be actually starving to

464
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,080
Speaker 1: death whilst working. What do the Victorians do about this?

465
00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: Where they could have reformed things, They could have improved housing,

466
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:22,639
Speaker 1: they could have improved working conditions, But why would you

467
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:27,200
Speaker 1: do that? That's expensive. It's a lot easier to divide

468
00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:32,119
Speaker 1: the poor into the deserving and the undeserving. Virtually no

469
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:35,040
Speaker 1: one is deserving poor. Really, even if you are, they'll

470
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:37,160
Speaker 1: find a way that you're doing something wrong and being

471
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 1: the wrong sort of poor person. So we can blame

472
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: these people, Oh, well they must be drinking, or well

473
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: they can't really be working hard enough. And when there

474
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: are occasional stories of a doctor being called to a

475
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: woman who's who's working sixteen hour days and who's literally

476
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,880
Speaker 1: died of malnutrition, it's all a bit awkward and embarrassing

477
00:27:56,359 --> 00:27:58,600
Speaker 1: and quite now what to do about that, So tend

478
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:01,480
Speaker 1: to do nothing really, but she probably had a husband

479
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:04,800
Speaker 1: who drank. It's probably some kind of you know, properly

480
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: behavior was going on there. And it's really only when

481
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: the upper classes absolutely have to I mean, there are

482
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:16,720
Speaker 1: some exceptions, of course, there are reformers and philanthropists, but

483
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: really it's when there's something like cholera and they realized

484
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: that disease doesn't necessarily respect class boundaries. That we get

485
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: people going into the East den missions to the East

486
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:30,960
Speaker 1: End to try to help these poor souls, but in

487
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:33,840
Speaker 1: very much a top down way. There's no equality there.

488
00:28:33,920 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: It's so this poor souls, this poor there's massive people

489
00:28:37,359 --> 00:28:39,840
Speaker 1: called the poor who are always with us, as Jesus

490
00:28:39,880 --> 00:28:42,520
Speaker 1: sale and will go in and pat them on ahead

491
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: a little bit and tell them to clean themselves up

492
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 1: and sort themselves out, and give them a little bit

493
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 1: of rather cold charity. So there's no there's no respect

494
00:28:52,040 --> 00:28:55,880
Speaker 1: really for working class people at all. They are written

495
00:28:55,920 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: about as animals a lot of the time. The terrible

496
00:28:59,240 --> 00:29:03,520
Speaker 1: conditions that they're living in are blamed on them, as

497
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 1: if they're choosing, you know, as if a family of

498
00:29:05,920 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: Irish migrants who are living fift into a room have

499
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:11,120
Speaker 1: chosen that, you know, they could have lived in a

500
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 1: five story town, has what they decided they did much

501
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 1: rather or live in one room with no running water

502
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: and granny dying in the corner and much more fun.

503
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: That's what they like to do. So we stigmatize and

504
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: we blame people for conditions that are absolutely no fault

505
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:31,240
Speaker 1: of their own MHM. In the book, in Striking a Light,

506
00:29:32,080 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 1: you cite an argument that in the Victorian era, um

507
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: here's the quote from the book, the power, social standing,

508
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:43,320
Speaker 1: and influence of the industrial industrial bourgeoise increased exponentially to

509
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 1: the point where it had been argued it became the

510
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:50,200
Speaker 1: hedgemonic class that its values eventually suffusing and dominating the

511
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: entire society. Did you find this sort of thing to

512
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 1: be true as you conducted your research? And to what

513
00:29:56,800 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: extent does that include ideals about domestic femininity among working

514
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 1: class women? So how true was it that really it

515
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:08,960
Speaker 1: was middle class rather even than than upper class kind

516
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 1: of culture that became the dominant culture in Victorian society. Yes,

517
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:17,720
Speaker 1: we definitely do see that happen. We see what people

518
00:30:17,840 --> 00:30:20,960
Speaker 1: might be familiar with as the angel in the house

519
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: narrative that the little woman should be embroidering by the

520
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: fire and making a lovely domestic haven for her man

521
00:30:29,120 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: to come houmet. Now we think of that as just

522
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: being old fashioned, like that's an idea that's always been there,

523
00:30:34,720 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. You See, this is a new idea.

524
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 1: What the men who and it is generally men that

525
00:30:40,280 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: are always who make money through being capitalists by owning factories.

526
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:50,000
Speaker 1: For the first time, there's a real social mobility that's

527
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: possible for working class people. If they have enough money

528
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: to buy a factory to set up production of matches, say,

529
00:30:57,040 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: which is actually quite cheap, it's quite a low capital

530
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:03,520
Speaker 1: in kind of thing to do, then they can start

531
00:31:03,600 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: to rise up a social scale in a way that

532
00:31:05,760 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 1: Jess wasn't possible before. Suddenly they've got money, Suddenly they

533
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 1: have status, and they look around and think, well, what

534
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 1: are we going to do about the fact that we're

535
00:31:17,080 --> 00:31:19,600
Speaker 1: still looked down on by the upper classes who say

536
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:24,480
Speaker 1: a gentleman doesn't work. Now, these aristocratic sorts, you know,

537
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 1: they're always a bit short of cash, so they're very

538
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:29,200
Speaker 1: happy to have their sons marry our daughters. They're very

539
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: happy to borrow money off us because they're always short

540
00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: of the old readies. Aren't they to heat their hope

541
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:37,600
Speaker 1: their massive country piles. But they look down on us.

542
00:31:38,120 --> 00:31:40,680
Speaker 1: No gentlemen would be involved in trade. We can't have that.

543
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: So they decide how they want to be seen, and

544
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:47,480
Speaker 1: obviously they scrapped the idea that no gentleman can be

545
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:50,880
Speaker 1: involved in trade. But what they take from the aristos

546
00:31:50,920 --> 00:31:53,680
Speaker 1: they like this idea of the lady of leisure. They

547
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:56,880
Speaker 1: think we'll have some of that for ourselves. We like that,

548
00:31:57,120 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: we like the idea of being able to show our

549
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: far wealth and stages by the fact that our daughters

550
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,960
Speaker 1: and wives don't work, and that they can be decorative

551
00:32:06,200 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: and that they can keep a lovely home for us.

552
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 1: So they take that idea. You have to be able

553
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: to hold at least two contradictory ideas in your head

554
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:19,200
Speaker 1: at anyone time to be a Victorian really really important

555
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: if you're going to be a middle rock class Victorian.

556
00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 1: So you have to consider that these men are going

557
00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 1: in two factories where the labor is very often female.

558
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 1: Seventy five percent of the workers who industrialized first were women.

559
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 1: So women have always worked, despite the myth that they hadn't.

560
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 1: So you have to go into work, make your money

561
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: from sort of Elsie and Mary and Martha and all

562
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:47,200
Speaker 1: those women who are making your fortune for you. Then

563
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: go home and say, well, women shouldn't work, disgraceful women

564
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: working as Darib was not respectable. They should be the

565
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 1: piano and riding horses and looking pretty. So it's very

566
00:32:58,000 --> 00:33:02,560
Speaker 1: very strange, and us have an effect on the people

567
00:33:03,560 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 1: that it's criticizing. It really does. We do see women

568
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:13,400
Speaker 1: saying working class women who said they didn't work after

569
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: they got married, because this was the idea. You know,

570
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 1: once you're a married lady, you shouldn't the breadwinner wage

571
00:33:19,560 --> 00:33:22,560
Speaker 1: of things, which never existed and was a complete fantasy.

572
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: Your man will look after you. You should be at home,

573
00:33:25,360 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: looking after the children and making the house lovely for him.

574
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:34,280
Speaker 1: This myth does penetrate the minds of working class women,

575
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: and you can see that when you're going around trying

576
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,520
Speaker 1: to do all history interviews and saying to people, tell

577
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: me about your your granny or your great granny or

578
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 1: your mom. Did they work? Oh? No, they never worked

579
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,600
Speaker 1: after they were married. Well, I mean they took in laundry,

580
00:33:49,400 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: and they did a bit of canning for the local factory,

581
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: and they actually made match boxes at home. And in fact,

582
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: these women never start working. They worked any four seven.

583
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 1: But it's the narrative gets adopted to the extent of

584
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 1: people saying, oh, yes, I'm not really working because you know,

585
00:34:06,240 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 1: I'm just working to pin money. Not true at all.

586
00:34:09,520 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 1: And we also see the working classes sometimes completely rejecting

587
00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:18,919
Speaker 1: this respectability narrative, which is the big thing for Victorian's respectability.

588
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 1: They love a bit of that, at least in theory,

589
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:24,800
Speaker 1: not so much impractice as it turns out, but they adapt.

590
00:34:24,920 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. So you'll get people who will say, well,

591
00:34:29,360 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: my family were respectable, but the Pitaways down at number seventeen,

592
00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:36,560
Speaker 1: they definitely weren't respectable, or we were respectable, but two

593
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: streets over they weren't respectable, so everyone redefines it to

594
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:45,280
Speaker 1: suit themselves. Factory girls are the most looked down on, probably,

595
00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:48,280
Speaker 1: and they're looked down on by servants as being really

596
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: common and rough and probably a moral But they in

597
00:34:51,640 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 1: turn look down on servant women and say, well, you're

598
00:34:55,200 --> 00:35:00,359
Speaker 1: basically enslaved. You we are free. So everyone's are keying

599
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:03,839
Speaker 1: for position and defining and redefining, but they are very

600
00:35:03,960 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: creative with it. They don't and obviously they can't just

601
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:11,120
Speaker 1: accept this notion of respectability and say, oh no, we're

602
00:35:11,160 --> 00:35:14,279
Speaker 1: not respectable, we're terrible people. We shouldn't be working. They

603
00:35:14,360 --> 00:35:17,840
Speaker 1: know they have to. But we also see people completely

604
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:23,320
Speaker 1: rejecting it. We see people whose parents who are trade unions,

605
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: are very poor and working class will say to them,

606
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:28,359
Speaker 1: don't ever let anyone look down on you. Who We'll

607
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:30,680
Speaker 1: walk them around London and say, look at these beautiful

608
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: buildings in brush London. Who do you think built them?

609
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: That was our lord, that was us from the back slums.

610
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: Always remember that, remember who has created London really, from

611
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:43,360
Speaker 1: the navies, you know, building the railways and the canals.

612
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:46,880
Speaker 1: We have made this and always be proud and always

613
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:48,719
Speaker 1: remember that, so you do get a lot of that

614
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:51,640
Speaker 1: resistance as well. It's a really fascinating time for that.

615
00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 1: In writing about middle class stereotypes, you describe the symbolic

616
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:03,960
Speaker 1: triad of the good wife, the celibate spinster, and the

617
00:36:04,160 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: prostitute as kind of the three categories that were possible

618
00:36:08,040 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: to imagine for women, and you also write that, of course,

619
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:15,040
Speaker 1: as you've been saying, working class women who were working

620
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:21,359
Speaker 1: outside the home, particularly alongside men, they didn't exactly fit

621
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: any of those three, but they risked classification, mostly as prostitutes,

622
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:29,880
Speaker 1: if they were going to be shoehorned into one of

623
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:33,360
Speaker 1: those three. Would you offer a few more comments on

624
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: on perceptions maybe of sex work and factory work for

625
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:40,839
Speaker 1: women at the time, and why it was so easy

626
00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 1: for especially middle class Victorians to equate those two. It's

627
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 1: no coincidence that the term working girl becomes a euphamiss

628
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:54,800
Speaker 1: them for prostituted women or for sex workers at this time.

629
00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:59,319
Speaker 1: A study of Victorian literature really fascinated me because they

630
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: conclude to that if a novelist wanted to have her

631
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:07,760
Speaker 1: reader sympathized with her there down on their luck heroin,

632
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:11,520
Speaker 1: they would make her a prostitute rather than a factory girl,

633
00:37:11,760 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 1: because nobody had any sympathy with factory girls. They're sort

634
00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:18,560
Speaker 1: of worse in some ways because at least with prostituted women.

635
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:22,680
Speaker 1: There's this fallen woman narrative, which the Victoria's get terribly

636
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 1: excited about. They love a fallen woman because a fallen

637
00:37:26,080 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: woman can be redeemed. You see, she can realize how

638
00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:31,719
Speaker 1: ghastly and beastly her behavior has been, and she can

639
00:37:31,760 --> 00:37:35,720
Speaker 1: come to Jesus and she can be forgiven. But somebody

640
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,360
Speaker 1: who's working, well, that's a little bit different, isn't it,

641
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 1: because they're probably going to continue doing it. You see

642
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:47,720
Speaker 1: this incredible judgmental and very sexualized by the way narrative.

643
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,160
Speaker 1: Even in labor reports of the period, there was one

644
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:55,040
Speaker 1: mining commissioner, you know, who knows what working life is like,

645
00:37:55,360 --> 00:37:58,480
Speaker 1: you would think, and yet he looks at the terrible

646
00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 1: conditions down mines where you've got girls, women, boys, men

647
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: crawling through tunnels all day on their hands and knees,

648
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:11,359
Speaker 1: you know, naked to the waist with chains around their waist,

649
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:16,920
Speaker 1: pulling carts of coal. Absolutely horrific. Imagine that heat imagined

650
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: the difficulty in breathing. Imagine the physical horror of that.

651
00:38:22,560 --> 00:38:24,839
Speaker 1: But he looks at that and doesn't say, well, yes,

652
00:38:24,880 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 1: the conditions are pretty awful. He writes about it as

653
00:38:28,000 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 1: if it's some sort of orgy going on, because the

654
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,960
Speaker 1: women are partly dressed, partially dressed as you would be

655
00:38:33,000 --> 00:38:34,880
Speaker 1: in those conditions. You're not gonna wear your best dress,

656
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,239
Speaker 1: are to crawl on your hands and knees through a

657
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:41,760
Speaker 1: coal shaft. And he says the conditions that the site,

658
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:47,399
Speaker 1: the spectacle of these women at work was absolutely revolting, disgusting.

659
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:51,600
Speaker 1: It was seen. No brothel can beat it. And first

660
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:53,920
Speaker 1: that you think, well, Mr Mining commission you seem a

661
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 1: bit well versed and exactly what a brothel is like.

662
00:38:56,920 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: I wonder what Mrs Mining Commissioner might have had to

663
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,240
Speaker 1: say about up that one. But also how bizarre, how bizarre,

664
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 1: and how sort of pervy really and slightly fetishistic do

665
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 1: you have to be to look at children, you know,

666
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 1: in those awful conditions and say, oh, good grief, they're

667
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 1: partially closed or they must all be having you know,

668
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:22,120
Speaker 1: they must be all be having sex with each other,

669
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 1: disgraceful and disgusting, as if these people I must have thought, well,

670
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 1: a chance to be a fine thing. You know, these

671
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: people are exhausted, they're absolutely exhausted, and they're starving. And

672
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:34,279
Speaker 1: yet that is what we see. We look at a

673
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: factor and we see women working alongside men and we say, well,

674
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,240
Speaker 1: she's clearly no better than she should be. But again,

675
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:42,560
Speaker 1: that's a lovely way to be humanized people. It's a

676
00:39:42,680 --> 00:39:45,640
Speaker 1: lovely way to stigmatize them and blame them. Well, you

677
00:39:45,719 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: no wonder you're Paul. Look at the way you're carrying on.

678
00:39:48,200 --> 00:39:53,280
Speaker 1: It's absolutely disgraceful. And yeah, that symbolic triad is absolutely

679
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 1: fascinating in this the fact that working women don't figure

680
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 1: in it at all. When we do hear about working women,

681
00:40:00,280 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 1: there are always comments on their morality. We have people

682
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:07,480
Speaker 1: like Charles Booth, who reported an investigated London posit poverty,

683
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,239
Speaker 1: and he will always say about groups of women, well,

684
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:13,480
Speaker 1: you know, they're a bit rough, but they're not too

685
00:40:13,719 --> 00:40:17,840
Speaker 1: bad morally. That's always significant. One of his causes of

686
00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:21,239
Speaker 1: publicies I really love actually was having a drunken or

687
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: fectless wife. I think we'd all like to be that

688
00:40:24,480 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 1: drunken and effectless wife. But these are the judgments. There's

689
00:40:27,840 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: always is incredible sexual judgments, and they're only really put

690
00:40:31,560 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: on women, they're not really put on men at all.

691
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:38,080
Speaker 1: And we see it in the Contagious Diseases Acts, where

692
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:40,399
Speaker 1: the government decides to act as if women are giving

693
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: themselves scenarial disease in cases of prostitution, as if women

694
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:47,880
Speaker 1: are doing prostitution all by themselves. No one else is

695
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:50,560
Speaker 1: doing it. There can't be anyone else in bold. Of course,

696
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:53,279
Speaker 1: the reality is that midd class and upper class men

697
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:57,799
Speaker 1: are sneaking into poor areas and using them as sexual playgrounds.

698
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 1: Who on earth is visiting the artles Paul Working men

699
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 1: often can't afford to. And there are also lots of

700
00:41:05,480 --> 00:41:09,240
Speaker 1: incidences of people, you know, sexual predators, trying to drag

701
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:13,160
Speaker 1: women and children as well away from groups down the

702
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:17,040
Speaker 1: darkened back alleys. That's a very dangerous place. But we

703
00:41:17,200 --> 00:41:20,600
Speaker 1: do get this siren idea that it's it's the women

704
00:41:20,640 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 1: of the Eastern, the women of the poor areas, alluring

705
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 1: these poor innocent men who are just trying to get

706
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 1: home to their wives. Leave me alone, you wretched women.

707
00:41:29,200 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 1: They're being dragged into these brothels. It's incredibly bizarre, and

708
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: even the people who are supposed to be in sympathy

709
00:41:37,600 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 1: with these women, you're Josephine Butler's and your child's Dickens.

710
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: There's incredibly patronizing and judgmental language about the women, as

711
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:51,360
Speaker 1: if they are somehow corrupt, as if they are somehow

712
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:55,920
Speaker 1: eugenically degraded. And even if, like Charles Dickens did, you

713
00:41:56,040 --> 00:41:59,480
Speaker 1: can save them from themselves and rehabilitate them from prostitution,

714
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 1: you better and get them to move abroad, because we

715
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: don't really want them staying in London. Josephine Butler who

716
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:09,360
Speaker 1: has a dying prostitute to live with her at the

717
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:11,760
Speaker 1: end of her days, which sounds lovely, but she assures

718
00:42:11,760 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 1: everyone she's not letting her children go anywhere near this

719
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: woman or see this woman, this poor girl who's tying

720
00:42:18,239 --> 00:42:22,560
Speaker 1: and consumpted, because they could be corrupted. So there really

721
00:42:22,840 --> 00:42:29,399
Speaker 1: is this horribly eugelic idea of bad, bad women, contrasted

722
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:31,440
Speaker 1: with the angel in the house who you know, oh

723
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 1: reathed in clouds of glory, the shining example, ghastly poem.

724
00:42:35,960 --> 00:42:38,359
Speaker 1: I have to say apologist to Coventry pat more fans,

725
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: but ghastly poem epic poem by Coventry back pat more,

726
00:42:42,280 --> 00:42:45,480
Speaker 1: where he writes about the life of the perfect you know,

727
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:50,800
Speaker 1: surrendered wife really, who completely subjugates herself to the needs

728
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 1: of her man and casts herself down the gulf of

729
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:57,799
Speaker 1: his old necessities more falling and flinging and casting. There's

730
00:42:57,800 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: an awful lot of that forman A currently written about

731
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:03,560
Speaker 1: his first wife who died young, and I could only say,

732
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:05,600
Speaker 1: I really don't blame her. I think if I had

733
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:09,239
Speaker 1: to listen too much epic poetry like that, I would

734
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: have chosen to die young as well. So again it's

735
00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:17,680
Speaker 1: just incredibly hypocritical, and a woman's place in the East

736
00:43:17,760 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: End of London is in the wrong. You can't do

737
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 1: right for doing wrong at this period. That gives us

738
00:43:25,120 --> 00:43:30,719
Speaker 1: a pretty well rounded picture of how middle class Victorians

739
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: were thinking about working women in the East End. Um.

740
00:43:34,960 --> 00:43:36,959
Speaker 1: But a lot of your work has been to try,

741
00:43:37,120 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 1: as you've said, through talking with Descendance um and through

742
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 1: the other kinds of research that you did in archives

743
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: and and all the rest, to try to get a

744
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: sense of what life was like for those people. And

745
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:59,200
Speaker 1: maybe could you offer us what life was like for

746
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:02,960
Speaker 1: those people in the East End if if we're when

747
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: they could have expressed it themselves, what was life like

748
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 1: actually in the East End, Not through the eyes of

749
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:14,319
Speaker 1: a Victorian journalist or a Victorian Victorian novelist, but from

750
00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: a Victorian worker. M Again, there's obviously no one East

751
00:44:19,520 --> 00:44:22,600
Speaker 1: End life and no one account of East End life,

752
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 1: but you can draw out some common themes for children

753
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 1: in particular. People look back on their Eastern childhood and

754
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,320
Speaker 1: they would tell me that they remembered the warmth and

755
00:44:34,480 --> 00:44:38,200
Speaker 1: the comfort of very close families. I mean literally very close,

756
00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 1: because you'll be sleeping six to her bed sometimes if

757
00:44:40,440 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: you had a bed, of course, but they remember that

758
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:46,319
Speaker 1: it's really comforting. And later, if they did make enough

759
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:48,040
Speaker 1: money to move out and have their own places, they

760
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:50,359
Speaker 1: kind of missed that, I kind of missed having their

761
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:53,399
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters all around them. But then they would

762
00:44:53,480 --> 00:44:57,720
Speaker 1: tell you it was incredibly hard. Mean, being poor is exhausting.

763
00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:01,239
Speaker 1: It's exhausting now, it was particularly exhausting. And then you're

764
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 1: working long hours and you may be all snugg in

765
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:08,200
Speaker 1: that bed together, but also your room is probably crawling

766
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 1: with insects. It was a nightly process for kids to

767
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: get their shoes and bash the black beetles that infested

768
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: the tenements. And the rooms of the Eastern so that

769
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:23,160
Speaker 1: they could go to sleep without being woken up by

770
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: being bitten. And people would sleep outside actually on rules

771
00:45:26,760 --> 00:45:30,200
Speaker 1: if they couldn't to the nineteen twenties to escape that.

772
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:34,280
Speaker 1: So nighttime, when you desperately need to sleep, is really noisy.

773
00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:39,240
Speaker 1: There's always dogs barking, drunk people shouting, people doing moonlight flips,

774
00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:41,440
Speaker 1: the fine eestent tradition to try and get ahead of

775
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: the landlord and the rent and load everything into a

776
00:45:44,200 --> 00:45:46,720
Speaker 1: cart at midnight and flit off to your next address.

777
00:45:47,360 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 1: But people do remember extraordinary solidarity, really, and the ingenuity

778
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:59,200
Speaker 1: that people used to help each other, but to do

779
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:02,800
Speaker 1: it so everyone could preserve their dignity. So if you

780
00:46:02,960 --> 00:46:06,520
Speaker 1: knew that someone in your tenement was really struggling, and

781
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,320
Speaker 1: perhaps husband had been laid off at the docks and

782
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: they had no money, you wouldn't help them in that

783
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 1: sort of patronizing, lady bountiful way that you know you

784
00:46:16,080 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: resent being helped yourself by the middle classes. You send

785
00:46:19,200 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: little Jimmy over to knock on the door with a

786
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:24,719
Speaker 1: saucepan and say, oh, all right, Mrs Jones, mom's made

787
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:28,080
Speaker 1: too much food tonight. You know, silly old mayor. She

788
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 1: made too much food, so she said, could you please

789
00:46:30,520 --> 00:46:32,440
Speaker 1: use this for us, because we're just going to have

790
00:46:32,480 --> 00:46:36,440
Speaker 1: to throw away otherwise. So you really would give people

791
00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:40,960
Speaker 1: your dignity their dignity. The way that the poor organized

792
00:46:41,000 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: themselves into these incredible communities. Every street had its queen,

793
00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:50,399
Speaker 1: every street had its auntie. They weren't by different names,

794
00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:52,440
Speaker 1: but there was a woman in every street who was

795
00:46:52,520 --> 00:46:55,920
Speaker 1: the go to gal. So if you were skinned, if

796
00:46:55,960 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: you were in trouble, you would go to this woman

797
00:46:58,360 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: and she would help you out. And this could be

798
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:05,440
Speaker 1: by the woman who was an official midwife before the NHS,

799
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:09,279
Speaker 1: the unofficial undertaker, and the person who would tell you

800
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:13,000
Speaker 1: which butcher you could go to if you were really skinned,

801
00:47:13,000 --> 00:47:14,839
Speaker 1: and he'd give you the bones out the back door

802
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:17,359
Speaker 1: so you can make soup out of them. Who tell

803
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:19,960
Speaker 1: you which shopkeepers would give you tick, would give you credit,

804
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 1: Who tell you when to go to the market to

805
00:47:22,360 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 1: pick up what they called the specs that the fruit

806
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:27,120
Speaker 1: and vege that got dropped on the ground. So it

807
00:47:27,280 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: was all about your mates. You could survive. You had

808
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,360
Speaker 1: to be quite popular. Your social skills had to be

809
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:36,759
Speaker 1: pretty good, because if you're obnoxious. No one's going to

810
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:39,560
Speaker 1: help you. When the landlord or the bailiff comes knocking,

811
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:42,319
Speaker 1: no one's going to look after you. But as long

812
00:47:42,400 --> 00:47:44,800
Speaker 1: as you played by the rules and have this community spirit,

813
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:48,840
Speaker 1: people will help you. If your husband's violent, your neighbors

814
00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,759
Speaker 1: will come in and help you. If dad is trying

815
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: to sexually assault or attack the children when he comes

816
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:58,600
Speaker 1: home drunk from the pub, your neighbors will pull your

817
00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 1: children over the back fence and hide them in theirs

818
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:05,560
Speaker 1: until dad's calmed down. But it would be wrong to

819
00:48:05,840 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 1: say that all these dempool were drunken, violent, not at all.

820
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:16,319
Speaker 1: They couldn't have survived. There had to be very, very sensible,

821
00:48:16,920 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: very practical, very hard working people, often women, who could

822
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:24,960
Speaker 1: make something out of nothing, who could feed ten children

823
00:48:25,080 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: on not much more than fresh air, really, and make

824
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:32,239
Speaker 1: do and mend and repair and keep your place as

825
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:35,160
Speaker 1: clean as you could with no running water, you know,

826
00:48:35,239 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: going down three flights of stairs, bringing the water up,

827
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 1: heating out over the fire to get any sort of

828
00:48:39,800 --> 00:48:43,640
Speaker 1: hot water, and yet keeping things just hygienic enough so

829
00:48:43,760 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: that everybody survives. It's a mammoth task. It's the policy Olympics.

830
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: You wonder how anyone managed to survive this, let alone

831
00:48:53,640 --> 00:48:56,680
Speaker 1: to thrive. But they did. And people look back with

832
00:48:56,760 --> 00:49:01,720
Speaker 1: incredible respect on their moms and their grandma's who had

833
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:05,719
Speaker 1: all these skills and all this ingenerity. So it's a

834
00:49:05,880 --> 00:49:10,760
Speaker 1: very very mixed picture. Of course, there's misery. Of course,

835
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:14,279
Speaker 1: there's death and horror and disease and violence. Of course,

836
00:49:14,360 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 1: there is in starvation hunger all the time. But there's

837
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:22,920
Speaker 1: also people who are very united. And they're particularly united

838
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 1: because they know that they're judged and their look down

839
00:49:26,640 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: on by everybody else, so they unite. So they take

840
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 1: on this Eastender identity, which is an insult by the way.

841
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 1: That's how it starts. East Ender is an insult, and

842
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: they what we call revalorize that. They turn that around

843
00:49:42,200 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 1: and they say, know, we're very proud of our streets,

844
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:48,160
Speaker 1: We're proud of our community. We're proud of our friends

845
00:49:48,200 --> 00:49:51,320
Speaker 1: and neighbors. We all work together, we all stick together.

846
00:49:51,440 --> 00:49:54,480
Speaker 1: And they had a great deal of totally justified pride

847
00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:59,840
Speaker 1: in that there were incredible people m and thinking about

848
00:50:00,040 --> 00:50:05,840
Speaker 1: how these neighborhoods were changing shape around the working people.

849
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:15,160
Speaker 1: UM you talked about in Industrial Industrialism Reshaping London. UM

850
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 1: in the book, you mentioned that when the St. Catharine's

851
00:50:18,640 --> 00:50:22,760
Speaker 1: Docks were built, they displaced eleven thousand, more than eleven

852
00:50:22,840 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 1: thousand people who undertook that dock building project. And what

853
00:50:29,960 --> 00:50:32,360
Speaker 1: happened with those people who were displaced? What did that

854
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,239
Speaker 1: look like for this east end of London where these

855
00:50:35,320 --> 00:50:39,839
Speaker 1: communities were living. This was a disaster because even though

856
00:50:40,040 --> 00:50:43,120
Speaker 1: their houses were pretty grim and pretty ghastly, they were

857
00:50:43,200 --> 00:50:45,520
Speaker 1: at least houses. This was their home, this was near

858
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:49,600
Speaker 1: to work. Often these were dockers often who were displaced

859
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:52,800
Speaker 1: by the building of this new docks. A dock company

860
00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 1: was set up. They've been trying to develop this area

861
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:58,560
Speaker 1: since the seventeen hundreds. They could see the profit in it.

862
00:50:59,200 --> 00:51:02,240
Speaker 1: And it was Robert Telford and the famous Robert Telford,

863
00:51:02,600 --> 00:51:07,000
Speaker 1: the engineer. It was his only big building and development

864
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:13,080
Speaker 1: project in London. And it was not just St Catherine's Docks.

865
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 1: This happened as well when they built the underground they

866
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:18,680
Speaker 1: were just knocked down poor houses. Are that so much

867
00:51:18,719 --> 00:51:21,320
Speaker 1: as by your leave? If you were better off and

868
00:51:21,400 --> 00:51:25,040
Speaker 1: the property owner, then you've got compensation. If you didn't

869
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:29,400
Speaker 1: tough on, you go. And we presume because nobody bothered

870
00:51:29,440 --> 00:51:32,480
Speaker 1: to record where people went that they just went deeper

871
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: into London. They just increased the overcrowding everywhere else they

872
00:51:36,640 --> 00:51:39,759
Speaker 1: would have had no choice, perhaps stay with friends, go

873
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:41,640
Speaker 1: wherever you could. A lot of them would just have

874
00:51:41,719 --> 00:51:45,480
Speaker 1: been homeless, and there was a large increase in homelessness.

875
00:51:46,239 --> 00:51:49,279
Speaker 1: But again this is very typical of London. We think

876
00:51:49,360 --> 00:51:52,840
Speaker 1: of pulling down the tenements as a good thing, of

877
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:56,000
Speaker 1: flump clearance as a good thing, and of course getting

878
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 1: rid of insanitary housing is a good thing. But if

879
00:51:58,160 --> 00:52:01,839
Speaker 1: you're not providing any alto latives for people, how can

880
00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: it be? And that's what's so extraordinary. Very few people

881
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:07,239
Speaker 1: at the time wrote about that. They wrote about isn't

882
00:52:07,239 --> 00:52:09,880
Speaker 1: this wonderful We're getting rid of all this awful housing?

883
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: Was Hello, there are people in those houses. Where are

884
00:52:13,360 --> 00:52:15,840
Speaker 1: they going to go? They probably rather have a really grotty,

885
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:18,360
Speaker 1: dirty roof over their head with their family and friends

886
00:52:18,400 --> 00:52:21,440
Speaker 1: and neighbors around them than no roof over their head

887
00:52:21,480 --> 00:52:23,759
Speaker 1: at all. And of course if they're homeless, they get

888
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:28,879
Speaker 1: judged and castigated for being homeless. And it's really it's

889
00:52:28,960 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: quite surprising that that has still been talked about as

890
00:52:34,600 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 1: this really interesting, huge development and how good that it

891
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 1: got rid of terrible slums, And there's been very little

892
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:45,840
Speaker 1: comment even now on what a disaster it was to

893
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 1: lose your home and how completely discombobulating. As if life

894
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:53,200
Speaker 1: wasn't bad and uncertain enough, suddenly you've got to move

895
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:55,399
Speaker 1: and you need to be near work because you can't

896
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:58,400
Speaker 1: afford to get public transports, so you're working. So it

897
00:52:58,480 --> 00:53:00,600
Speaker 1: could be a disaster. Couldn't it have to be four

898
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: or five miles away from your work? Just everything just

899
00:53:04,440 --> 00:53:07,759
Speaker 1: makes poverty worse. That's really what happens in London of

900
00:53:07,840 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: this series, just about everything that happens happens to the

901
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:17,239
Speaker 1: poor and makes their lives so much worse. MM. So

902
00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:20,320
Speaker 1: you've you've talked a little bit about that middle class

903
00:53:20,480 --> 00:53:24,440
Speaker 1: culture that shaped Victorian thinking about poverty in London. UM,

904
00:53:24,920 --> 00:53:27,279
Speaker 1: let's talk a little more about the role of journalism

905
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: specifically and especially stories like The Maiden Tribute of Modern

906
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:36,839
Speaker 1: Babylon series or The Bitter Cry about Castle London UM

907
00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 1: in creating an imaginative geography of the East End for

908
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:43,759
Speaker 1: London readers. Like we've talked about those two pieces you

909
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:46,520
Speaker 1: mentioned in your book, how influential were they and what

910
00:53:46,719 --> 00:53:50,400
Speaker 1: kind of substance. Did they add to the the general

911
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:54,120
Speaker 1: ideas about the East End. Yes, it's a very interesting

912
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: period for the sensationalist press. And it all comes about

913
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:02,520
Speaker 1: because they dropped a tax on newspapers, so suddenly it's

914
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:07,080
Speaker 1: possible and quite cost effective to publish daily and in

915
00:54:07,239 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 1: order to keep readers interested. We get these serializations have

916
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 1: often very dramatic and quite salacious stories, so we certainly

917
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:21,320
Speaker 1: get that with W. T. Stead, the journalist who wrote

918
00:54:21,360 --> 00:54:25,440
Speaker 1: the Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon, and what that was

919
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: about was the supposed sex trafficking of young London girls

920
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:34,359
Speaker 1: to foreign bruthels. And again, you know the foreign it's

921
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:38,279
Speaker 1: much easier to be outraged and to deal with and

922
00:54:38,400 --> 00:54:41,320
Speaker 1: look at these things when it's not bruthels here in England.

923
00:54:41,400 --> 00:54:47,000
Speaker 1: It's those foreigners taking our girls. But what he actually did,

924
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 1: I'm gonna said, don't think you get away with this now,

925
00:54:49,760 --> 00:54:54,680
Speaker 1: was smuggled a young girl away to France just to

926
00:54:54,880 --> 00:54:58,399
Speaker 1: prove that it could be done. He struggled to get

927
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:03,840
Speaker 1: accounts for various reason of that really proved this was

928
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:07,719
Speaker 1: happening extensively. So he did this too, at least show

929
00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 1: that it could be done, and to be honest, the

930
00:55:10,360 --> 00:55:13,320
Speaker 1: whole thing was highly dubious. He seems to have paid

931
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:17,440
Speaker 1: this girl's mother to effectively by her, and there's no

932
00:55:17,520 --> 00:55:20,200
Speaker 1: suggestion that anything went on between him and this girl.

933
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:22,879
Speaker 1: I should stipulate, but the whole thing, you know, it's

934
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:27,360
Speaker 1: highly ethically questionable, to say the very least. But of

935
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:32,120
Speaker 1: course readers lap this up. Innocent young girls have been

936
00:55:32,239 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 1: trafficked into prostitution. You can see how that's going to

937
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 1: sell papers. But it also casts the people of the

938
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:44,480
Speaker 1: East End in a ghastly light, doesn't it. They're selling

939
00:55:44,680 --> 00:55:48,360
Speaker 1: their children these awful It proves everything, doesn't it that

940
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:52,360
Speaker 1: we've suspected about these people who are degraded and not

941
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:55,520
Speaker 1: really proper humans and their animals. And they will even

942
00:55:55,680 --> 00:55:58,560
Speaker 1: sell their own children, that's how low they will go.

943
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:02,720
Speaker 1: So well, he's trying to get the age of consent

944
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:06,239
Speaker 1: raised with this, and ultimately he does achieve that, so

945
00:56:06,520 --> 00:56:11,560
Speaker 1: his aim is good. It's just is more demonization of

946
00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:16,759
Speaker 1: the poor and more suggestion that the East End is

947
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 1: this ghastly in moral criminal place where all these ghastly

948
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:27,480
Speaker 1: acts begin. And in fact, there was this idea that

949
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:30,560
Speaker 1: the poor didn't love their children which is a really

950
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:34,680
Speaker 1: strange one. How separate of a species have you got

951
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:37,760
Speaker 1: to be considered if people question whether you love your children?

952
00:56:37,960 --> 00:56:40,840
Speaker 1: And there are even some commentators who say, you know,

953
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:42,319
Speaker 1: I've talked to some of this poor pl and jin

954
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:45,560
Speaker 1: know they actually do, they actually love their children. The

955
00:56:45,640 --> 00:56:48,920
Speaker 1: poor used their children. Well, they're very surprised about this.

956
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:52,840
Speaker 1: Why shouldn't they well, of course because their children are working.

957
00:56:53,120 --> 00:56:58,279
Speaker 1: And again the ludicrousness to modern eyes of making people

958
00:56:58,400 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: so poor that everyone in the family has to work

959
00:57:00,680 --> 00:57:02,719
Speaker 1: from six years old and then saying well, do you

960
00:57:02,920 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: love your children? I feel making them work is so

961
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:11,240
Speaker 1: hypocritical to eyes. And then we have means the bitter

962
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: cry of Outcast London, which again is a very very

963
00:57:15,160 --> 00:57:20,600
Speaker 1: famous piece, but outcast the very language of it. You know,

964
00:57:20,640 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: there are people who are beyond the pale, that outside

965
00:57:24,840 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: normal society, and it is judgmental. It's very top down.

966
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:33,560
Speaker 1: We're looking down on these people. Were saying, well, they

967
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:38,600
Speaker 1: don't attend church very often, they're not regular attenders at worship.

968
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:42,520
Speaker 1: Men's talks about that. An awful lot talks about immorality,

969
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:46,000
Speaker 1: very obsessed with that, the fact that in these crowded

970
00:57:47,160 --> 00:57:50,000
Speaker 1: houses and what people are sleeping together in the same head.

971
00:57:50,080 --> 00:57:52,760
Speaker 1: You know, there could be incests, there could be immorality.

972
00:57:52,920 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 1: That's always the implication, and that if we're not careful

973
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 1: in means his eyes, one of the reason we should

974
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:03,240
Speaker 1: do something about this, and definitely is saying that we

975
00:58:03,240 --> 00:58:07,480
Speaker 1: shouldn't do something about this because we might have revolution otherwise,

976
00:58:07,600 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 1: and revolution the ultimate terror. So it's not let's be

977
00:58:12,080 --> 00:58:15,640
Speaker 1: fair to the pool because it's fair, or let's stop

978
00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:18,320
Speaker 1: people starving and die because we're a very rich country

979
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:21,880
Speaker 1: and nobody needs to starve and die. It's there will

980
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:26,120
Speaker 1: be consequences if we don't. There could be revolution if

981
00:58:26,200 --> 00:58:28,240
Speaker 1: there don't. There could be people having the wrong sort

982
00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: of sex with the wrong sort of people if we don't.

983
00:58:31,720 --> 00:58:35,280
Speaker 1: So there's always this need to justify why on earth

984
00:58:35,400 --> 00:58:38,160
Speaker 1: we should help these people who are you know, in

985
00:58:38,240 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 1: the East and there within a stone strow of Posh London.

986
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:44,680
Speaker 1: They're so close to Parliament. And that, by the way,

987
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: is another reason that the Eastern becomes so feared and

988
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:51,680
Speaker 1: watch and people are keeping an eye on it for

989
00:58:51,760 --> 00:58:56,880
Speaker 1: signs of revolution because they there is this uneasy awareness

990
00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: that's so close to the sender to repower. Are all

991
00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:06,120
Speaker 1: these thousands upon thousands of people who we are working

992
00:59:06,240 --> 00:59:09,560
Speaker 1: to death basically, and who we are making staff to death,

993
00:59:09,960 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 1: and my goodness, we're all in trouble if they get

994
00:59:11,920 --> 00:59:16,280
Speaker 1: a bit upperty m hm hm and over and over again.

995
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:18,240
Speaker 1: This is something that you mentioned a little bit earlier,

996
00:59:18,320 --> 00:59:22,160
Speaker 1: but I'd like to explore with a few more comments, um,

997
00:59:22,720 --> 00:59:27,120
Speaker 1: the way that writers compared East London to the Imperial borderlands,

998
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:31,600
Speaker 1: and the kind of mystique, the kind of Orientalists thinking

999
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:34,080
Speaker 1: that was used to talk about the Middle East or

1000
00:59:34,360 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 1: or India were applied to bethnal Green and whopping um,

1001
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:41,520
Speaker 1: could you give us an example of that kind of

1002
00:59:42,160 --> 00:59:48,120
Speaker 1: writing that drew the imperial logic into London itself. We

1003
00:59:48,440 --> 00:59:53,640
Speaker 1: hear it absolutely constantly when people talk about the East End.

1004
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:58,720
Speaker 1: It's the mysterious East. It's the darkest East. It's a

1005
00:59:59,040 --> 01:00:02,560
Speaker 1: terror in coordin eater, it's a darkened land. It's a

1006
01:00:02,640 --> 01:00:05,040
Speaker 1: place that we cannot find on a map. It's this

1007
01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:11,520
Speaker 1: alien culture. And of course that's again super handy if

1008
01:00:11,600 --> 01:00:13,680
Speaker 1: you want to justify the fact that you are letting

1009
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 1: people start is to say, well, they're not like us.

1010
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:20,680
Speaker 1: To see, we can't really comment on how other cultures

1011
01:00:20,720 --> 01:00:23,000
Speaker 1: in other countries live. That's up to them. That's not

1012
01:00:23,080 --> 01:00:25,000
Speaker 1: our business how they run themselves. And this is a

1013
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:28,920
Speaker 1: separate country within our own country. These are not really

1014
01:00:29,040 --> 01:00:31,960
Speaker 1: people like us. They're not even really human. They're certainly

1015
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 1: not really normal English people. So what can we do?

1016
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:39,800
Speaker 1: They choose to live like this, and it's another way

1017
01:00:40,080 --> 01:00:45,479
Speaker 1: of demonizing people and other in people. And we see

1018
01:00:46,040 --> 01:00:51,320
Speaker 1: the result of this in what's known as plumbing. What

1019
01:00:51,520 --> 01:00:55,440
Speaker 1: people like to do who had read these sensationalist, dramatic

1020
01:00:55,600 --> 01:00:59,000
Speaker 1: tales of the Darkest East was to go and visit it,

1021
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:02,160
Speaker 1: often with a couple of policemen who were paid to

1022
01:01:02,280 --> 01:01:05,480
Speaker 1: accompany them, and they would go around and stare at

1023
01:01:05,520 --> 01:01:09,040
Speaker 1: the poor. Basically, so they would go into the slums,

1024
01:01:09,240 --> 01:01:12,360
Speaker 1: into the tenements and look at how they lived. And

1025
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be I suppose sometimes somewhat philanthropic.

1026
01:01:18,440 --> 01:01:20,960
Speaker 1: Oh dear, they could exclaim about, oh dear, how terrible.

1027
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:23,920
Speaker 1: You know, I do at least understand the conditions of

1028
01:01:23,960 --> 01:01:25,720
Speaker 1: the poor, because I bothered to go and see it.

1029
01:01:26,520 --> 01:01:30,520
Speaker 1: But then there were a lot of posh, young ladies

1030
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:32,960
Speaker 1: and gentlemen who just thought it was a laugh, really,

1031
01:01:33,040 --> 01:01:36,000
Speaker 1: and it was a freak show. So it was akin

1032
01:01:36,560 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: to go and laugh at the bearded lady at the circus,

1033
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:43,800
Speaker 1: to laugh at the freaks, and how awful that must

1034
01:01:43,840 --> 01:01:48,680
Speaker 1: have been to experience. I worked on a TV show

1035
01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:51,760
Speaker 1: for the BBC a few years ago called The Victorian Slum.

1036
01:01:52,440 --> 01:01:57,480
Speaker 1: Loved working on it because they recreated a plum, essentially

1037
01:01:57,520 --> 01:02:01,720
Speaker 1: a tenement, and for an as geek historian like me,

1038
01:02:01,920 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 1: that's as close as you were going to get. It

1039
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:08,360
Speaker 1: was gremendously exciting to be in those beautifully recreatible I said,

1040
01:02:08,400 --> 01:02:11,720
Speaker 1: beautifully that horrible living a conversation, but to be almost

1041
01:02:11,840 --> 01:02:15,640
Speaker 1: in it was incredible. But what I've never forgotten about that,

1042
01:02:15,680 --> 01:02:17,480
Speaker 1: and I'm still friends with some of the people that

1043
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:21,360
Speaker 1: were the cast. When I say the cast, they weren't acting,

1044
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:24,040
Speaker 1: they weren't trying to pretend they were Victorian. They were

1045
01:02:24,120 --> 01:02:27,720
Speaker 1: sending modern people to dress like it and live like it,

1046
01:02:27,840 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 1: and see if they could earn money, see if they

1047
01:02:29,760 --> 01:02:32,560
Speaker 1: could survive without the welfare state. It was really eye opening.

1048
01:02:33,160 --> 01:02:35,520
Speaker 1: But I remember one day I went into do filming

1049
01:02:36,920 --> 01:02:41,880
Speaker 1: and they were furious, so angry and so agitated, and

1050
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:43,560
Speaker 1: I said, what on earth it's wrong with you? You

1051
01:02:43,680 --> 01:02:46,720
Speaker 1: all you've all got faces like thunder. And they said, oh,

1052
01:02:47,240 --> 01:02:51,360
Speaker 1: we filmed this thing this morning where people came slumming

1053
01:02:51,920 --> 01:02:54,240
Speaker 1: and they came into our rooms, they came into our

1054
01:02:54,320 --> 01:02:57,120
Speaker 1: boarding house, as they came into our courtyards, and they

1055
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:00,480
Speaker 1: filmed us. They actually like we weren't there. They didn't

1056
01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:04,040
Speaker 1: talk to us, and they were even though they knew

1057
01:03:04,880 --> 01:03:08,600
Speaker 1: that this was the two thousand's, even though they knew

1058
01:03:08,760 --> 01:03:12,000
Speaker 1: these people had, you know, were not really laughing at them.

1059
01:03:12,360 --> 01:03:15,720
Speaker 1: It hurt them emotionally. It caused them so much pain

1060
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:18,160
Speaker 1: and in fact, one of the fathers that one of

1061
01:03:18,200 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 1: the families had to have counseling after doing that. Chauffeur,

1062
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:24,640
Speaker 1: I think it was three weeks because it was just

1063
01:03:25,040 --> 01:03:29,320
Speaker 1: so awful not to be able to protect and help

1064
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:31,960
Speaker 1: your family, not be able to protect and help his

1065
01:03:32,120 --> 01:03:35,560
Speaker 1: children and his grandchildren as he wanted to. So I

1066
01:03:35,640 --> 01:03:38,440
Speaker 1: think that gives you some idea of what it's like

1067
01:03:38,760 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 1: to be right there in London and to have people saying,

1068
01:03:43,960 --> 01:03:48,240
Speaker 1: where is this mysterious country that is strange and mysterious

1069
01:03:48,360 --> 01:03:52,360
Speaker 1: denizens living And you're thinking, Hi, I'm right here, can

1070
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,400
Speaker 1: you not see me? But you're being cast adrift. You

1071
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: are being outcast by your own society and community. M HM.

1072
01:04:00,760 --> 01:04:04,240
Speaker 1: I will say in in I love that that program.

1073
01:04:04,320 --> 01:04:06,960
Speaker 1: I watched it last year. Um. It's marketed in the

1074
01:04:07,040 --> 01:04:10,560
Speaker 1: United States as slum House. I think I hope for

1075
01:04:11,000 --> 01:04:14,680
Speaker 1: any listeners of unobscured who want to get a little

1076
01:04:14,720 --> 01:04:18,040
Speaker 1: more of that tangible feeling, who want to try to

1077
01:04:18,160 --> 01:04:22,320
Speaker 1: experience some of the rhythms of Victorian working class life,

1078
01:04:22,720 --> 01:04:25,520
Speaker 1: uh slum house or the Victorian slum that program is

1079
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:30,160
Speaker 1: brilliant for that. UM. So I really commend that too. Listeners,

1080
01:04:30,560 --> 01:04:33,040
Speaker 1: go check it out, give it a watch. It's it's very,

1081
01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:37,840
Speaker 1: very worth it. In in striking a Light, Louise you right,

1082
01:04:38,760 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 1: um that the socialist groups which have been so well studied, um,

1083
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:47,200
Speaker 1: they only represented a very small minority of the people

1084
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:50,600
Speaker 1: who actually lived in the East End, and that membership

1085
01:04:50,680 --> 01:04:53,960
Speaker 1: was generally highest among the middle classes and men from

1086
01:04:54,040 --> 01:04:57,280
Speaker 1: more affluent sections of the working class. UM. And if

1087
01:04:57,400 --> 01:05:01,040
Speaker 1: most of the socialists or the radical known to us

1088
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 1: today we're a middle class people, what can we actually

1089
01:05:05,240 --> 01:05:09,680
Speaker 1: say about the politics of East London's working classes and

1090
01:05:10,160 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 1: and poor. And what's so interesting is that we've just

1091
01:05:15,520 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 1: gone ahead and assumed that working class people in the

1092
01:05:20,200 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 1: East End were not political, as if somehow, just because

1093
01:05:25,680 --> 01:05:27,680
Speaker 1: you hadn't read car marks cover to cover the fact

1094
01:05:27,760 --> 01:05:33,919
Speaker 1: that you were starving and dying and being worked to death,

1095
01:05:33,960 --> 01:05:37,040
Speaker 1: wouldn't wouldn't really occur to you. You wouldn't really realize

1096
01:05:38,400 --> 01:05:41,600
Speaker 1: unless somebody middle class came and told you. And even

1097
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 1: some historians that I greatly respect have written about that

1098
01:05:46,240 --> 01:05:49,120
Speaker 1: and said, you know, politics stirs them very little. Was

1099
01:05:49,240 --> 01:05:51,560
Speaker 1: the phrase that was used at the time about the

1100
01:05:51,600 --> 01:05:55,800
Speaker 1: working classes. They're not moved by politics. They're just so

1101
01:05:56,120 --> 01:05:59,920
Speaker 1: busy trying to get ahead, trying to get work, try

1102
01:06:00,000 --> 01:06:02,640
Speaker 1: mine to live, that they will climb on each other,

1103
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:06,360
Speaker 1: you know, they will do each other down in order

1104
01:06:06,720 --> 01:06:10,120
Speaker 1: to survive. And you could understand it, frankly, if that

1105
01:06:10,320 --> 01:06:14,600
Speaker 1: had been the case, because working those hours, that struggled

1106
01:06:14,640 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 1: to survive, that struggled to feed your family, what does

1107
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:22,480
Speaker 1: it leave you for political thinking? But what's so fascinating

1108
01:06:22,680 --> 01:06:27,280
Speaker 1: is it's not true at all. Working class people again

1109
01:06:27,440 --> 01:06:31,200
Speaker 1: and again have told us when talking about their childhoods,

1110
01:06:31,520 --> 01:06:36,520
Speaker 1: that they were incredibly politicized. It tends to be assumed

1111
01:06:37,400 --> 01:06:41,320
Speaker 1: that literacy, that being able to read is the be

1112
01:06:41,480 --> 01:06:44,960
Speaker 1: all and end all and if they were illiterate. I've

1113
01:06:45,000 --> 01:06:47,000
Speaker 1: often been told this, you know, don't you think you

1114
01:06:47,080 --> 01:06:49,800
Speaker 1: make too much louise about the poor being? Don't you

1115
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:53,320
Speaker 1: think you're romanticizing them when you say that they were political,

1116
01:06:53,400 --> 01:06:57,480
Speaker 1: because after all, they couldn't read all right. Well, humanity

1117
01:06:57,600 --> 01:06:59,840
Speaker 1: hasn't been able to read all right for a great

1118
01:07:00,280 --> 01:07:02,440
Speaker 1: deal of our history. And yet you know, we've managed

1119
01:07:02,520 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 1: pretty well. And for example, the Irish community maintained a

1120
01:07:09,120 --> 01:07:15,760
Speaker 1: real sense of politicization through telling tales around the fireside. Literally,

1121
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:19,200
Speaker 1: families would gather of an evening and they would, as

1122
01:07:19,240 --> 01:07:23,320
Speaker 1: one man called John Gibbons his reminiscences, unpublished Reminiscences of

1123
01:07:23,440 --> 01:07:27,520
Speaker 1: his Childhood I read, said, we would tell the tales

1124
01:07:27,880 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 1: of Erin's wrongs, and they would talk about all the

1125
01:07:31,200 --> 01:07:33,200
Speaker 1: terrible things that the Bricks had done in Ireland, and

1126
01:07:33,280 --> 01:07:35,000
Speaker 1: my goodness, there were enough to keep you going for

1127
01:07:35,200 --> 01:07:38,320
Speaker 1: several evenings, I would imagine. And he they would talk

1128
01:07:38,400 --> 01:07:41,760
Speaker 1: about Robert Emmett, the Irish rebel who was executed and

1129
01:07:41,880 --> 01:07:45,960
Speaker 1: how he died, and somebody would recite his speech from

1130
01:07:46,040 --> 01:07:49,160
Speaker 1: the dock, and he said, how can we not grow

1131
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:53,720
Speaker 1: up to be dreamers? Of them? Roast romantic dreams. How

1132
01:07:53,840 --> 01:07:58,720
Speaker 1: could those people not become passionate about Irish home rule,

1133
01:07:58,760 --> 01:08:01,880
Speaker 1: about Irish affair is, how could they not become passionate

1134
01:08:01,920 --> 01:08:06,640
Speaker 1: about their people? And this was recreated with non Irish

1135
01:08:06,680 --> 01:08:09,600
Speaker 1: people as well. I mentioned before that one doctor's daughter

1136
01:08:09,760 --> 01:08:13,680
Speaker 1: remembered her dad taking them around for Sunday walks and saying,

1137
01:08:13,760 --> 01:08:17,479
Speaker 1: look at that beautiful building. Are people built that? And

1138
01:08:17,720 --> 01:08:22,680
Speaker 1: there were organizations like the Clarion Cycling Club. There was

1139
01:08:22,760 --> 01:08:28,679
Speaker 1: also a journal that was really widely read and Marry England,

1140
01:08:28,760 --> 01:08:32,040
Speaker 1: the wonderful book by the Clarions Robert Blatchford, which people

1141
01:08:32,080 --> 01:08:35,679
Speaker 1: would read. And there was a tale that I read

1142
01:08:35,720 --> 01:08:38,120
Speaker 1: of a little girl's thinking. I remember that my dad

1143
01:08:38,240 --> 01:08:40,880
Speaker 1: would read to us from that from Mary England, and

1144
01:08:40,960 --> 01:08:43,679
Speaker 1: my mom would shout up the stairs, those children should

1145
01:08:43,760 --> 01:08:46,800
Speaker 1: be in bed, it's past their bedtime. Stop reading to them,

1146
01:08:46,920 --> 01:08:49,880
Speaker 1: let's go to sleep. And he would say, what I

1147
01:08:50,000 --> 01:08:54,200
Speaker 1: am telling them will do them much more good than sleep.

1148
01:08:54,880 --> 01:08:57,640
Speaker 1: So there was this awareness by parents that we have

1149
01:08:57,880 --> 01:09:00,800
Speaker 1: to politicize our kids, we have to give them a

1150
01:09:00,920 --> 01:09:06,880
Speaker 1: sense of class pride. Another um reminiscence that I read

1151
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:08,960
Speaker 1: was ever woman saying, well, we were told we were

1152
01:09:08,960 --> 01:09:11,760
Speaker 1: supposed to look up to our so called betters. But

1153
01:09:11,920 --> 01:09:14,680
Speaker 1: you know, my mom was was in service and she

1154
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:17,960
Speaker 1: dusted the sideboard of old Lord Ponson b Smithe and

1155
01:09:18,040 --> 01:09:19,760
Speaker 1: she knew what he was like. She had to pick

1156
01:09:19,840 --> 01:09:23,280
Speaker 1: up after him. We weren't impressed by these people because

1157
01:09:23,360 --> 01:09:26,320
Speaker 1: we knew from our parents we were told that they

1158
01:09:26,400 --> 01:09:29,840
Speaker 1: were no better than us. And in fact, there are

1159
01:09:29,960 --> 01:09:35,560
Speaker 1: constant attempts to unionize. There are constant attempts to protest

1160
01:09:35,800 --> 01:09:38,760
Speaker 1: and to rebel by working people. It's just that they

1161
01:09:38,800 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 1: often get their skulls broken by the police and the

1162
01:09:41,360 --> 01:09:43,800
Speaker 1: armies when they try it. It's not that they don't

1163
01:09:43,920 --> 01:09:48,800
Speaker 1: try it, but then these stories also get misrepresented. There

1164
01:09:48,960 --> 01:09:54,040
Speaker 1: was an incident in six that led to violence when

1165
01:09:54,080 --> 01:09:58,960
Speaker 1: a protectionist group, so a group that are supposedly representing

1166
01:09:59,040 --> 01:10:02,200
Speaker 1: working people, are speaking in Trafalgar Square and they're saying

1167
01:10:02,240 --> 01:10:05,000
Speaker 1: we've got to keep these foreigners out of our British

1168
01:10:05,120 --> 01:10:08,719
Speaker 1: jobs and all that awful rhetoric that unfortunately is still

1169
01:10:08,840 --> 01:10:13,519
Speaker 1: with us, and this led to violence. This has been

1170
01:10:13,560 --> 01:10:17,040
Speaker 1: written about by historians saying, look you see, you see

1171
01:10:17,080 --> 01:10:19,840
Speaker 1: this is what working class people were like then. They

1172
01:10:19,920 --> 01:10:23,280
Speaker 1: were so ready to fight foreigners. They were so ready

1173
01:10:23,360 --> 01:10:26,160
Speaker 1: to be sort of borderline racist and xenophobic, and they

1174
01:10:26,200 --> 01:10:29,559
Speaker 1: were so ready to riot all the time. But actually

1175
01:10:30,040 --> 01:10:33,719
Speaker 1: it doesn't take much research to prove that that whole

1176
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:38,320
Speaker 1: thing was a front for employers organizations. It was them

1177
01:10:38,439 --> 01:10:41,719
Speaker 1: who are up on the posiums in Trafalgar Square speaking

1178
01:10:41,720 --> 01:10:43,720
Speaker 1: about the need to get rid of foreign workers and

1179
01:10:43,840 --> 01:10:48,400
Speaker 1: to fight foreign competition. It wasn't genuine working people, and

1180
01:10:48,520 --> 01:10:51,799
Speaker 1: in fact, genuine working people who were listening were pretty

1181
01:10:51,880 --> 01:10:55,920
Speaker 1: disgusted and fought back against those speakers, and that's what

1182
01:10:56,160 --> 01:11:01,320
Speaker 1: caused the violence. And yet even comparatively re historians have

1183
01:11:01,560 --> 01:11:08,160
Speaker 1: written about that as an example of these uneducated, selfish,

1184
01:11:08,560 --> 01:11:12,919
Speaker 1: a political poor people. But I would say you couldn't

1185
01:11:13,320 --> 01:11:18,240
Speaker 1: be a political and survive as a poor person in

1186
01:11:18,400 --> 01:11:21,640
Speaker 1: the East End of London if you take politics in

1187
01:11:21,720 --> 01:11:25,000
Speaker 1: its widest sense, if you didn't have enough sense of

1188
01:11:25,080 --> 01:11:29,080
Speaker 1: solidarity to say, look, we're all in this together, we

1189
01:11:29,280 --> 01:11:32,000
Speaker 1: all need to help each other, we all need to

1190
01:11:32,439 --> 01:11:34,400
Speaker 1: make sure Mrs so and so next door has got

1191
01:11:34,520 --> 01:11:38,000
Speaker 1: enough food because it could be us tomorrow. That very

1192
01:11:38,160 --> 01:11:42,920
Speaker 1: basic sense of basically important sense of networking and solidarity.

1193
01:11:43,600 --> 01:11:47,479
Speaker 1: People brought that into factories and women in particular bought

1194
01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:51,599
Speaker 1: their networks of support and solidarity into the new factories

1195
01:11:51,640 --> 01:11:54,960
Speaker 1: and the new industrial jobs, and why wouldn't they? And

1196
01:11:55,240 --> 01:12:00,680
Speaker 1: really these things get dismissed sometimes by the serious label historians. Oh,

1197
01:12:00,760 --> 01:12:03,599
Speaker 1: that's not really a form of politics, but I think

1198
01:12:03,800 --> 01:12:06,560
Speaker 1: it's definitely, to my mind it is. And that was

1199
01:12:06,640 --> 01:12:10,519
Speaker 1: really the basis for trade unionism. For modern trade unisn't

1200
01:12:10,640 --> 01:12:14,360
Speaker 1: begins with this idea that we all need to help

1201
01:12:14,439 --> 01:12:17,439
Speaker 1: each other. We know who, we know, we have class

1202
01:12:17,560 --> 01:12:19,920
Speaker 1: enemies and we all need to unite to fight them,

1203
01:12:20,000 --> 01:12:22,320
Speaker 1: and a wrong to one is a wrong to all,

1204
01:12:22,400 --> 01:12:24,920
Speaker 1: if you like, that's a lesson that you learned pretty

1205
01:12:25,000 --> 01:12:30,360
Speaker 1: quickly in the backslums of the East End. What's jumped

1206
01:12:30,360 --> 01:12:33,400
Speaker 1: forward a little bit um. What was it like to

1207
01:12:33,640 --> 01:12:39,080
Speaker 1: be Irish in London's East End? What was distinctive about

1208
01:12:39,200 --> 01:12:43,920
Speaker 1: the Irish community there? What was that experience like and

1209
01:12:44,120 --> 01:12:47,839
Speaker 1: was it typical of the Irish experience in other places

1210
01:12:47,880 --> 01:12:53,759
Speaker 1: in London. Yeah, there's no one Irish experience in London,

1211
01:12:53,880 --> 01:12:58,320
Speaker 1: of course, but certainly it's a very different experience. If

1212
01:12:58,400 --> 01:13:02,479
Speaker 1: you're arriving from Ireland and extremely poor, with perhaps nothing

1213
01:13:02,520 --> 01:13:04,920
Speaker 1: but the clothes you stand up in and settling perhaps

1214
01:13:05,000 --> 01:13:08,440
Speaker 1: around spittle fields. That was always the zone of transmission,

1215
01:13:08,520 --> 01:13:11,800
Speaker 1: that was where people often began. Then if you'll say

1216
01:13:11,840 --> 01:13:15,679
Speaker 1: an Irish lawyer or a playwright, or if you're Oscar Wild,

1217
01:13:15,840 --> 01:13:18,360
Speaker 1: you know there's Irish people in Irish people at this time.

1218
01:13:19,640 --> 01:13:22,639
Speaker 1: But it was said that if there was one thing

1219
01:13:22,920 --> 01:13:27,760
Speaker 1: an English working person despised more than a policeman, it

1220
01:13:28,040 --> 01:13:32,040
Speaker 1: was an irishman. So there were these awful divisions of

1221
01:13:32,120 --> 01:13:34,200
Speaker 1: Karl Marks commented on that. He said, oh, we have

1222
01:13:34,439 --> 01:13:40,360
Speaker 1: to stop this racist conception where workers don't unite together.

1223
01:13:41,600 --> 01:13:44,040
Speaker 1: They see the Irish is competition and they try and

1224
01:13:44,240 --> 01:13:46,320
Speaker 1: drive them out of the employment market. They need to

1225
01:13:46,479 --> 01:13:49,680
Speaker 1: unite with them. Isn't that always the problem? And it's

1226
01:13:49,680 --> 01:13:52,639
Speaker 1: also a problem for women workers that male trade uniors

1227
01:13:52,680 --> 01:13:54,920
Speaker 1: would see them as taking their jobs because they were

1228
01:13:54,960 --> 01:13:58,639
Speaker 1: forced to work for less. So we do see Irish

1229
01:13:58,760 --> 01:14:04,599
Speaker 1: people being accused of causing their own povericy. This happens

1230
01:14:04,640 --> 01:14:06,920
Speaker 1: with Jewish people as well. It happens with most waves

1231
01:14:07,040 --> 01:14:11,760
Speaker 1: of migrant workers. They're accused of bringing down wages, they're

1232
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:17,280
Speaker 1: accused of causing overcrowding. To set against this, they do

1233
01:14:17,640 --> 01:14:23,840
Speaker 1: have really strong networks, so through culture, through music, through pubs.

1234
01:14:23,880 --> 01:14:25,680
Speaker 1: There are a lot of Irish pubs in London at

1235
01:14:25,720 --> 01:14:28,000
Speaker 1: this time and they're very important to the political life

1236
01:14:28,080 --> 01:14:33,640
Speaker 1: of London. And through the church, Irish people are very united,

1237
01:14:33,840 --> 01:14:36,280
Speaker 1: and we see a lot of what they call chain migration,

1238
01:14:36,360 --> 01:14:39,000
Speaker 1: which means you go to a certain area because your

1239
01:14:39,040 --> 01:14:41,400
Speaker 1: friends are there, so your friends are settled in London,

1240
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:44,439
Speaker 1: you come over and settle there. And we see entire

1241
01:14:44,600 --> 01:14:50,439
Speaker 1: streets becoming categorized as Irish that is an Irish area.

1242
01:14:51,200 --> 01:14:53,680
Speaker 1: And from the seventeen hundreds we hear people saying yes,

1243
01:14:53,720 --> 01:14:58,000
Speaker 1: in certain districts of London, you won't hear English spoken

1244
01:14:58,040 --> 01:15:00,639
Speaker 1: at all. People are speaking Irish or people speaking gaily.

1245
01:15:00,680 --> 01:15:04,320
Speaker 1: There's a priest who says, because I speak Irish, I'm

1246
01:15:04,479 --> 01:15:08,160
Speaker 1: really in demand for giving confession because most people can

1247
01:15:08,200 --> 01:15:11,400
Speaker 1: only access to English priests. So I'm working flat out

1248
01:15:11,560 --> 01:15:14,599
Speaker 1: dealing with all the Irish people, and I never hear

1249
01:15:14,720 --> 01:15:18,920
Speaker 1: English spoken from morning tonight. And we also see in

1250
01:15:19,000 --> 01:15:25,240
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds horrible anti Irish riots in which people

1251
01:15:25,280 --> 01:15:27,880
Speaker 1: are actually killed. It's it's not written about it very much,

1252
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:31,840
Speaker 1: but there were some awful periods of xenophobia going to

1253
01:15:32,040 --> 01:15:35,080
Speaker 1: attack Irish hands. I mean, how terrifying must it have been?

1254
01:15:35,120 --> 01:15:38,240
Speaker 1: You know, for several days and nights, English people were

1255
01:15:38,320 --> 01:15:41,200
Speaker 1: told to put a candle in their window to show

1256
01:15:41,320 --> 01:15:44,559
Speaker 1: they weren't Irish, otherwise they could get their house pulled down.

1257
01:15:45,080 --> 01:15:48,479
Speaker 1: Irish pubs were attacked, Irish homes were attacked, Irish people

1258
01:15:48,520 --> 01:15:51,839
Speaker 1: were attacked. Apparently an Irish person was shot and actually

1259
01:15:52,040 --> 01:15:55,160
Speaker 1: killed in Brick Lane in the seventeen hundred. There's very

1260
01:15:55,240 --> 01:15:59,519
Speaker 1: little evidence of that's not written about very much. So

1261
01:15:59,760 --> 01:16:03,240
Speaker 1: Irish people are dealing with all of that, and there

1262
01:16:03,560 --> 01:16:07,519
Speaker 1: is a tendency, certainly from middle class commentators to look

1263
01:16:07,680 --> 01:16:11,200
Speaker 1: down on them even more than they're looking down on

1264
01:16:11,320 --> 01:16:13,640
Speaker 1: the English working class that we hear about, you know,

1265
01:16:14,040 --> 01:16:18,000
Speaker 1: the dirty Irish and the black Irish and all Irish

1266
01:16:18,040 --> 01:16:24,040
Speaker 1: and drinkers, all Irish criminals, they're all tinkers. Terrible bias,

1267
01:16:24,720 --> 01:16:27,800
Speaker 1: not helped by the fact that the Victorians, of course,

1268
01:16:27,880 --> 01:16:32,120
Speaker 1: we should never forget that the Victorians begin eugenics. You know,

1269
01:16:32,200 --> 01:16:34,160
Speaker 1: the Nazis really do a lot with it. We have

1270
01:16:34,320 --> 01:16:36,639
Speaker 1: fair they really pick up on it. But it's another

1271
01:16:36,800 --> 01:16:41,080
Speaker 1: wonderful thing that the British invented around this period, and

1272
01:16:41,240 --> 01:16:45,280
Speaker 1: one of the justifications for the conditions of poor, working

1273
01:16:45,360 --> 01:16:48,400
Speaker 1: class Irish people was that the Victorians decided, on no

1274
01:16:48,520 --> 01:16:52,240
Speaker 1: basis whatsoever, that they were a black race, a Negroid race,

1275
01:16:52,479 --> 01:16:55,960
Speaker 1: and therefore, of course inferior to the only superior people

1276
01:16:56,000 --> 01:17:00,920
Speaker 1: who were white English upper class men, incdentally considering a

1277
01:17:00,960 --> 01:17:03,040
Speaker 1: lot of the people that were writing the studio science

1278
01:17:03,080 --> 01:17:05,559
Speaker 1: were white English upper class and then they just happened

1279
01:17:05,600 --> 01:17:08,800
Speaker 1: that they were the superior ones. So you're really up

1280
01:17:08,880 --> 01:17:11,599
Speaker 1: against it, I think it's fair to say if you're Irish.

1281
01:17:11,680 --> 01:17:15,400
Speaker 1: But they do have the advantage of these strong networks

1282
01:17:15,439 --> 01:17:19,759
Speaker 1: and solidarity, and also this politicization that I've talked about.

1283
01:17:20,280 --> 01:17:23,559
Speaker 1: They are very politicized by what happens back home in Ireland,

1284
01:17:23,640 --> 01:17:25,519
Speaker 1: by their treatment at the hand of the British, and

1285
01:17:25,560 --> 01:17:28,559
Speaker 1: they come over here and they're very unenthusiastic about the British,

1286
01:17:28,640 --> 01:17:31,839
Speaker 1: just as much as we are about them. They're not grateful,

1287
01:17:31,880 --> 01:17:34,120
Speaker 1: and people complain about this. You know, they're coming over

1288
01:17:34,200 --> 01:17:36,160
Speaker 1: here and they're not at all grateful. They don't like

1289
01:17:36,320 --> 01:17:38,680
Speaker 1: the English. I mean, how dare they were giving them

1290
01:17:38,720 --> 01:17:42,760
Speaker 1: a roof over their head, So they were already pre

1291
01:17:42,960 --> 01:17:46,280
Speaker 1: politicized if you like, and that is a great weapon

1292
01:17:47,040 --> 01:17:52,600
Speaker 1: to fight being mothered and being demonized and dehumanized is

1293
01:17:52,760 --> 01:17:55,160
Speaker 1: your sense of self. And this is something with the

1294
01:17:55,240 --> 01:17:59,960
Speaker 1: Irish community that's quite remarkable is that even three general

1295
01:18:00,080 --> 01:18:04,160
Speaker 1: rations in London ISS would say I am Irish, even

1296
01:18:04,160 --> 01:18:08,439
Speaker 1: if they've never been to Ireland. They really maintained that

1297
01:18:08,560 --> 01:18:13,120
Speaker 1: sense of identity and that was very important. That's how

1298
01:18:13,280 --> 01:18:15,840
Speaker 1: you survive, I suppose, when you're really up against it,

1299
01:18:16,080 --> 01:18:20,160
Speaker 1: by a sense of pride in your identity. When you're

1300
01:18:20,160 --> 01:18:26,360
Speaker 1: talking about um, politicized communities and political forces working on

1301
01:18:26,560 --> 01:18:30,320
Speaker 1: some of these groups and in these neighborhoods. Um, would

1302
01:18:30,360 --> 01:18:35,080
Speaker 1: you describe the influence that Fenian movements and the Fenian

1303
01:18:35,120 --> 01:18:39,439
Speaker 1: bombings of the eighties had on Irish life in London

1304
01:18:39,479 --> 01:18:43,720
Speaker 1: at the time. M Yes, just as the community I

1305
01:18:43,800 --> 01:18:47,120
Speaker 1: suppose was getting a little bit more settled and a

1306
01:18:47,200 --> 01:18:50,640
Speaker 1: little bit more established. I wouldn't say massively accepted, but

1307
01:18:51,080 --> 01:18:54,559
Speaker 1: getting that way. There was First of all, in eighteen

1308
01:18:54,600 --> 01:18:58,679
Speaker 1: sixty seven there was the bombing at Clarkenwell Prison which

1309
01:18:58,800 --> 01:19:01,320
Speaker 1: was to release Richard was Sullivan Bok, who was an

1310
01:19:01,360 --> 01:19:05,040
Speaker 1: Irish rebel leader who was being held there and unfortunately

1311
01:19:05,160 --> 01:19:09,080
Speaker 1: it went horrifically wrong and six people were killed, and

1312
01:19:09,160 --> 01:19:12,200
Speaker 1: it was working class people who suffered. They put gunpower

1313
01:19:12,280 --> 01:19:14,680
Speaker 1: against the prison war, but there were crowded, you know,

1314
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:17,720
Speaker 1: working class houses cheap by jail, right up against the

1315
01:19:17,800 --> 01:19:21,240
Speaker 1: prison And as Karl Marks remarked at the time, people

1316
01:19:21,280 --> 01:19:24,320
Speaker 1: have previously shown great sympathy for the Irish cause, and

1317
01:19:24,400 --> 01:19:26,760
Speaker 1: there was an awful lot of sympathy for it, but

1318
01:19:27,000 --> 01:19:29,879
Speaker 1: they will be driven into the arms of the government

1319
01:19:29,960 --> 01:19:33,040
Speaker 1: by this. You cannot expect the English proletariat to accept

1320
01:19:33,080 --> 01:19:36,599
Speaker 1: being blown up just because it believes in the political cause.

1321
01:19:37,080 --> 01:19:39,519
Speaker 1: So this did cause a lot of descent within the

1322
01:19:39,600 --> 01:19:42,960
Speaker 1: Irish community as well. The cause was a good one,

1323
01:19:43,520 --> 01:19:47,240
Speaker 1: but yes, when you kill working class supporters, it's never

1324
01:19:47,320 --> 01:19:49,680
Speaker 1: going to be a good move. And then there were

1325
01:19:49,800 --> 01:19:53,439
Speaker 1: the eight and eight three bombs at train stations and

1326
01:19:53,760 --> 01:19:56,960
Speaker 1: at underground stations, and that's why Special Branch was set up,

1327
01:19:57,080 --> 01:20:00,320
Speaker 1: of course, So suddenly you have all the these in

1328
01:20:00,479 --> 01:20:04,559
Speaker 1: four months from the Irage community. And within the Irage community,

1329
01:20:04,920 --> 01:20:09,439
Speaker 1: you know, you are the most suspect group in London.

1330
01:20:09,800 --> 01:20:12,000
Speaker 1: People write about the Irage at this time or they're

1331
01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:16,000
Speaker 1: all Fenian terrorists. Fenian was used as an insult against

1332
01:20:16,080 --> 01:20:19,040
Speaker 1: Irish people. There was an area of London around Gayle

1333
01:20:19,120 --> 01:20:23,400
Speaker 1: Street that was known as the Fenian Barracks. And Charles

1334
01:20:23,520 --> 01:20:27,040
Speaker 1: Booth writes about a policeman telling him about the Fenian Barracks,

1335
01:20:27,120 --> 01:20:30,400
Speaker 1: and he says, men here are not human, they are

1336
01:20:30,560 --> 01:20:34,840
Speaker 1: wild beasts. If you try and arrest anyone, he said,

1337
01:20:34,920 --> 01:20:38,040
Speaker 1: from that area, they all unite together. They will barricade

1338
01:20:38,120 --> 01:20:41,280
Speaker 1: themselves in. They will throw anything they can get their

1339
01:20:41,320 --> 01:20:45,320
Speaker 1: hands on, furniture, anything at you. They will never allow

1340
01:20:45,400 --> 01:20:48,280
Speaker 1: one of their numbers to be arrested. And he says,

1341
01:20:48,320 --> 01:20:52,200
Speaker 1: not an Englishman nor a Scotsman would live among them.

1342
01:20:53,120 --> 01:20:55,479
Speaker 1: So here we are, even in the East End, which

1343
01:20:55,560 --> 01:20:58,360
Speaker 1: is being divided from the rest of London, even the

1344
01:20:58,439 --> 01:21:01,639
Speaker 1: working class, which has been divided from the rest of society,

1345
01:21:01,880 --> 01:21:06,439
Speaker 1: is dividing itself. And we're guessing these divisions, these false

1346
01:21:06,520 --> 01:21:11,040
Speaker 1: divisions between Irish and English, and the Irish are coming

1347
01:21:11,080 --> 01:21:16,240
Speaker 1: to personify the worst and least respectable poor of all,

1348
01:21:16,840 --> 01:21:21,600
Speaker 1: and all suspects, all being suspected of terrorism. Mhm. Of

1349
01:21:21,680 --> 01:21:24,080
Speaker 1: course you write in Striking a Light that many of

1350
01:21:24,120 --> 01:21:28,160
Speaker 1: the Metro when were Irish and you've mentioned that again today. Um,

1351
01:21:28,600 --> 01:21:31,519
Speaker 1: you have a section of your first chapter dedicated to

1352
01:21:31,960 --> 01:21:34,639
Speaker 1: perceptions of women who worked in factories, and again you've

1353
01:21:34,640 --> 01:21:37,880
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about the factory girl in the

1354
01:21:37,960 --> 01:21:43,639
Speaker 1: middle class imagination. What was the reputation of factory women

1355
01:21:44,200 --> 01:21:48,439
Speaker 1: in the neighborhoods where they live. Yes, now that is

1356
01:21:48,439 --> 01:21:52,559
Speaker 1: a very different thing. Of course, how push London, how

1357
01:21:52,640 --> 01:21:57,080
Speaker 1: they're so called betters, viewed them, and how the local

1358
01:21:57,160 --> 01:22:00,760
Speaker 1: spewed them is completely different. So taking the match women

1359
01:22:00,800 --> 01:22:04,240
Speaker 1: as one example, because they are the largest pool of

1360
01:22:04,439 --> 01:22:09,320
Speaker 1: female so called casual workers in the East Stand at

1361
01:22:09,360 --> 01:22:12,599
Speaker 1: that time, so they're quite a good example. They were

1362
01:22:12,800 --> 01:22:16,760
Speaker 1: so looked down upon by commentators, you know, a rough

1363
01:22:16,880 --> 01:22:21,360
Speaker 1: set of girls. Their own employers said said that about them,

1364
01:22:22,080 --> 01:22:25,680
Speaker 1: and people would write about the incredibly patronizing lee or

1365
01:22:25,760 --> 01:22:28,840
Speaker 1: they're always drunk and they're always consorting with men of

1366
01:22:28,920 --> 01:22:32,439
Speaker 1: the very worst type. And they're also written about. When

1367
01:22:32,439 --> 01:22:35,519
Speaker 1: they're not written about like that, they're written about us children.

1368
01:22:35,720 --> 01:22:39,320
Speaker 1: So match girls, it's always match girls, and they're written

1369
01:22:39,360 --> 01:22:43,639
Speaker 1: about being a little bit simple, having no intelligence whatsoever.

1370
01:22:43,760 --> 01:22:46,400
Speaker 1: So they're the lowest of the low really because they're

1371
01:22:46,439 --> 01:22:52,479
Speaker 1: east Enders and Irish origin and industrially working women factory girls.

1372
01:22:52,600 --> 01:22:56,480
Speaker 1: That is three massive strikes against you. This is appalling.

1373
01:22:56,560 --> 01:22:58,400
Speaker 1: You know, it's bad enough being a woman really in

1374
01:22:58,520 --> 01:23:02,120
Speaker 1: Victorian England, but insisting on being working class and Irish

1375
01:23:02,160 --> 01:23:07,320
Speaker 1: only standa isn't really taking the proverbill. So the way

1376
01:23:07,360 --> 01:23:10,920
Speaker 1: they're looked at in their area though, is completely different.

1377
01:23:11,320 --> 01:23:14,400
Speaker 1: So fascinating. You could get away with a lot of

1378
01:23:14,640 --> 01:23:20,120
Speaker 1: sins against the Victorian narrative if you were the right

1379
01:23:20,200 --> 01:23:24,160
Speaker 1: sort of woman, So if you were really gutsy, if

1380
01:23:24,240 --> 01:23:27,640
Speaker 1: you fronted it out. That's a really important term in

1381
01:23:27,720 --> 01:23:30,640
Speaker 1: the East End, fronting it out, you know, having the competence,

1382
01:23:30,720 --> 01:23:34,679
Speaker 1: holding your head high and not taking any nonsense from anybody,

1383
01:23:34,760 --> 01:23:37,479
Speaker 1: having self respect I supposed to. Really, you could get

1384
01:23:37,479 --> 01:23:39,120
Speaker 1: away with an awful lot of stuff. You know. There

1385
01:23:39,120 --> 01:23:41,240
Speaker 1: are women who had lovers, which were supposed to be

1386
01:23:41,320 --> 01:23:45,759
Speaker 1: a terrible sin, and yet they were still a great

1387
01:23:45,840 --> 01:23:49,439
Speaker 1: standing in the community because they were just wonderful people.

1388
01:23:50,120 --> 01:23:54,280
Speaker 1: They were good to their friends. They were the aunts

1389
01:23:54,320 --> 01:23:56,439
Speaker 1: and queens of the street. They were the midwife, they

1390
01:23:56,439 --> 01:23:59,800
Speaker 1: were the undertakers. They filed incredibly important functions. So where

1391
01:24:00,160 --> 01:24:04,160
Speaker 1: we are told any woman who does anything immoral, is

1392
01:24:04,280 --> 01:24:08,200
Speaker 1: completely outcast. Nobody would speak to her, her reputation is ruined.

1393
01:24:08,640 --> 01:24:11,920
Speaker 1: That's not true at all. That's the middle class perception.

1394
01:24:12,479 --> 01:24:15,320
Speaker 1: And the Pool were a lot less judgmental and a

1395
01:24:15,439 --> 01:24:18,720
Speaker 1: lot more flexible, and the match Woden were kind of

1396
01:24:19,080 --> 01:24:23,439
Speaker 1: really the cool girl gang in the neighborhood. Actually, or

1397
01:24:23,640 --> 01:24:26,760
Speaker 1: despite the way, it's such a contrast between the way

1398
01:24:26,840 --> 01:24:30,160
Speaker 1: that the middle classes looked down on them, they were

1399
01:24:31,120 --> 01:24:36,320
Speaker 1: the ones who knew all the musical songs of the day.

1400
01:24:36,439 --> 01:24:39,599
Speaker 1: I discovered that when I've read a magistrate who lived

1401
01:24:39,640 --> 01:24:43,280
Speaker 1: in the Eastern complaining about, Oh, these match women they

1402
01:24:43,400 --> 01:24:45,760
Speaker 1: wake me up, you know, occasionally when they have enough

1403
01:24:45,840 --> 01:24:48,120
Speaker 1: money to go out, maybe on the back holiday, they

1404
01:24:48,240 --> 01:24:50,960
Speaker 1: come back from the musicals and they're singing all the

1405
01:24:51,040 --> 01:24:54,560
Speaker 1: way home. They're singing Tar Bundier knocked him in the

1406
01:24:54,600 --> 01:24:57,320
Speaker 1: old Road. And I'm trying to sleep, I've got caught

1407
01:24:57,400 --> 01:24:59,360
Speaker 1: in the morning and I'm being woken up by them.

1408
01:25:00,200 --> 01:25:02,760
Speaker 1: But when you think about what that means, you could

1409
01:25:02,880 --> 01:25:06,280
Speaker 1: only know the words of musical songs if you manage

1410
01:25:06,320 --> 01:25:10,280
Speaker 1: to get into those performances. And they were their hit

1411
01:25:10,360 --> 01:25:13,280
Speaker 1: the coolest songs at the time, so it's like dropping

1412
01:25:13,439 --> 01:25:16,880
Speaker 1: bars from the latest grime artists, being able to recite

1413
01:25:17,080 --> 01:25:19,519
Speaker 1: those songs, being able to sing them walking arm in

1414
01:25:19,640 --> 01:25:23,160
Speaker 1: arm down the street. That's pretty cool. That makes you

1415
01:25:23,880 --> 01:25:27,479
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They all said something else they loved about them,

1416
01:25:27,479 --> 01:25:32,280
Speaker 1: which gave me a real clue to their personalities. And

1417
01:25:32,400 --> 01:25:35,840
Speaker 1: it's really common of working class people over the world,

1418
01:25:35,960 --> 01:25:38,960
Speaker 1: actually not just in England at this period, and certainly

1419
01:25:39,000 --> 01:25:41,200
Speaker 1: not just in the East End, was that when they

1420
01:25:41,240 --> 01:25:44,559
Speaker 1: could go out, which was rare, but sometimes somebody, one

1421
01:25:44,560 --> 01:25:47,040
Speaker 1: of the better paid workers would stand treat as it

1422
01:25:47,200 --> 01:25:49,120
Speaker 1: was called, and who said I'll pay for you all

1423
01:25:49,200 --> 01:25:51,200
Speaker 1: to have tea, and they'd be really excited. They might

1424
01:25:51,240 --> 01:25:53,719
Speaker 1: get a cup of tea in a cafe and jam

1425
01:25:53,920 --> 01:25:56,360
Speaker 1: on their bread. This was a real highlight, maybe even

1426
01:25:56,479 --> 01:25:59,000
Speaker 1: some cake. And when they got to go out, they

1427
01:25:59,040 --> 01:26:01,920
Speaker 1: were going to look their better as a matter of

1428
01:26:02,040 --> 01:26:05,240
Speaker 1: pride and partly as a retort to the people they

1429
01:26:05,320 --> 01:26:07,600
Speaker 1: knew were looking down on them. They were going to

1430
01:26:07,760 --> 01:26:10,800
Speaker 1: look absolutely dressed up to the nines and probably the

1431
01:26:10,920 --> 01:26:14,080
Speaker 1: tents when they were walking down the streets. They couldn't

1432
01:26:14,080 --> 01:26:17,280
Speaker 1: afford it though on their own they couldn't afford to

1433
01:26:17,439 --> 01:26:20,920
Speaker 1: buy the beautiful hats that every Victorian woman needed to

1434
01:26:21,040 --> 01:26:24,960
Speaker 1: be really cool. So they formed what they called feather clubs,

1435
01:26:25,400 --> 01:26:27,640
Speaker 1: and actually a lot of factory women did this. The

1436
01:26:27,760 --> 01:26:29,680
Speaker 1: match women had a feather club, and what was it.

1437
01:26:29,800 --> 01:26:32,920
Speaker 1: It was a communal hat club. Feather club. Because the

1438
01:26:32,960 --> 01:26:36,000
Speaker 1: hats were so befeathered at the times, entire flocks of

1439
01:26:36,080 --> 01:26:39,720
Speaker 1: poor little birds died to make these hats, and they

1440
01:26:39,760 --> 01:26:44,760
Speaker 1: would pay in to the club. And I presume that

1441
01:26:44,840 --> 01:26:46,760
Speaker 1: when there was enough money, Elsie would pop up to

1442
01:26:46,800 --> 01:26:48,880
Speaker 1: the milliners, or perhaps somebody would make a hat. I

1443
01:26:48,920 --> 01:26:51,560
Speaker 1: don't know, but they would have these beautiful hats. So

1444
01:26:51,760 --> 01:26:54,519
Speaker 1: they knew when they walked down the bow row, when

1445
01:26:54,560 --> 01:26:57,200
Speaker 1: they promenaded down the bow row with their friends singing

1446
01:26:57,320 --> 01:27:01,280
Speaker 1: these really a lot, you know, up to the minute

1447
01:27:01,360 --> 01:27:05,840
Speaker 1: musical songs, they looked incredible. And that was a kind

1448
01:27:05,880 --> 01:27:08,640
Speaker 1: of political resistance. Really. It was like, Okay, you might

1449
01:27:08,720 --> 01:27:10,519
Speaker 1: want to look down on us, but look at us.

1450
01:27:10,640 --> 01:27:14,160
Speaker 1: We look bloody fantastic, and we know we do. And

1451
01:27:14,240 --> 01:27:17,880
Speaker 1: the descendants that I talked to, we're really good at

1452
01:27:18,000 --> 01:27:23,200
Speaker 1: explaining how these notions, these received notions that were forced

1453
01:27:23,280 --> 01:27:26,599
Speaker 1: on them from above, were rejected and were turned around

1454
01:27:26,680 --> 01:27:29,439
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm really glad you're writing about my

1455
01:27:29,520 --> 01:27:33,559
Speaker 1: grand and her friends, because they were wonderful and nobody

1456
01:27:33,680 --> 01:27:35,720
Speaker 1: thinks they were. And I had to grow up with that.

1457
01:27:35,880 --> 01:27:39,960
Speaker 1: I had to grow up with these incredible powerhouse women,

1458
01:27:40,520 --> 01:27:44,439
Speaker 1: strong characters, brave, amazing, you know, did the impossible on

1459
01:27:44,479 --> 01:27:48,400
Speaker 1: a daily basis, fed huge families, and people treated them

1460
01:27:48,439 --> 01:27:51,800
Speaker 1: like dirt. And people would say they weren't ladies, but

1461
01:27:52,000 --> 01:27:56,120
Speaker 1: to us they were. They were East End ladies. And

1462
01:27:56,320 --> 01:28:01,360
Speaker 1: that's so key, that distinction between women and lady. Anyone

1463
01:28:01,439 --> 01:28:03,760
Speaker 1: can be a woman, but certainly not everyone, according to

1464
01:28:03,840 --> 01:28:07,920
Speaker 1: the Victorians, could be a lady, and a lady was

1465
01:28:09,040 --> 01:28:12,000
Speaker 1: an absence. Really, what is a lady? Well, it's what

1466
01:28:12,160 --> 01:28:17,519
Speaker 1: she's not. She's not loud, she's not drunk, she's not sexy,

1467
01:28:18,439 --> 01:28:21,799
Speaker 1: she's not having a good time. Really, she's sitting quietly,

1468
01:28:21,880 --> 01:28:25,280
Speaker 1: as quiet and still as you can possibly be, as

1469
01:28:25,720 --> 01:28:28,920
Speaker 1: as devoid of humanity as you can possibly be. It's

1470
01:28:28,960 --> 01:28:31,439
Speaker 1: no coincidence that the angel in the house that an

1471
01:28:31,520 --> 01:28:36,320
Speaker 1: angel isn't human, is above humanity. But the east Enders

1472
01:28:36,360 --> 01:28:40,679
Speaker 1: rejected this. They had their own much more liberated, I suppose.

1473
01:28:40,760 --> 01:28:42,880
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds strange to talk about. I'm not

1474
01:28:43,040 --> 01:28:47,120
Speaker 1: suggesting that every doctor was a rampant feminist in this period,

1475
01:28:47,400 --> 01:28:50,160
Speaker 1: but they had far more liberated conceptions and far more

1476
01:28:50,360 --> 01:28:55,639
Speaker 1: real conceptions of what a woman was than they're supposing.

1477
01:28:55,680 --> 01:28:59,800
Speaker 1: Betters m What did working women in the Eastern think

1478
01:29:00,280 --> 01:29:03,040
Speaker 1: of the police? Did they have a relationship with the

1479
01:29:03,160 --> 01:29:07,599
Speaker 1: police that was antagonistic? Was there was there a general

1480
01:29:07,800 --> 01:29:10,320
Speaker 1: class alignment of the London police at the time that

1481
01:29:10,479 --> 01:29:14,600
Speaker 1: was very evident? What can we say about that? This

1482
01:29:14,960 --> 01:29:20,840
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating because the police had a healthy respect,

1483
01:29:21,320 --> 01:29:25,559
Speaker 1: shall we say, for working class women, and there were

1484
01:29:25,640 --> 01:29:30,880
Speaker 1: reasons for this. You hear policemen talking. Sometimes commentators like

1485
01:29:30,960 --> 01:29:33,320
Speaker 1: Child's Booth will seek out the opinion of the police

1486
01:29:33,360 --> 01:29:36,080
Speaker 1: are sort of respectable authority figures who also know the

1487
01:29:36,160 --> 01:29:39,160
Speaker 1: working classes because they're from the working classes on the whole.

1488
01:29:39,720 --> 01:29:43,000
Speaker 1: About people like the matchwomen and they will tell them, well,

1489
01:29:43,680 --> 01:29:47,200
Speaker 1: the matchment are very well respected in the area. They

1490
01:29:47,479 --> 01:29:51,000
Speaker 1: have a famous sense of unity. They settle all their

1491
01:29:51,080 --> 01:29:54,960
Speaker 1: disputes really quickly. But if they have a dispute and

1492
01:29:55,080 --> 01:29:56,840
Speaker 1: you know you're working with people, they get on your nerves.

1493
01:29:56,880 --> 01:30:00,360
Speaker 1: If they have a dispute at work, they can't resolve. Well,

1494
01:30:00,479 --> 01:30:04,639
Speaker 1: let's just say they had a rather non Industrial Relations

1495
01:30:04,720 --> 01:30:08,080
Speaker 1: approved method of sorting that out. So this police been said,

1496
01:30:08,280 --> 01:30:11,200
Speaker 1: a ring will be formed, they will fight like men,

1497
01:30:11,840 --> 01:30:15,120
Speaker 1: and we, as the police, do not interfere. So they'd

1498
01:30:15,160 --> 01:30:18,040
Speaker 1: have punch ups if they really couldn't sort out a

1499
01:30:18,200 --> 01:30:21,639
Speaker 1: problem at work, and the police would back off. Isn't

1500
01:30:21,720 --> 01:30:25,840
Speaker 1: that interesting? The police were scared or certainly respectful of

1501
01:30:26,000 --> 01:30:29,680
Speaker 1: these incredibly tough working class women. And then one of

1502
01:30:29,760 --> 01:30:33,400
Speaker 1: the other tales that I was told was that, in

1503
01:30:33,560 --> 01:30:36,280
Speaker 1: order to amuse themselves of an evening, of course there

1504
01:30:36,400 --> 01:30:40,400
Speaker 1: wasn't much on Telly because there wasn't telly. Working class

1505
01:30:40,439 --> 01:30:44,400
Speaker 1: people would observe the coppers who were parading around their neighborhood,

1506
01:30:44,439 --> 01:30:47,439
Speaker 1: and who would often go in pairs because famously we

1507
01:30:47,479 --> 01:30:49,600
Speaker 1: always here, don't we. You know, you wouldn't patrol that

1508
01:30:49,640 --> 01:30:51,680
Speaker 1: neighborhood with less than two of you because it was

1509
01:30:51,760 --> 01:30:55,879
Speaker 1: so dangerous and also dark. So they'd watched the coppers

1510
01:30:56,520 --> 01:31:00,360
Speaker 1: strolling around and they think, interesting, their walk over a

1511
01:31:00,479 --> 01:31:04,320
Speaker 1: manhole there, and that's quite a large manhole. I wonder

1512
01:31:04,400 --> 01:31:08,920
Speaker 1: what would happen if we removed that manhole cover? And

1513
01:31:09,120 --> 01:31:12,800
Speaker 1: it's dark and the coppers wouldn't see that. So one

1514
01:31:12,880 --> 01:31:16,120
Speaker 1: of their forms are fun was to remove the manhole

1515
01:31:16,160 --> 01:31:19,080
Speaker 1: covers the poor coppers walking around, and they wait and

1516
01:31:19,240 --> 01:31:22,519
Speaker 1: see if one of them just dropped and ended up

1517
01:31:22,880 --> 01:31:26,960
Speaker 1: beneath the street, down the manhole, and then, as if

1518
01:31:27,000 --> 01:31:29,920
Speaker 1: that wasn't bad enough, if they if they could, if

1519
01:31:29,920 --> 01:31:31,360
Speaker 1: they could get away with it, they sneak out and

1520
01:31:31,400 --> 01:31:34,240
Speaker 1: put the manhole cover back on and leave the poor

1521
01:31:34,320 --> 01:31:36,200
Speaker 1: bobby down there. Now I don't think forever. I mean

1522
01:31:36,240 --> 01:31:39,240
Speaker 1: I presume eventually his workmates got him out. I don't

1523
01:31:39,240 --> 01:31:43,040
Speaker 1: think they're still down there skeletons of policemen below the

1524
01:31:43,120 --> 01:31:45,800
Speaker 1: streets at the east End. But I think this gives

1525
01:31:45,840 --> 01:31:50,599
Speaker 1: you an idea of the shall we say, mischievous regard

1526
01:31:50,960 --> 01:31:52,880
Speaker 1: in which the east Enders held the police. Now, there

1527
01:31:53,040 --> 01:31:56,000
Speaker 1: wasn't a great deal of respect there because they saw

1528
01:31:56,120 --> 01:32:00,760
Speaker 1: the police on the whole as forces of the establishment.

1529
01:32:01,280 --> 01:32:03,719
Speaker 1: You know, they're the people that are on these damned

1530
01:32:03,760 --> 01:32:06,920
Speaker 1: plumbing tours. So these are people coming to your neighborhoods,

1531
01:32:07,040 --> 01:32:11,160
Speaker 1: leading the knobs, the talks, the posh people laughing at us.

1532
01:32:11,280 --> 01:32:13,720
Speaker 1: They're being led by police. So how can you see

1533
01:32:13,760 --> 01:32:16,920
Speaker 1: them as being on your side when there are demonstrations

1534
01:32:16,960 --> 01:32:19,839
Speaker 1: and protests. Who who's hitting over here with a truncheon.

1535
01:32:20,040 --> 01:32:23,920
Speaker 1: It's the police. So no, there isn't much class solidarity.

1536
01:32:23,960 --> 01:32:26,439
Speaker 1: There are some police at the time who say, well,

1537
01:32:26,479 --> 01:32:29,280
Speaker 1: we are trying to do good for our neighborhood and

1538
01:32:29,360 --> 01:32:31,280
Speaker 1: you know, we need a job. We're not trying to

1539
01:32:32,520 --> 01:32:35,639
Speaker 1: oppress our working class neighbors. But now I think it's

1540
01:32:35,680 --> 01:32:40,080
Speaker 1: fair to say that they're not incredibly well thought of

1541
01:32:40,520 --> 01:32:43,400
Speaker 1: by the people of the East. And when the match

1542
01:32:43,479 --> 01:32:45,920
Speaker 1: from the strike happened, I was really interested to read

1543
01:32:46,280 --> 01:32:50,719
Speaker 1: in the local press that battalions of police were rushed

1544
01:32:50,840 --> 01:32:54,800
Speaker 1: into the area. I love this idea of women on

1545
01:32:54,960 --> 01:32:57,920
Speaker 1: strike and young women girls in many cases, being so

1546
01:32:58,160 --> 01:33:01,879
Speaker 1: terrified to the establishment they're all police leave was canceled.

1547
01:33:01,920 --> 01:33:04,519
Speaker 1: Oh my god, people eye on these dangerous match women

1548
01:33:04,560 --> 01:33:06,920
Speaker 1: said police are rushed in. But I think another reason

1549
01:33:07,080 --> 01:33:10,280
Speaker 1: is probably the local police were not key at all

1550
01:33:11,000 --> 01:33:14,640
Speaker 1: on trying to police the match women strike. They were like, no,

1551
01:33:14,880 --> 01:33:17,400
Speaker 1: it's fine. Let let people from outside who don't know

1552
01:33:17,479 --> 01:33:21,000
Speaker 1: what they're dealing with it and we can see the

1553
01:33:21,160 --> 01:33:24,280
Speaker 1: spirit of the match women. There was an event in

1554
01:33:24,400 --> 01:33:29,520
Speaker 1: the seventies when match workers were protesting against a proposed

1555
01:33:29,800 --> 01:33:33,120
Speaker 1: tax on matches which have been really bad for their trade.

1556
01:33:33,680 --> 01:33:35,760
Speaker 1: Now I have to say that their employers were really

1557
01:33:35,840 --> 01:33:38,240
Speaker 1: happy with them, encouraged them to protest. Actually, so that's

1558
01:33:38,280 --> 01:33:42,839
Speaker 1: not a complete revolution. React that they marched to Parliament

1559
01:33:42,960 --> 01:33:44,880
Speaker 1: and they're very young, a lot for people marching, and

1560
01:33:44,960 --> 01:33:48,920
Speaker 1: they have banners that they've made themselves to say two

1561
01:33:49,200 --> 01:33:52,400
Speaker 1: MPs do not don't bring this tax in. Now the

1562
01:33:52,520 --> 01:33:55,360
Speaker 1: police cattle them like this might have been one of

1563
01:33:55,439 --> 01:33:58,839
Speaker 1: the first examples ever of cattling, when the police around

1564
01:33:58,920 --> 01:34:02,679
Speaker 1: protesters and they try to snatch their banners and there's

1565
01:34:02,720 --> 01:34:07,320
Speaker 1: an all all out, free for all punch up. By

1566
01:34:07,400 --> 01:34:10,240
Speaker 1: the side of the tents, there are match women throwing

1567
01:34:10,400 --> 01:34:12,800
Speaker 1: rocks at the police, very well aimed apparently as well.

1568
01:34:12,880 --> 01:34:16,640
Speaker 1: They're they're finding their targets and breaking through, refusing to

1569
01:34:16,720 --> 01:34:19,280
Speaker 1: surrender their banners. Banners are a very important thing in

1570
01:34:19,360 --> 01:34:21,519
Speaker 1: protest at this period. It's like an army. You don't

1571
01:34:21,600 --> 01:34:24,560
Speaker 1: let the other side take your banners. And there's some

1572
01:34:24,640 --> 01:34:26,439
Speaker 1: of them managed to get free and they managed to

1573
01:34:26,479 --> 01:34:30,200
Speaker 1: get as far as Parliament to present their petition. But

1574
01:34:30,360 --> 01:34:33,440
Speaker 1: that gives you an idea as well. These are children

1575
01:34:33,720 --> 01:34:36,439
Speaker 1: on the whole. But my goodness, they can be fierce

1576
01:34:36,600 --> 01:34:39,720
Speaker 1: and they can fight, and the police, you know, the

1577
01:34:39,840 --> 01:34:44,880
Speaker 1: police know it. Mhm. Let's step forward a little in time,

1578
01:34:45,240 --> 01:34:50,280
Speaker 1: but follow those girls, those women who protesting in the seventies. Um,

1579
01:34:52,520 --> 01:34:55,360
Speaker 1: But what was the context in which they were working.

1580
01:34:55,439 --> 01:34:59,760
Speaker 1: Let's hear a little bit more about the factory. What's

1581
01:34:59,800 --> 01:35:02,760
Speaker 1: her little bit more about Brian and May. How significant

1582
01:35:02,880 --> 01:35:06,400
Speaker 1: a company was it? And you know in the book

1583
01:35:06,479 --> 01:35:11,080
Speaker 1: you've you've described that that company had an irresistible rise

1584
01:35:11,280 --> 01:35:17,320
Speaker 1: from quaker grocers to powerful and ruthless cartel. Can you

1585
01:35:17,400 --> 01:35:20,439
Speaker 1: offer that story kind of in in brief they're really

1586
01:35:20,520 --> 01:35:23,599
Speaker 1: the Victorian dream Brian to May. There is an original

1587
01:35:23,680 --> 01:35:26,200
Speaker 1: mis to Brian and then Mr May. And they start

1588
01:35:26,280 --> 01:35:31,439
Speaker 1: out as grossest, they're not particularly rich. They're trying a

1589
01:35:31,640 --> 01:35:34,000
Speaker 1: number of things, trying their hand at various things, so

1590
01:35:34,320 --> 01:35:37,439
Speaker 1: making candle making, all trying to make their fortune. And

1591
01:35:37,560 --> 01:35:41,560
Speaker 1: eventually they come to London because they're from Plymouth originally,

1592
01:35:42,040 --> 01:35:45,679
Speaker 1: and they leased this factory site on the Fairfield Road,

1593
01:35:46,400 --> 01:35:48,600
Speaker 1: very near the Bow Road, one of the most important

1594
01:35:48,800 --> 01:35:52,240
Speaker 1: roads in the East End. It was three factories. That's

1595
01:35:52,280 --> 01:35:56,960
Speaker 1: how large their ambition is really. And they construct this

1596
01:35:57,120 --> 01:36:01,320
Speaker 1: incredible Gothic castle. It's it looks like from the outside

1597
01:36:02,000 --> 01:36:06,519
Speaker 1: in which to make matches. They become this huge, huge firm.

1598
01:36:06,600 --> 01:36:10,360
Speaker 1: There are a household name. Matches are hugely important of

1599
01:36:10,479 --> 01:36:14,160
Speaker 1: course at the time, because you've got no lighting, you've

1600
01:36:14,200 --> 01:36:16,400
Speaker 1: got no heating, you've got no fire, you've got no

1601
01:36:16,479 --> 01:36:19,200
Speaker 1: hot water, you've got no hot food, let alone lighting

1602
01:36:19,280 --> 01:36:22,439
Speaker 1: your fag, your cigarettes or your pipes or your cigars.

1603
01:36:22,800 --> 01:36:26,000
Speaker 1: So matches are everywhere and they're an absolute essential for

1604
01:36:26,120 --> 01:36:30,040
Speaker 1: every household. And they very quickly because it is a

1605
01:36:30,320 --> 01:36:35,479
Speaker 1: low investment industry, huge profits, very little money to put in.

1606
01:36:36,320 --> 01:36:41,240
Speaker 1: They become massive within a generation. The original Mr Bryan

1607
01:36:41,280 --> 01:36:45,240
Speaker 1: and Mr May are still alive when this firm really

1608
01:36:45,360 --> 01:36:48,840
Speaker 1: carries all before it, and they're incredibly in with the

1609
01:36:49,040 --> 01:36:53,800
Speaker 1: Liberal Party that in the politicians. They're very significant. They

1610
01:36:53,920 --> 01:36:59,000
Speaker 1: become huge exporters as well, something factors all over the country.

1611
01:36:59,000 --> 01:37:00,800
Speaker 1: It's not just in the East End of Well This

1612
01:37:00,920 --> 01:37:03,240
Speaker 1: is a very significant one in the East End. And

1613
01:37:03,400 --> 01:37:06,760
Speaker 1: they're so important to the government that the government will

1614
01:37:06,920 --> 01:37:11,040
Speaker 1: tailor it's policies to Briant May. So, for example, the

1615
01:37:11,200 --> 01:37:14,840
Speaker 1: ghastly white phosphorus that they used to make matches gets

1616
01:37:14,960 --> 01:37:17,559
Speaker 1: banned in the rest of Europe quicker than it does

1617
01:37:17,640 --> 01:37:20,120
Speaker 1: in England because we don't want to aspect Brian and made.

1618
01:37:20,200 --> 01:37:25,320
Speaker 1: That's how important they become. The original Mr May, who's

1619
01:37:25,360 --> 01:37:28,200
Speaker 1: the nicer of the two. Francis May, I think, gets

1620
01:37:28,320 --> 01:37:31,120
Speaker 1: forced out by the Bryants. We don't know why. I'd

1621
01:37:31,320 --> 01:37:35,280
Speaker 1: love to know why something happens. He alludes Mr May

1622
01:37:35,720 --> 01:37:37,760
Speaker 1: to this terrible thing that Bryants have done that he

1623
01:37:37,800 --> 01:37:40,080
Speaker 1: can't forgive. I would love to know. I love a

1624
01:37:40,120 --> 01:37:43,560
Speaker 1: bit of gossip, but we don't know. The sons of

1625
01:37:43,640 --> 01:37:47,400
Speaker 1: the original Brant takeover and they are absolutely ruthless, capitalistic

1626
01:37:47,520 --> 01:37:51,120
Speaker 1: bastards in a very modern sense too. They've got a

1627
01:37:51,400 --> 01:37:57,040
Speaker 1: huge regard for public relations, so they're constantly showing rich

1628
01:37:57,160 --> 01:37:59,680
Speaker 1: people in journalists around the factory and saying, look at

1629
01:37:59,720 --> 01:38:02,920
Speaker 1: our lovely working conditions. Obviously they're making everything look good

1630
01:38:02,960 --> 01:38:04,800
Speaker 1: for those days. The girls are dressed up in their

1631
01:38:04,840 --> 01:38:07,280
Speaker 1: finest clothes that they probably got out of the pawn broker,

1632
01:38:07,720 --> 01:38:10,400
Speaker 1: so they're really aware of their public image and they

1633
01:38:10,520 --> 01:38:13,200
Speaker 1: just become second to none. They're one of the most

1634
01:38:13,360 --> 01:38:20,559
Speaker 1: successful countries in the company, so people assume that conditions

1635
01:38:20,640 --> 01:38:23,200
Speaker 1: must be good, it must be all right working for them,

1636
01:38:23,200 --> 01:38:26,040
Speaker 1: because look how rich they are. They've become a firm

1637
01:38:26,400 --> 01:38:30,719
Speaker 1: Innate and eighty four and very quickly shareholders they're getting

1638
01:38:31,720 --> 01:38:36,880
Speaker 1: return on their investment. That's massive. Also, shareholders are often

1639
01:38:37,360 --> 01:38:39,760
Speaker 1: liberal MPs because they're very tied in with the Liberal

1640
01:38:39,840 --> 01:38:43,760
Speaker 1: Party and clergymen. So again people think, well, they must

1641
01:38:43,920 --> 01:38:48,439
Speaker 1: be a fairly kindly respectable company because look at all

1642
01:38:48,439 --> 01:38:50,800
Speaker 1: these good men who are very concerned about the pool,

1643
01:38:51,280 --> 01:38:55,000
Speaker 1: who are investing in them. And it's really not until

1644
01:38:55,080 --> 01:38:58,400
Speaker 1: the strike that the match when managed to show us

1645
01:38:58,560 --> 01:39:03,400
Speaker 1: what's really going on. Behind this facards that looks like

1646
01:39:03,800 --> 01:39:07,760
Speaker 1: this gothic castle with gatehouses and turrets. Women are working

1647
01:39:07,840 --> 01:39:11,720
Speaker 1: twelve hour days and starving to death. Women are contracting

1648
01:39:12,479 --> 01:39:16,679
Speaker 1: necrosis from white phosphorus. Their jaws are rotting and decaying

1649
01:39:16,840 --> 01:39:21,320
Speaker 1: while they're still alive. But it takes this huge event

1650
01:39:21,439 --> 01:39:23,560
Speaker 1: that a striper comes to show us this because we

1651
01:39:23,640 --> 01:39:26,920
Speaker 1: don't want to see it. We want to assume Brian

1652
01:39:27,000 --> 01:39:29,880
Speaker 1: to mayar this lovely success story. And we all have

1653
01:39:30,000 --> 01:39:32,400
Speaker 1: their match boxes at home, and they have this wonderful

1654
01:39:32,520 --> 01:39:36,240
Speaker 1: patriotic designs on their match boxes, and it's all very Imperial.

1655
01:39:36,400 --> 01:39:40,080
Speaker 1: It's all very royal. We want to believe that they

1656
01:39:40,200 --> 01:39:43,280
Speaker 1: are good employers as much as we would bother thinking

1657
01:39:43,320 --> 01:39:47,280
Speaker 1: about match match work is we want to believe that

1658
01:39:47,439 --> 01:39:50,840
Speaker 1: they're good, but they're not. And they're also buying up

1659
01:39:51,000 --> 01:39:55,559
Speaker 1: rival firms at an incredible rate. So when people hear

1660
01:39:55,600 --> 01:39:59,840
Speaker 1: about conditions and they want to boycott Branton May, they say, right, well,

1661
01:40:00,080 --> 01:40:02,960
Speaker 1: will buy our matches from Bells or from this other

1662
01:40:03,240 --> 01:40:07,040
Speaker 1: companies instead. They don't realize that Briant to me are

1663
01:40:07,080 --> 01:40:09,040
Speaker 1: chuckling wig go and go on them because we actually

1664
01:40:09,160 --> 01:40:12,320
Speaker 1: own those companies. Sometimes they would buy out rivals who

1665
01:40:12,360 --> 01:40:16,160
Speaker 1: would maintain their own name. So you know, really it

1666
01:40:16,320 --> 01:40:19,240
Speaker 1: looks like David versus Goliath. It looks like the matter

1667
01:40:19,400 --> 01:40:23,760
Speaker 1: and have no chance. They've done everything to ensure their positions.

1668
01:40:24,040 --> 01:40:28,240
Speaker 1: They've not only managed to push wages down for no reason,

1669
01:40:28,360 --> 01:40:31,200
Speaker 1: doesn't need to be done, but wages are lower in

1670
01:40:32,200 --> 01:40:34,679
Speaker 1: eight and they were in eighteen seventy eight, just because

1671
01:40:34,720 --> 01:40:38,439
Speaker 1: why not, you know, more profits for the shareholders. And

1672
01:40:38,720 --> 01:40:43,120
Speaker 1: they've done this relentless pr campaign. They're in with government

1673
01:40:43,439 --> 01:40:46,320
Speaker 1: who can possibly stop them, who is possibly going to

1674
01:40:46,439 --> 01:40:48,960
Speaker 1: take them on? They think no one but of course

1675
01:40:49,000 --> 01:40:52,000
Speaker 1: they've underestimated the women who are right under their noses.

1676
01:40:53,040 --> 01:40:56,200
Speaker 1: Can you describe what kind of life was possible on

1677
01:40:56,280 --> 01:40:59,040
Speaker 1: a branton May wage and how did it compare to

1678
01:40:59,240 --> 01:41:01,880
Speaker 1: other sorts of are available in the in the East End.

1679
01:41:02,720 --> 01:41:06,400
Speaker 1: It was lower paid that brianton May didn't even know that.

1680
01:41:06,640 --> 01:41:08,800
Speaker 1: That's what's so fascinating. They just paid as little as

1681
01:41:08,840 --> 01:41:11,840
Speaker 1: they could get away with. During the strike, when people

1682
01:41:11,880 --> 01:41:15,200
Speaker 1: start saying, you are paying your women a very low rate,

1683
01:41:15,280 --> 01:41:17,720
Speaker 1: even the best pay, because everyone got different ways they're paid,

1684
01:41:17,760 --> 01:41:20,160
Speaker 1: depending what they did, how how long they've been there,

1685
01:41:20,240 --> 01:41:22,679
Speaker 1: how good they were at the job. You are paying

1686
01:41:22,720 --> 01:41:27,200
Speaker 1: your women way below the average. And brianton May say,

1687
01:41:27,240 --> 01:41:29,760
Speaker 1: we're absolutely not. But behind this scenes, if you look

1688
01:41:29,800 --> 01:41:33,519
Speaker 1: in their company correspondence file, they're desperately writing if the

1689
01:41:33,600 --> 01:41:35,680
Speaker 1: other factors going what do you pay? What do you pay?

1690
01:41:35,720 --> 01:41:37,519
Speaker 1: Can you please tell us what you pay? And they

1691
01:41:37,640 --> 01:41:41,840
Speaker 1: find out that yes, pretty much everywhere is paying more

1692
01:41:42,320 --> 01:41:45,519
Speaker 1: than their pay, so very little life a toy. We

1693
01:41:45,560 --> 01:41:47,800
Speaker 1: can't really call it a life. When you look at

1694
01:41:47,840 --> 01:41:50,479
Speaker 1: what some women were earning, they'd be earning a few

1695
01:41:50,560 --> 01:41:53,160
Speaker 1: shillings four shillings a week, the rent of one room,

1696
01:41:53,200 --> 01:41:55,360
Speaker 1: would be two shillings, and then you've got your bills,

1697
01:41:55,479 --> 01:41:58,400
Speaker 1: and then you've got food, so you are just about

1698
01:41:58,479 --> 01:42:02,120
Speaker 1: scraping by if that. And they're constantly having to rely

1699
01:42:02,280 --> 01:42:04,479
Speaker 1: on each other. They're in and out of the pawn

1700
01:42:04,560 --> 01:42:07,880
Speaker 1: break at Broker's like a revolving door. You know that

1701
01:42:08,000 --> 01:42:11,720
Speaker 1: wonderful song, Pop goes the weasel up and down the

1702
01:42:11,800 --> 01:42:14,080
Speaker 1: city road in that diaesel, Pop goes the weasel. What

1703
01:42:14,200 --> 01:42:18,400
Speaker 1: that means is you're popping your pawning your weasel, which

1704
01:42:18,439 --> 01:42:22,840
Speaker 1: wasn't dressmaker's iron. So working women are constantly having to

1705
01:42:22,960 --> 01:42:25,960
Speaker 1: pawn even the tools of their trade to get them

1706
01:42:26,040 --> 01:42:28,000
Speaker 1: to the end of the week until I get paid again.

1707
01:42:28,240 --> 01:42:30,160
Speaker 1: And that was certainly the case for the match women,

1708
01:42:30,600 --> 01:42:33,840
Speaker 1: palling everything they could, their clothes, their boots and their

1709
01:42:33,880 --> 01:42:36,640
Speaker 1: hats that probably didn't have jewelry, but anything they did have,

1710
01:42:37,120 --> 01:42:41,040
Speaker 1: and helping each other, lending to each other, constantly supporting

1711
01:42:41,080 --> 01:42:44,479
Speaker 1: each other. So when they were sacked by Brian and

1712
01:42:44,600 --> 01:42:47,080
Speaker 1: May for anything, oh god, it could be anything, you know,

1713
01:42:47,200 --> 01:42:51,439
Speaker 1: getting pregnant if you weren't married, laughing, any kind of

1714
01:42:51,520 --> 01:42:54,519
Speaker 1: in subordination, you would just be sacked. And they would

1715
01:42:54,560 --> 01:42:56,360
Speaker 1: literally pass the hat, and it was a hat and

1716
01:42:56,400 --> 01:43:00,759
Speaker 1: probably a beautiful feathered one for each other. So life

1717
01:43:01,040 --> 01:43:04,400
Speaker 1: was impossible, and it was starvation rates unless you were

1718
01:43:04,479 --> 01:43:08,080
Speaker 1: helped out, and even those who did have the support

1719
01:43:08,120 --> 01:43:14,120
Speaker 1: of their friends were so malnourished by that When Annie

1720
01:43:14,160 --> 01:43:16,800
Speaker 1: Besset comes along and meet some women for the first time,

1721
01:43:16,880 --> 01:43:20,800
Speaker 1: she notices they're very small and frail, even for working

1722
01:43:20,840 --> 01:43:23,280
Speaker 1: class women at this time. They were not healthy and robust.

1723
01:43:23,320 --> 01:43:25,759
Speaker 1: You don't have a chance to be. But they're particularly

1724
01:43:25,840 --> 01:43:30,040
Speaker 1: small because these low wages. Brian and Mayor pushed the

1725
01:43:30,080 --> 01:43:32,559
Speaker 1: wages down, so they're lower than they were ten years before.

1726
01:43:32,640 --> 01:43:35,920
Speaker 1: So you're a young girl, you're getting that terribly below

1727
01:43:36,040 --> 01:43:40,360
Speaker 1: starvation rate of pay when you should be hitting puberty.

1728
01:43:40,680 --> 01:43:44,840
Speaker 1: So you're just not developing properly. You're just so malnourished

1729
01:43:44,920 --> 01:43:49,120
Speaker 1: that you're unable to grow and develop as you should

1730
01:43:49,160 --> 01:43:53,120
Speaker 1: have done. So really very little life was possible. Yet

1731
01:43:53,320 --> 01:43:55,719
Speaker 1: they still, you know, girls just want to have fun. Still,

1732
01:43:55,880 --> 01:43:59,799
Speaker 1: they would enjoy life whenever they could, their feather clubs,

1733
01:44:00,240 --> 01:44:03,800
Speaker 1: standing treat going out to tea whenever they could. They

1734
01:44:03,960 --> 01:44:07,479
Speaker 1: would still enjoy life, So you know, they weren't as

1735
01:44:07,640 --> 01:44:11,800
Speaker 1: beaten down and as oppressed, as their employers like to think,

1736
01:44:12,240 --> 01:44:14,599
Speaker 1: and as you think they might have been. They had

1737
01:44:15,080 --> 01:44:18,439
Speaker 1: this incredible spirit and they had pride in being matched women.

1738
01:44:18,840 --> 01:44:21,720
Speaker 1: They decided to turn that around. Other people may look

1739
01:44:21,800 --> 01:44:24,439
Speaker 1: down on us, but we are proud. We are the

1740
01:44:24,520 --> 01:44:26,720
Speaker 1: match girls. Who the hell are you? And they were

1741
01:44:26,840 --> 01:44:30,280
Speaker 1: proud of their identity, and still some of them remained friends,

1742
01:44:30,439 --> 01:44:34,479
Speaker 1: you know, forty forty years after they finished working in

1743
01:44:34,520 --> 01:44:38,880
Speaker 1: the factory and still went drinking together whenever they could. M.

1744
01:44:39,800 --> 01:44:44,479
Speaker 1: Can you describe the kinds of work needed to produce

1745
01:44:45,040 --> 01:44:50,080
Speaker 1: a briant in May match? M. Yes, it wasn't supposed

1746
01:44:50,120 --> 01:44:54,160
Speaker 1: to be skilled work, but in fact, the way that

1747
01:44:54,360 --> 01:44:57,080
Speaker 1: we decide what is skilled and what is not as

1748
01:44:57,120 --> 01:45:00,679
Speaker 1: pretty arbitrary. Generally decide that if men do it, it's skilled.

1749
01:45:00,800 --> 01:45:03,400
Speaker 1: Even when a job has been female, when it becomes male,

1750
01:45:03,760 --> 01:45:07,280
Speaker 1: suddenly we decided that it's skilled. But they had to

1751
01:45:07,439 --> 01:45:12,280
Speaker 1: work incredibly fast and incredibly accurately, not just to earn

1752
01:45:12,320 --> 01:45:15,200
Speaker 1: their wages, but to avoid being fined, because Bright and

1753
01:45:15,280 --> 01:45:18,960
Speaker 1: May would put illegal fines onto their wages if they

1754
01:45:19,080 --> 01:45:21,880
Speaker 1: made the slightest thing wrong, if the matches caught fire

1755
01:45:21,920 --> 01:45:26,400
Speaker 1: in the process, so you would initially have would that

1756
01:45:26,640 --> 01:45:30,519
Speaker 1: was divided into splints, which would go on to make

1757
01:45:30,560 --> 01:45:33,120
Speaker 1: the matches. Each splint was divided into two to make

1758
01:45:33,160 --> 01:45:38,080
Speaker 1: a match. These were set into a frame. The frame

1759
01:45:38,400 --> 01:45:44,360
Speaker 1: was then dipped into the white phosphorus, this horrible toxic chemical,

1760
01:45:45,000 --> 01:45:48,560
Speaker 1: and that was what made these matches so incredibly flammable.

1761
01:45:49,360 --> 01:45:52,920
Speaker 1: They were then left to dry. They were then cut

1762
01:45:53,040 --> 01:45:56,479
Speaker 1: down and they were then boxed and the fillers, by

1763
01:45:56,520 --> 01:45:59,360
Speaker 1: the way, the people who filled the boxes were incredible.

1764
01:46:00,080 --> 01:46:02,360
Speaker 1: Could throw any kind of different box or any kind

1765
01:46:02,400 --> 01:46:04,479
Speaker 1: of different match at them and they would hardly stop.

1766
01:46:04,520 --> 01:46:06,439
Speaker 1: Their fingers were just moving all the time. They knew

1767
01:46:06,479 --> 01:46:10,040
Speaker 1: exactly how many matches to grab to fit into a box.

1768
01:46:10,160 --> 01:46:14,800
Speaker 1: They were just incredibly skilled women. But a note on

1769
01:46:14,960 --> 01:46:18,240
Speaker 1: white phosphorus. People who have heard a little bit about

1770
01:46:18,280 --> 01:46:21,120
Speaker 1: the match them may have heard of Fossey jewel, this

1771
01:46:21,560 --> 01:46:27,000
Speaker 1: ghastly industrial disease. The thing about it was it's completely unnecessary.

1772
01:46:27,120 --> 01:46:30,760
Speaker 1: Brianton May didn't have to use it. Red phosphorus was

1773
01:46:30,840 --> 01:46:34,480
Speaker 1: available and it was safe, but it was more expensive,

1774
01:46:34,840 --> 01:46:37,080
Speaker 1: it was more difficult to produce, it took a little

1775
01:46:37,120 --> 01:46:41,280
Speaker 1: longer to produce, so why should they bother? They claimed,

1776
01:46:41,320 --> 01:46:43,280
Speaker 1: they didn't know about the effects of Fosse jewel. They

1777
01:46:43,439 --> 01:46:45,920
Speaker 1: claimed they didn't have any cases of it in their factory.

1778
01:46:45,960 --> 01:46:49,080
Speaker 1: They absolutely did know, and they absolutely did have people

1779
01:46:49,200 --> 01:46:52,200
Speaker 1: dying of it. And what would happen was that if

1780
01:46:52,240 --> 01:46:55,160
Speaker 1: you went into the area of the factory where the

1781
01:46:55,160 --> 01:47:00,400
Speaker 1: phosphorus was, you would immediately smell the ghastly fumes of phospterus.

1782
01:47:00,439 --> 01:47:05,080
Speaker 1: Absolutely stinks phosphorus, and you would perhaps be sick straightaway.

1783
01:47:05,080 --> 01:47:07,559
Speaker 1: People would vomit immediately on breathing it in, or they

1784
01:47:07,600 --> 01:47:10,040
Speaker 1: would pass out. That was really common. Whomen had to

1785
01:47:10,080 --> 01:47:12,719
Speaker 1: go outside and faint and then go back to work.

1786
01:47:13,760 --> 01:47:16,800
Speaker 1: If it caught hold of your teeth, as the women said,

1787
01:47:16,880 --> 01:47:19,840
Speaker 1: if it got into your jawbone, often throw holes in

1788
01:47:19,960 --> 01:47:22,679
Speaker 1: your teeth because you couldn't afford the dentists in those days.

1789
01:47:23,040 --> 01:47:26,479
Speaker 1: It would start to rot and decay your jawbone. So

1790
01:47:26,680 --> 01:47:32,800
Speaker 1: you're still alive, but you've got this horrible, separating, stinking abscesses. Sorry,

1791
01:47:32,840 --> 01:47:36,759
Speaker 1: I thying was just eaten in your gun and pieces

1792
01:47:36,800 --> 01:47:39,720
Speaker 1: of bone, your own bone. You're spitting them out there

1793
01:47:39,760 --> 01:47:43,400
Speaker 1: working their way out through these abscesses. It was a

1794
01:47:43,520 --> 01:47:48,519
Speaker 1: horrible disease, particularly because sufferers couldn't always live under the

1795
01:47:48,600 --> 01:47:51,240
Speaker 1: same roof as their families. Loved ones couldn't stand it.

1796
01:47:51,280 --> 01:47:53,240
Speaker 1: You know, you're living tend to a room. People just

1797
01:47:53,320 --> 01:47:57,200
Speaker 1: couldn't stand the smell. So later factory inspectors will find

1798
01:47:57,360 --> 01:48:00,759
Speaker 1: match women living on the outskirts of hounds and sishes,

1799
01:48:00,840 --> 01:48:04,240
Speaker 1: almost like lepers in the final stages of the disease,

1800
01:48:04,439 --> 01:48:07,000
Speaker 1: and match men as well. There were matched dippers who

1801
01:48:07,040 --> 01:48:09,599
Speaker 1: were often men, and they suffered from it as well.

1802
01:48:10,920 --> 01:48:13,560
Speaker 1: As If all of this wasn't bad enough, Brian and

1803
01:48:13,640 --> 01:48:16,719
Speaker 1: they constantly made it worse. And one of the reasons

1804
01:48:16,880 --> 01:48:18,600
Speaker 1: they made it worse was they should have provided a

1805
01:48:18,680 --> 01:48:21,439
Speaker 1: separate dining room so that women could eat out of

1806
01:48:21,600 --> 01:48:24,320
Speaker 1: the fumes, eat their own food. By the way, Branton

1807
01:48:24,360 --> 01:48:26,800
Speaker 1: may weren't going to provide them a single crumb, but

1808
01:48:27,000 --> 01:48:30,479
Speaker 1: perhaps their own bitter, stale bread if they were lucky

1809
01:48:30,560 --> 01:48:32,800
Speaker 1: that they brought him for home, so they would set

1810
01:48:32,840 --> 01:48:35,920
Speaker 1: it on their workbench until it was time to eat,

1811
01:48:36,320 --> 01:48:38,559
Speaker 1: and then cram it down as quickly as they could

1812
01:48:38,640 --> 01:48:41,840
Speaker 1: when they could. And if you imagine, the phosphorus particles

1813
01:48:41,920 --> 01:48:45,040
Speaker 1: in the air have settled now on your lunch, so

1814
01:48:45,120 --> 01:48:49,240
Speaker 1: you've got this deadly seasoning and so it's immediately in

1815
01:48:49,560 --> 01:48:53,080
Speaker 1: your mouth and it's got a way into your guns.

1816
01:48:54,600 --> 01:48:58,520
Speaker 1: And Briant and May's attitude to this was complete indifference.

1817
01:48:59,320 --> 01:49:01,360
Speaker 1: If they saw a woman who seemed to be coming

1818
01:49:01,400 --> 01:49:04,439
Speaker 1: down with the foss, perhaps your doorbone would start to

1819
01:49:04,640 --> 01:49:07,360
Speaker 1: swell and you look very toothache and a bit mumpsy.

1820
01:49:07,920 --> 01:49:11,360
Speaker 1: They would stack you. So the women would cover up

1821
01:49:11,479 --> 01:49:14,560
Speaker 1: their faces with kerchiefs. And even though they knew this

1822
01:49:14,720 --> 01:49:17,880
Speaker 1: disease was deadly, it didn't always kill you, and it

1823
01:49:17,960 --> 01:49:20,880
Speaker 1: didn't kill you as quickly as starvation. So that was

1824
01:49:20,960 --> 01:49:26,080
Speaker 1: the kind of awful calculations and accommodations that they had

1825
01:49:26,160 --> 01:49:29,920
Speaker 1: to make. While brianson May were literally living in oh,

1826
01:49:30,040 --> 01:49:33,640
Speaker 1: the most incredible country estates. You know, Mansions isn't in it.

1827
01:49:33,800 --> 01:49:37,120
Speaker 1: One of them was the Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. I always

1828
01:49:37,160 --> 01:49:39,400
Speaker 1: think it should have been the Sheriff of nottingham Shire,

1829
01:49:39,520 --> 01:49:42,120
Speaker 1: like in robin Hood, because they were such terrible people.

1830
01:49:42,800 --> 01:49:46,040
Speaker 1: But they're making a fortune, that's the awful thing. While

1831
01:49:46,160 --> 01:49:51,240
Speaker 1: this is happening, the company is absolutely flourishing. Would you

1832
01:49:51,280 --> 01:49:58,840
Speaker 1: describe from the Gladstone statue and what what kind of

1833
01:49:58,920 --> 01:50:03,560
Speaker 1: reaction it provoked? Now this is absolutely fascinating and this

1834
01:50:03,800 --> 01:50:06,720
Speaker 1: really gives us a flavor of the spirit of the

1835
01:50:06,840 --> 01:50:11,519
Speaker 1: match women and their eye for a good political gesture.

1836
01:50:12,280 --> 01:50:14,519
Speaker 1: So Brian and may as I said, we're very well

1837
01:50:14,760 --> 01:50:18,120
Speaker 1: in with the Liberal Party. And Gladstone was always being

1838
01:50:18,160 --> 01:50:20,880
Speaker 1: Prime Minister during this period, is prime minister for several

1839
01:50:20,960 --> 01:50:25,439
Speaker 1: different terms. So the ultimate act of sucking up my

1840
01:50:25,560 --> 01:50:29,080
Speaker 1: goodness talk about as kissing Brian. And they just said

1841
01:50:29,120 --> 01:50:32,840
Speaker 1: they will build a statue of William Gladstone and they

1842
01:50:32,880 --> 01:50:35,160
Speaker 1: will build it on the Bow Road. And it's actually

1843
01:50:35,360 --> 01:50:40,120
Speaker 1: gesturing with the right hand towards their factory. Such humidity.

1844
01:50:40,280 --> 01:50:43,280
Speaker 1: You know, there's Gladstone saying you look at this wonderful factory.

1845
01:50:43,760 --> 01:50:46,240
Speaker 1: So they decided they're going to build it. They could

1846
01:50:46,240 --> 01:50:47,840
Speaker 1: have paid for it themselves. They could have paid for

1847
01:50:47,880 --> 01:50:51,799
Speaker 1: a thousand statues themselves, I'm sure, very easily. But again,

1848
01:50:52,080 --> 01:50:54,679
Speaker 1: why would you when you can make your work is pay.

1849
01:50:55,479 --> 01:50:59,839
Speaker 1: So what they do is to take involuntary deductions, forced

1850
01:51:00,080 --> 01:51:03,960
Speaker 1: deductions from the girls, already incredibly low paid, to pay

1851
01:51:04,080 --> 01:51:07,960
Speaker 1: for this statue. Women not happy, you could understand, women

1852
01:51:08,080 --> 01:51:10,439
Speaker 1: not pleased at all with this, but they don't have

1853
01:51:10,479 --> 01:51:14,040
Speaker 1: any say in it. And then they announced the foremen,

1854
01:51:14,280 --> 01:51:17,360
Speaker 1: who were the sort of line managers I suppose, and

1855
01:51:17,479 --> 01:51:19,800
Speaker 1: often quite violent. They would hit the women and they

1856
01:51:19,840 --> 01:51:23,760
Speaker 1: were really unpleasant to them, and they were real company men.

1857
01:51:23,840 --> 01:51:26,479
Speaker 1: They'd lived on site, they had lovely cottages on site,

1858
01:51:26,520 --> 01:51:30,040
Speaker 1: so they were really brought and painful. Came in and said, oh,

1859
01:51:30,120 --> 01:51:33,000
Speaker 1: you're all very lucky. You're getting half afternoon off tomorrow.

1860
01:51:33,040 --> 01:51:35,320
Speaker 1: You're getting half the day off to go and see

1861
01:51:35,360 --> 01:51:38,000
Speaker 1: this statue being unveiled. And the women are like, well,

1862
01:51:38,040 --> 01:51:40,400
Speaker 1: are we being paid for that? And they say no,

1863
01:51:40,920 --> 01:51:43,200
Speaker 1: you're very lucky, you're getting some time off work. And

1864
01:51:43,280 --> 01:51:45,959
Speaker 1: the women say, you know you can stuff that. Basically

1865
01:51:46,160 --> 01:51:49,439
Speaker 1: whether's son doesn't shine. We don't want no holidays on

1866
01:51:49,600 --> 01:51:52,960
Speaker 1: those terms. Quite rightly, they want to be paid. And

1867
01:51:53,000 --> 01:51:54,720
Speaker 1: the former say, look, if you want to work here,

1868
01:51:54,960 --> 01:51:57,640
Speaker 1: you're going to turn up in your best bib and

1869
01:51:57,680 --> 01:51:59,920
Speaker 1: tucker your best hat and you're going to be pulled

1870
01:52:00,040 --> 01:52:04,600
Speaker 1: light and you're gonna stand and pullaue put applaud politely

1871
01:52:05,160 --> 01:52:07,479
Speaker 1: while this statue and right in the middle of the

1872
01:52:07,520 --> 01:52:10,519
Speaker 1: bow road it couldn't be more prominent, is unveiled. So

1873
01:52:10,600 --> 01:52:12,439
Speaker 1: the match, when we have a plan, they say all right,

1874
01:52:12,479 --> 01:52:15,519
Speaker 1: then we'll be there, and they are there, and you

1875
01:52:15,600 --> 01:52:18,880
Speaker 1: can just imagine the scene. The great and the good

1876
01:52:18,960 --> 01:52:22,640
Speaker 1: are gathered because Brian and may never miss an opportunity

1877
01:52:22,760 --> 01:52:25,240
Speaker 1: to show off. So all the Brant boys and their

1878
01:52:25,280 --> 01:52:29,240
Speaker 1: wives and their children, and their shareholders and prominent liberals

1879
01:52:29,280 --> 01:52:32,520
Speaker 1: are all there, and there are features and it's all tremendous.

1880
01:52:32,600 --> 01:52:37,120
Speaker 1: And finally this statue is unveiled and then the match

1881
01:52:37,160 --> 01:52:39,800
Speaker 1: were in move as one. They run up to the

1882
01:52:39,880 --> 01:52:44,439
Speaker 1: posire of the statue shouting out, our blood paid for

1883
01:52:44,520 --> 01:52:47,800
Speaker 1: this statue. And they pricked their fingers, which must have

1884
01:52:47,880 --> 01:52:49,800
Speaker 1: been with happins, because of what else would you do

1885
01:52:49,880 --> 01:52:54,040
Speaker 1: it with? They have these incredibly long, sharp, vicious happens

1886
01:52:54,040 --> 01:52:55,840
Speaker 1: which they used a self defense when they had to,

1887
01:52:56,280 --> 01:52:59,479
Speaker 1: in their beautiful hats prick their fingers and held their

1888
01:52:59,560 --> 01:53:03,559
Speaker 1: hands and dripped their blood onto the statue and said,

1889
01:53:03,720 --> 01:53:08,519
Speaker 1: our blood paid for this, which is just incredible. It's

1890
01:53:08,520 --> 01:53:11,240
Speaker 1: a shame it's not recorded anywhere, but I would imagine

1891
01:53:11,280 --> 01:53:16,000
Speaker 1: that Bryant's must have been incandescent. Talk about ruining their moment,

1892
01:53:16,720 --> 01:53:20,280
Speaker 1: but it was absolutely brilliant. And that if that's not political,

1893
01:53:20,479 --> 01:53:22,960
Speaker 1: and if that's not resistance I don't know what is

1894
01:53:23,120 --> 01:53:25,960
Speaker 1: because they waited for their moment and they just timed

1895
01:53:26,000 --> 01:53:32,960
Speaker 1: it beautifully. Ah. So let's start talking about who some

1896
01:53:33,080 --> 01:53:36,120
Speaker 1: of these who some of these women were, and one especially,

1897
01:53:36,200 --> 01:53:39,960
Speaker 1: let's talk about married risk call Um, who was married

1898
01:53:40,080 --> 01:53:44,880
Speaker 1: risk all A. Mary Diskill was only fourteen at the

1899
01:53:45,000 --> 01:53:47,479
Speaker 1: time of the strike, but that wasn't one of these.

1900
01:53:47,520 --> 01:53:50,120
Speaker 1: That wouldn't have been one of the youngest girls. She's

1901
01:53:50,200 --> 01:53:53,360
Speaker 1: in if anyone's seen that, the most famous photograph of

1902
01:53:53,439 --> 01:53:55,920
Speaker 1: the women, when they're actually standing outside the factory and

1903
01:53:55,920 --> 01:53:58,200
Speaker 1: they're looking into the camera, they look very nervous and

1904
01:53:58,360 --> 01:54:02,080
Speaker 1: very pale. She's the allst woman at the back wearing

1905
01:54:02,120 --> 01:54:04,320
Speaker 1: a hat. His granddaughter came up to me and said,

1906
01:54:04,320 --> 01:54:08,479
Speaker 1: I think that's my grandmother now. She was born in

1907
01:54:08,800 --> 01:54:12,720
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four. Both her parents were Irish and had

1908
01:54:12,760 --> 01:54:15,960
Speaker 1: come over from Ireland. She started working when she was

1909
01:54:16,000 --> 01:54:21,200
Speaker 1: a very young girl, and she was really prominent in

1910
01:54:21,439 --> 01:54:25,040
Speaker 1: the factory. She was very well respected, and her granddaughter

1911
01:54:25,120 --> 01:54:28,720
Speaker 1: told me that although she was quiet, she was quite

1912
01:54:28,760 --> 01:54:32,960
Speaker 1: a reticent woman. She had what Joan called an Irish temper,

1913
01:54:33,440 --> 01:54:37,120
Speaker 1: and she absolutely took no nonsense. So later in life,

1914
01:54:37,560 --> 01:54:40,200
Speaker 1: when one of the women in her street is being

1915
01:54:40,240 --> 01:54:43,800
Speaker 1: assaulted by her husband. It's Mary who goes out there

1916
01:54:43,840 --> 01:54:47,320
Speaker 1: with the poker from the fireplace and chases him down

1917
01:54:47,840 --> 01:54:51,080
Speaker 1: and tells him to stop beating up his wife. And

1918
01:54:51,160 --> 01:54:53,320
Speaker 1: at the time of her strike the strike, not just

1919
01:54:53,920 --> 01:54:57,680
Speaker 1: Mary but her sister Paul, also known as mog because

1920
01:54:57,720 --> 01:54:59,920
Speaker 1: people do very strange things, was named in the Victory

1921
01:55:00,160 --> 01:55:03,360
Speaker 1: period and also known as Margaret. It's working there as well.

1922
01:55:04,400 --> 01:55:08,600
Speaker 1: And in the picture Paul has her hand on Mary's shoulder.

1923
01:55:09,320 --> 01:55:12,400
Speaker 1: And I've seen pictures of these two going right towards

1924
01:55:12,480 --> 01:55:14,880
Speaker 1: the ends of their lives where they always stand like that.

1925
01:55:15,000 --> 01:55:17,440
Speaker 1: They're so close and so fond of each other that

1926
01:55:17,640 --> 01:55:20,280
Speaker 1: one's always got their hand on the other one's shoulder.

1927
01:55:21,080 --> 01:55:23,840
Speaker 1: But Mary had an incredibly hard life. She married a

1928
01:55:24,040 --> 01:55:27,240
Speaker 1: dock laborer, and that's really common as well. Match women

1929
01:55:27,280 --> 01:55:30,680
Speaker 1: and dockers tended to marry each other. Not surprisingly, they

1930
01:55:30,720 --> 01:55:32,960
Speaker 1: lived in the same streets and houses. They were all

1931
01:55:33,680 --> 01:55:38,200
Speaker 1: pretty much Irish heritage. They had all those connections. They

1932
01:55:38,280 --> 01:55:41,640
Speaker 1: were the casual workers of these dens, and the docks

1933
01:55:41,680 --> 01:55:44,720
Speaker 1: were a huge employer of men. The match works were

1934
01:55:44,720 --> 01:55:48,240
Speaker 1: a huge employer of women. But she had a really

1935
01:55:48,360 --> 01:55:52,040
Speaker 1: hard life with him. He was an alcoholic and he

1936
01:55:52,240 --> 01:55:55,680
Speaker 1: was violent occasionally as well, and in fact, when she

1937
01:55:55,840 --> 01:55:58,880
Speaker 1: was pregnant. Once during one of her pregnances, he knocked

1938
01:55:58,920 --> 01:56:02,960
Speaker 1: her down the stairs and she miscarriage and was extremely

1939
01:56:03,120 --> 01:56:09,400
Speaker 1: ill afterwards. When Thomas eventually died, it was on the docks,

1940
01:56:10,240 --> 01:56:14,080
Speaker 1: although there were stories that he'd actually got into a fight,

1941
01:56:14,240 --> 01:56:19,440
Speaker 1: so it wasn't really an industrial accident. However, Mary finally

1942
01:56:19,600 --> 01:56:24,440
Speaker 1: got a stroke of luck because she got compensation because

1943
01:56:24,440 --> 01:56:26,680
Speaker 1: of the doctor's strike, which had followed on from her

1944
01:56:26,760 --> 01:56:31,440
Speaker 1: own strike. Conditions were better and there was workers compensation available,

1945
01:56:31,520 --> 01:56:35,160
Speaker 1: so this made a huge difference to her, and instantly

1946
01:56:36,040 --> 01:56:40,320
Speaker 1: she was incredibly sensible and went and bought herself a shop.

1947
01:56:40,760 --> 01:56:43,160
Speaker 1: Now that sounds really fancy, doesn't It Only a shop,

1948
01:56:43,680 --> 01:56:46,000
Speaker 1: But shops at that time we're tiny. They could be

1949
01:56:46,080 --> 01:56:48,040
Speaker 1: quite whole in the corner of fairs. They could be

1950
01:56:48,120 --> 01:56:51,400
Speaker 1: just front rooms of little houses on East end streets

1951
01:56:52,040 --> 01:56:55,720
Speaker 1: that she eventually owned two shops, a corn chandler's like

1952
01:56:55,800 --> 01:56:59,840
Speaker 1: a general groceres and a cat's meat shop. Now, when

1953
01:56:59,840 --> 01:57:03,120
Speaker 1: I say cats meat shop, people often say, oh my god,

1954
01:57:03,560 --> 01:57:08,840
Speaker 1: were there that poor? Were people eating cats? Well? No,

1955
01:57:09,520 --> 01:57:12,160
Speaker 1: not as far as we know. Not on the whole.

1956
01:57:12,320 --> 01:57:15,080
Speaker 1: This was meat forecats, because people, even though they were poor,

1957
01:57:15,160 --> 01:57:17,879
Speaker 1: they wanted to have pets and they still loved animals,

1958
01:57:18,560 --> 01:57:21,840
Speaker 1: so they would buy the cheapest cuts of meat for cats.

1959
01:57:22,520 --> 01:57:27,960
Speaker 1: She was an amazing shop owner, according to her granddaughter Joan.

1960
01:57:28,440 --> 01:57:31,600
Speaker 1: She said that although she never learned to read or write,

1961
01:57:31,800 --> 01:57:35,440
Speaker 1: my God, could she add up? She would know anytime

1962
01:57:35,480 --> 01:57:39,040
Speaker 1: she could be running total in her head of exactly

1963
01:57:39,120 --> 01:57:42,240
Speaker 1: what was in the tills, exactly how much should be

1964
01:57:42,320 --> 01:57:44,720
Speaker 1: in the tills of either shop at any one time,

1965
01:57:45,360 --> 01:57:48,000
Speaker 1: and when the aunts, when her daughters would want to

1966
01:57:48,040 --> 01:57:50,400
Speaker 1: sneak out on dates, she'd be, where are you going?

1967
01:57:50,440 --> 01:57:52,960
Speaker 1: You're supposed to be working in the shop. So really

1968
01:57:53,160 --> 01:57:57,960
Speaker 1: everything was dedicated to this family business. She did reasonably

1969
01:57:58,040 --> 01:58:02,400
Speaker 1: well for herself in that God, but she was also

1970
01:58:03,280 --> 01:58:07,320
Speaker 1: so interesting political to the extent of being a huge

1971
01:58:07,440 --> 01:58:11,560
Speaker 1: fan of the Irish rebels, and her granddaughter Jones, said

1972
01:58:11,720 --> 01:58:14,520
Speaker 1: that whenever she was in drink, when she'd had a gym,

1973
01:58:14,640 --> 01:58:18,800
Speaker 1: she did enjoy gin. She would sing Irish rebel songs

1974
01:58:18,880 --> 01:58:22,080
Speaker 1: as she would sing the bold Robert Emmett, and she

1975
01:58:22,440 --> 01:58:26,040
Speaker 1: had pictures of Michael Collins in the nineties sixteen uprising

1976
01:58:26,160 --> 01:58:28,840
Speaker 1: much later in her life obviously, and Robert Emma, and

1977
01:58:28,920 --> 01:58:32,400
Speaker 1: she didn't own much, but those were never pawned or sold.

1978
01:58:32,760 --> 01:58:36,200
Speaker 1: Those were taken with her to every house that she

1979
01:58:36,360 --> 01:58:40,440
Speaker 1: lived in. Now. She enjoyed the gin to an extent

1980
01:58:40,640 --> 01:58:43,880
Speaker 1: that she had a mother in law that the mother

1981
01:58:44,040 --> 01:58:46,920
Speaker 1: of her cruel and abusive husband, so she didn't get

1982
01:58:46,920 --> 01:58:50,120
Speaker 1: on with either. And she took out a small life

1983
01:58:50,160 --> 01:58:54,000
Speaker 1: insurance policy on her mar in law. And when mother

1984
01:58:54,080 --> 01:58:56,920
Speaker 1: in law died, she was so delighted. She had a

1985
01:58:57,000 --> 01:58:59,800
Speaker 1: party and she spent all of that life and she

1986
01:59:00,040 --> 01:59:06,320
Speaker 1: wants money on Jim. She was the most amazingly strong woman.

1987
01:59:07,040 --> 01:59:11,960
Speaker 1: She survived to the blitz of World War two, and

1988
01:59:12,120 --> 01:59:15,720
Speaker 1: Mary remembers her telling the story that when the bombs

1989
01:59:15,800 --> 01:59:21,520
Speaker 1: were falling, one of Mary's daughters had a baby terror.

1990
01:59:21,560 --> 01:59:23,760
Speaker 1: What a terrifying time to be giving birth, but she

1991
01:59:23,840 --> 01:59:26,480
Speaker 1: gave birth and Mary ran through the streets with this

1992
01:59:26,600 --> 01:59:29,080
Speaker 1: grandchild in her arms. Goodness says what the new mom

1993
01:59:29,160 --> 01:59:32,280
Speaker 1: thought about this in order to get her baptized, because

1994
01:59:32,320 --> 01:59:34,640
Speaker 1: she was Catholic and it was really important to her

1995
01:59:35,000 --> 01:59:40,920
Speaker 1: to get this baby baptized. Joan absolutely adored Mary. She

1996
01:59:41,320 --> 01:59:44,800
Speaker 1: was the matriarch of the family, absolutely no question about that.

1997
01:59:45,440 --> 01:59:50,040
Speaker 1: And because Joan's own mom was ill, Mary basically brought

1998
01:59:50,080 --> 01:59:52,520
Speaker 1: her up to the point where she adored her grandmother

1999
01:59:52,680 --> 01:59:55,360
Speaker 1: so much that her own mother would say, well, she

2000
01:59:55,440 --> 01:59:58,600
Speaker 1: has got her faults, you know, she's not perfect. But

2001
01:59:58,680 --> 02:00:00,800
Speaker 1: the accommodation she was living thing, and Mary just there

2002
02:00:00,880 --> 02:00:03,600
Speaker 1: was a very fastidious woman. She was very house proud

2003
02:00:03,640 --> 02:00:06,120
Speaker 1: where she could be. But she was living in a

2004
02:00:06,200 --> 02:00:09,960
Speaker 1: house with black beetles all over it, with no toilet,

2005
02:00:10,040 --> 02:00:12,760
Speaker 1: with no running water, toilet out in a courtyard of

2006
02:00:12,800 --> 02:00:17,320
Speaker 1: shared toilet horrible. And when one of her daughters moved

2007
02:00:17,400 --> 02:00:19,520
Speaker 1: slightly out of the East End into one of the

2008
02:00:19,640 --> 02:00:23,680
Speaker 1: new semi detached houses, Mary was, for the first time

2009
02:00:23,720 --> 02:00:27,360
Speaker 1: in her life, absolutely speechless. She just stared at this house,

2010
02:00:27,560 --> 02:00:29,680
Speaker 1: very very small house, you know, too up to down,

2011
02:00:30,080 --> 02:00:33,680
Speaker 1: but with his own toilet and its own bathroom, and

2012
02:00:33,840 --> 02:00:38,240
Speaker 1: she said, oh, my goodness, this is a palace. And

2013
02:00:38,360 --> 02:00:42,320
Speaker 1: she was so pleased that her own children were doing

2014
02:00:42,400 --> 02:00:47,440
Speaker 1: better than she had done. And she died finally during

2015
02:00:47,480 --> 02:00:50,800
Speaker 1: World War two, and her granddaughter Joan was in the

2016
02:00:51,080 --> 02:00:55,400
Speaker 1: Women's Army and had to plead to get leave to

2017
02:00:55,560 --> 02:00:59,320
Speaker 1: go home and see her beloved granddaughter. Grandmother in her

2018
02:00:59,440 --> 02:01:01,680
Speaker 1: last moment went So she was furious with her sergeant

2019
02:01:01,720 --> 02:01:03,560
Speaker 1: who didn't want to give her leave, and she said

2020
02:01:03,640 --> 02:01:06,040
Speaker 1: to her, it's only your grandmother. And Janes said, she

2021
02:01:06,240 --> 02:01:08,760
Speaker 1: might seem like only a grandmother, but she's all the

2022
02:01:08,880 --> 02:01:13,440
Speaker 1: world to me and just just the most incredible woman.

2023
02:01:14,440 --> 02:01:17,560
Speaker 1: M there's one little story that you tell in the

2024
02:01:17,680 --> 02:01:22,160
Speaker 1: book about her attitude towards the Salvation Army in the

2025
02:01:22,280 --> 02:01:24,680
Speaker 1: East End when she was young. Do you want to

2026
02:01:24,720 --> 02:01:28,720
Speaker 1: read tell that little Yes, she was not stupid. There

2027
02:01:28,760 --> 02:01:31,120
Speaker 1: were no flies on Mary. She was a very clever woman,

2028
02:01:31,200 --> 02:01:34,760
Speaker 1: and like all Eastern moms, she did whatever she had

2029
02:01:34,800 --> 02:01:38,320
Speaker 1: to do to survive. And the Salvation Army, the Sally

2030
02:01:38,360 --> 02:01:42,160
Speaker 1: Anne was some of the people that would do good

2031
02:01:42,280 --> 02:01:46,160
Speaker 1: work amongst the poor and crucially ran soup kitchens and

2032
02:01:46,280 --> 02:01:50,160
Speaker 1: would give out soup and give out free food and Mary.

2033
02:01:50,320 --> 02:01:53,720
Speaker 1: But only if you were, you know, a good Protestant.

2034
02:01:53,880 --> 02:01:55,320
Speaker 1: They were not in the business of giving it out

2035
02:01:55,360 --> 02:02:00,200
Speaker 1: to Jewish people of Catholic people. So Mary train all

2036
02:02:00,240 --> 02:02:04,520
Speaker 1: her children to sing Salvation Army hymns and they would

2037
02:02:04,560 --> 02:02:07,440
Speaker 1: go along to these soup kitchens sing these hymns, you know,

2038
02:02:07,600 --> 02:02:10,400
Speaker 1: passionately pretend to be religious, a salvation army who would

2039
02:02:10,440 --> 02:02:13,440
Speaker 1: be terribly impressed, and they would get their free soup.

2040
02:02:15,640 --> 02:02:19,200
Speaker 1: Oh now, what sort of work did Mary do for

2041
02:02:19,720 --> 02:02:24,800
Speaker 1: Brian and May? So she worked in She and her

2042
02:02:24,880 --> 02:02:29,680
Speaker 1: sister both worked in the key workshops for Brian and May,

2043
02:02:29,800 --> 02:02:34,040
Speaker 1: and throughout their careers there did various kinds of jobs.

2044
02:02:34,080 --> 02:02:37,160
Speaker 1: So they would be working in the book stores, they

2045
02:02:37,200 --> 02:02:41,000
Speaker 1: would be filling the match boxes with matches and also

2046
02:02:41,120 --> 02:02:45,320
Speaker 1: doing cutting down and it was all very arduous because

2047
02:02:45,360 --> 02:02:47,680
Speaker 1: it was all done standing. You had to stand at

2048
02:02:47,720 --> 02:02:50,920
Speaker 1: your workbench, you weren't allowed to sit down, and it

2049
02:02:51,000 --> 02:02:54,720
Speaker 1: was at least a twelve hour day. You weren't supposed

2050
02:02:54,720 --> 02:02:57,720
Speaker 1: to talk, and you weren't supposed to laugh or joke

2051
02:02:57,840 --> 02:03:00,680
Speaker 1: with your fellow factory hands. And then I mentioned before,

2052
02:03:00,720 --> 02:03:04,720
Speaker 1: there was this business of burnt The matches dipped in

2053
02:03:04,760 --> 02:03:09,200
Speaker 1: white phosphors were incredibly flammable. I mean, obviously matches are

2054
02:03:09,240 --> 02:03:12,600
Speaker 1: supposed to be flammable, but these were dangerously so. What

2055
02:03:12,720 --> 02:03:16,800
Speaker 1: they called lucifer matches, which were people's favorite matches at

2056
02:03:16,840 --> 02:03:19,040
Speaker 1: the time because you didn't have to buy a whole

2057
02:03:19,120 --> 02:03:22,000
Speaker 1: box and carry it around, which is quite expensive thing

2058
02:03:22,080 --> 02:03:24,840
Speaker 1: to buy. You could just buy a few matches and

2059
02:03:25,000 --> 02:03:28,320
Speaker 1: carry them with you and strike them anywhere. Them called

2060
02:03:28,360 --> 02:03:31,400
Speaker 1: strike anywhere matches. So men used to apparently like to

2061
02:03:31,480 --> 02:03:33,720
Speaker 1: show off to the ladies by striking them on the

2062
02:03:33,880 --> 02:03:37,200
Speaker 1: flies of their trousers and on their boots. And I

2063
02:03:37,240 --> 02:03:38,960
Speaker 1: don't know if that would have impressed in women then,

2064
02:03:38,960 --> 02:03:43,240
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it would now. But they were prone

2065
02:03:43,520 --> 02:03:47,120
Speaker 1: to catching fire in the process. Absolutely not the workers

2066
02:03:47,200 --> 02:03:50,560
Speaker 1: full and yet they would be fined for it, So

2067
02:03:50,840 --> 02:03:54,480
Speaker 1: you know, it was really grim and arduous work. M

2068
02:03:55,560 --> 02:03:58,280
Speaker 1: Who was Martha Robinson and and how old was she

2069
02:03:58,440 --> 02:04:01,720
Speaker 1: at the time of the strike. Martha Robertson was the

2070
02:04:02,120 --> 02:04:07,160
Speaker 1: grandmother of one of my best witnesses and friends. I'm

2071
02:04:07,200 --> 02:04:10,360
Speaker 1: glad to say I became very friendly with her grandson,

2072
02:04:10,600 --> 02:04:12,840
Speaker 1: ted lewis a wonderful man and only died a couple

2073
02:04:12,880 --> 02:04:18,000
Speaker 1: of years ago. And she was born only a nation two,

2074
02:04:18,600 --> 02:04:21,560
Speaker 1: so how on earth? Because she had been working in

2075
02:04:22,840 --> 02:04:26,320
Speaker 1: but she was she was making matches for Brian to May,

2076
02:04:27,680 --> 02:04:29,960
Speaker 1: and she was such a matriarch in her family that

2077
02:04:30,040 --> 02:04:33,960
Speaker 1: we do have a wonderful record that was recorded by

2078
02:04:34,040 --> 02:04:37,080
Speaker 1: the family they wrote down some of her reminiscences, and

2079
02:04:37,200 --> 02:04:38,920
Speaker 1: thank god they did. You know, this is the whole

2080
02:04:38,960 --> 02:04:41,160
Speaker 1: story and stream, isn't it. I was like, give me

2081
02:04:41,320 --> 02:04:44,440
Speaker 1: that book. I kept borrowing it and looking at it

2082
02:04:44,480 --> 02:04:47,040
Speaker 1: and finding more things. And it was hand written with

2083
02:04:47,200 --> 02:04:50,240
Speaker 1: photographs as well. But it was a scrap book really,

2084
02:04:50,360 --> 02:04:55,560
Speaker 1: but it was really wonderful memoir of the family. So

2085
02:04:56,000 --> 02:04:59,080
Speaker 1: she would get up as a six year old. I

2086
02:04:59,120 --> 02:05:01,280
Speaker 1: always tell my son this, you know, when he doesn't

2087
02:05:01,280 --> 02:05:03,160
Speaker 1: feel like doing his homework or doesn't feel like helping

2088
02:05:03,160 --> 02:05:04,920
Speaker 1: around the house. And you could have been working from

2089
02:05:04,920 --> 02:05:07,360
Speaker 1: the age of six, my lad. She'd get up at

2090
02:05:07,440 --> 02:05:11,680
Speaker 1: five in the morning and lay sweep at the fireplace

2091
02:05:12,000 --> 02:05:15,160
Speaker 1: and lay the fire for the family. She was one

2092
02:05:15,200 --> 02:05:17,920
Speaker 1: of six children, then later another three, so she became

2093
02:05:18,000 --> 02:05:21,400
Speaker 1: one of nine. She would look under the stairs where

2094
02:05:22,120 --> 02:05:24,880
Speaker 1: the shoe collection, the family shoe collection was, because you

2095
02:05:24,880 --> 02:05:27,200
Speaker 1: didn't have your own pairs of shoes. It was just

2096
02:05:27,320 --> 02:05:29,080
Speaker 1: whatever you could find. You know, you might find a

2097
02:05:29,120 --> 02:05:30,760
Speaker 1: shoe in the street and bring it home and try

2098
02:05:30,800 --> 02:05:33,000
Speaker 1: and make it fit by stuff with newspaper. Because shoes

2099
02:05:33,040 --> 02:05:36,000
Speaker 1: were so expensive, she tried to find a vaguely matching

2100
02:05:36,040 --> 02:05:38,960
Speaker 1: pair pad them out if she had to, and off

2101
02:05:39,080 --> 02:05:44,000
Speaker 1: she'd walk to the factory. She would pick up everything

2102
02:05:44,080 --> 02:05:47,320
Speaker 1: she needed from Brian and May to make the matchboxes,

2103
02:05:47,360 --> 02:05:49,880
Speaker 1: so the cardboard, and she would have to buy her

2104
02:05:49,920 --> 02:05:53,720
Speaker 1: own paste and come home and make as many of

2105
02:05:53,840 --> 02:05:56,840
Speaker 1: the boxes as she could and then take them back

2106
02:05:56,880 --> 02:05:59,440
Speaker 1: to the factory and get paid, so she'd get paid

2107
02:05:59,560 --> 02:06:03,120
Speaker 1: like on her piece work. And then she'd walk home

2108
02:06:03,400 --> 02:06:05,800
Speaker 1: six years old. Again, I have to stress and buy

2109
02:06:05,960 --> 02:06:08,880
Speaker 1: bread for the family. So if she didn't do that,

2110
02:06:09,200 --> 02:06:11,720
Speaker 1: she wasn't feeling well. One day they didn't get to eat.

2111
02:06:12,400 --> 02:06:17,400
Speaker 1: So it is the most incredibly responsible position. And she

2112
02:06:17,880 --> 02:06:23,320
Speaker 1: got married to James Laken and he was a rifleman

2113
02:06:23,760 --> 02:06:26,680
Speaker 1: in World War One. She was still working at Brianton

2114
02:06:26,760 --> 02:06:31,760
Speaker 1: May then sometimes in the factory. Between children, people generally

2115
02:06:31,840 --> 02:06:33,280
Speaker 1: would work in the factory and then when you had

2116
02:06:33,320 --> 02:06:35,960
Speaker 1: a new baby you might switch to making match boxes

2117
02:06:36,000 --> 02:06:39,640
Speaker 1: again at home. And he went missing. He was missing

2118
02:06:39,800 --> 02:06:44,760
Speaker 1: in action, presumed dead, and Martha had three children by them,

2119
02:06:45,400 --> 02:06:49,400
Speaker 1: and she was one of these incredibly well respected women

2120
02:06:49,520 --> 02:06:52,200
Speaker 1: in the community and in the street. She was there.

2121
02:06:52,360 --> 02:06:54,080
Speaker 1: She was the one who call if someone died. She

2122
02:06:54,120 --> 02:06:57,040
Speaker 1: would help you lay out the dead because of that.

2123
02:06:58,240 --> 02:07:02,320
Speaker 1: She was so well respected that the army came to

2124
02:07:02,440 --> 02:07:05,280
Speaker 1: her because they had a problem. They had a number

2125
02:07:05,360 --> 02:07:08,760
Speaker 1: of soldiers who had been so badly wounded in the

2126
02:07:09,000 --> 02:07:12,760
Speaker 1: horrors of World War One that they were unidentifiable. They

2127
02:07:12,800 --> 02:07:16,120
Speaker 1: were alive just about, but they were impossible to identify.

2128
02:07:16,160 --> 02:07:19,440
Speaker 1: They couldn't speak, they'd lost all their identity tags. There

2129
02:07:19,520 --> 02:07:22,160
Speaker 1: was a whole ward of them, and so they bought

2130
02:07:22,240 --> 02:07:25,360
Speaker 1: him women in good standing in the neighborhood to help

2131
02:07:25,760 --> 02:07:29,440
Speaker 1: if they could identify some of their neighbors. It's just

2132
02:07:29,520 --> 02:07:31,840
Speaker 1: absolutely bizarre, isn't it that the army could not have

2133
02:07:32,040 --> 02:07:35,760
Speaker 1: known who these people were. And she went around with

2134
02:07:35,880 --> 02:07:39,680
Speaker 1: her sons, and she was drawn to one man in particular,

2135
02:07:39,840 --> 02:07:42,680
Speaker 1: who was just completely bandaged from head to toe. I

2136
02:07:42,760 --> 02:07:44,880
Speaker 1: picture of being like the invisible man wh she can

2137
02:07:45,000 --> 02:07:47,680
Speaker 1: just about see his eyes and that's all and you

2138
02:07:47,760 --> 02:07:50,520
Speaker 1: can't speak. He's just sort of making noises. But she

2139
02:07:50,720 --> 02:07:53,520
Speaker 1: feels drawn to him for some reason, and he's trying

2140
02:07:53,560 --> 02:07:56,000
Speaker 1: to make eye contact with her, and she suddenly says, Jim,

2141
02:07:56,240 --> 02:07:59,840
Speaker 1: is that you And she realizes that yes, it's her

2142
02:08:00,080 --> 02:08:03,480
Speaker 1: husband who was supposed to be dead, and she fainted.

2143
02:08:03,720 --> 02:08:07,480
Speaker 1: She fainted into the arms of her son's and then

2144
02:08:08,320 --> 02:08:11,520
Speaker 1: she had to look after him. Now, forget about any

2145
02:08:11,680 --> 02:08:15,080
Speaker 1: kind of help to do that. Don't forget no NHS,

2146
02:08:15,160 --> 02:08:19,000
Speaker 1: no natural health, so there's no benefits whatsoever. She's just expected,

2147
02:08:19,120 --> 02:08:23,760
Speaker 1: whilst working, whilst looking after her kids, to look after

2148
02:08:23,880 --> 02:08:26,680
Speaker 1: this man as well, who's completely deformed and disfigured by

2149
02:08:26,720 --> 02:08:29,480
Speaker 1: the way. He's had half a face blown away and

2150
02:08:29,720 --> 02:08:33,400
Speaker 1: in the photographs it's bad that the deformity is really bad,

2151
02:08:33,440 --> 02:08:34,960
Speaker 1: and it must have been very difficult for him to

2152
02:08:35,080 --> 02:08:38,240
Speaker 1: even eat, and he was never the same again. They

2153
02:08:38,280 --> 02:08:41,760
Speaker 1: went on to have three more children together, but he

2154
02:08:42,040 --> 02:08:44,600
Speaker 1: really was never the same person. He was very I

2155
02:08:44,680 --> 02:08:47,840
Speaker 1: suppose depressed and probably had what we've now called PTSD,

2156
02:08:48,160 --> 02:08:51,120
Speaker 1: you know, post combat stress. So he was really a

2157
02:08:51,160 --> 02:08:52,880
Speaker 1: miserable brother, I think, and he would just sit in

2158
02:08:52,960 --> 02:08:54,920
Speaker 1: the corner and shout at the kids. That's what everyone

2159
02:08:55,000 --> 02:08:59,560
Speaker 1: remembers of him. But she stayed with him until he

2160
02:09:00,640 --> 02:09:04,800
Speaker 1: and she did marry again. She married a longstanding sweetheart

2161
02:09:05,240 --> 02:09:08,880
Speaker 1: of hers and had a much happier second marriage until

2162
02:09:08,960 --> 02:09:12,000
Speaker 1: he died as well. But what a character she was.

2163
02:09:12,240 --> 02:09:17,040
Speaker 1: She was absolutely one hell of a force. And her

2164
02:09:17,160 --> 02:09:21,280
Speaker 1: grandson Ted Lewis told me what she was like. He said, well,

2165
02:09:21,320 --> 02:09:24,520
Speaker 1: we'd go out drinking, because he, again, like Joan Harris,

2166
02:09:24,680 --> 02:09:27,360
Speaker 1: adored his grandmother and spent an awful lot of time

2167
02:09:27,440 --> 02:09:30,280
Speaker 1: with her as a boy, and when he was old

2168
02:09:30,360 --> 02:09:32,200
Speaker 1: enough to drink and they go to the pub together,

2169
02:09:32,720 --> 02:09:34,720
Speaker 1: he said, she was always the same Martha. She was

2170
02:09:34,840 --> 02:09:37,920
Speaker 1: really artful, she was really cunning. You'd say to her,

2171
02:09:38,000 --> 02:09:40,040
Speaker 1: oh can I get you a drink and she'd say,

2172
02:09:40,080 --> 02:09:41,680
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, no, dear, no, no no no

2173
02:09:41,880 --> 02:09:43,960
Speaker 1: no you you you keep your money, and she'd make

2174
02:09:44,000 --> 02:09:46,320
Speaker 1: you insist, oh no no, no, Granna buy you a drink,

2175
02:09:46,400 --> 02:09:48,760
Speaker 1: all right? Then dig Or bets you. So he'd always

2176
02:09:48,880 --> 02:09:51,480
Speaker 1: end up paying for the drinks. But if there was

2177
02:09:51,560 --> 02:09:53,440
Speaker 1: a fight in the pub, and there often were fights

2178
02:09:53,480 --> 02:09:56,800
Speaker 1: in the pub, she could to fight back, even as

2179
02:09:56,840 --> 02:09:59,200
Speaker 1: an old lady. He remembered. Once she'd had a hip

2180
02:09:59,240 --> 02:10:01,800
Speaker 1: operation and he took her out as her first time

2181
02:10:01,880 --> 02:10:06,800
Speaker 1: out in public since she'd had this operation, and they

2182
02:10:06,840 --> 02:10:09,160
Speaker 1: were in a pub and it all started to kick off.

2183
02:10:09,320 --> 02:10:13,000
Speaker 1: So she heaved herself up from her chair and she said, right, said,

2184
02:10:13,480 --> 02:10:15,880
Speaker 1: propped me up in the corner, give me my stick

2185
02:10:16,000 --> 02:10:19,040
Speaker 1: and our bloody take all the buggers on and she

2186
02:10:19,160 --> 02:10:23,440
Speaker 1: did as well. And even when she was ill and

2187
02:10:23,880 --> 02:10:28,600
Speaker 1: she was in bed in her house, friends would come

2188
02:10:28,640 --> 02:10:31,000
Speaker 1: and see her. She was always she always had open

2189
02:10:31,080 --> 02:10:33,640
Speaker 1: out house. When she was a younger woman, people will

2190
02:10:33,680 --> 02:10:35,800
Speaker 1: come back from the pubs with her and played the piano.

2191
02:10:35,920 --> 02:10:38,280
Speaker 1: And it sounds such a cliche, you know, around the

2192
02:10:38,320 --> 02:10:40,720
Speaker 1: old Joanna, the old cockneys having your knees up, But

2193
02:10:40,800 --> 02:10:43,200
Speaker 1: you know this cliche has come from somewhere. They really did.

2194
02:10:44,120 --> 02:10:46,800
Speaker 1: She always managed to pay the bills and keep a

2195
02:10:46,840 --> 02:10:48,960
Speaker 1: good roof over their head. And Ted said this was

2196
02:10:49,000 --> 02:10:51,920
Speaker 1: because she got about a bit. So she had a

2197
02:10:52,000 --> 02:10:54,880
Speaker 1: lot of lovers basically, and I think the landlord might

2198
02:10:54,920 --> 02:10:56,880
Speaker 1: have been one of them, because he would visit and say,

2199
02:10:57,720 --> 02:11:00,120
Speaker 1: you're supposed to have only three people in here, and

2200
02:11:00,160 --> 02:11:01,920
Speaker 1: you seem to have about seven or eight. They're always

2201
02:11:01,960 --> 02:11:05,080
Speaker 1: new children. But she managed to charm him somehow so

2202
02:11:05,400 --> 02:11:08,800
Speaker 1: they didn't get evicted. And finally, when she was dying,

2203
02:11:09,680 --> 02:11:12,880
Speaker 1: her room was always crowded because she was still holding court.

2204
02:11:13,000 --> 02:11:16,280
Speaker 1: That many people would come and visit her. And she

2205
02:11:16,440 --> 02:11:19,360
Speaker 1: always said that she didn't need an alarm clock because

2206
02:11:19,440 --> 02:11:22,600
Speaker 1: from where she was in bed she could hear a

2207
02:11:22,760 --> 02:11:26,080
Speaker 1: man who sold pots and pants, a street trader who'd

2208
02:11:26,160 --> 02:11:28,680
Speaker 1: walked down the road about seven in the morning with

2209
02:11:28,840 --> 02:11:31,560
Speaker 1: his barrow, and she said, do you know, Love, there's

2210
02:11:31,600 --> 02:11:34,960
Speaker 1: a dodgy manhole cover and he always hits it, that

2211
02:11:35,160 --> 02:11:38,400
Speaker 1: silly bugger. He always goes over it and he loses

2212
02:11:38,440 --> 02:11:41,000
Speaker 1: the look. And hear his whole his whole will barrow,

2213
02:11:41,080 --> 02:11:43,760
Speaker 1: his whole barrow, everything falling off it. And she would

2214
02:11:43,800 --> 02:11:46,400
Speaker 1: laugh herself sick at this. I wonder the poor son's

2215
02:11:46,440 --> 02:11:48,200
Speaker 1: got anything left us out? And she said that was

2216
02:11:48,280 --> 02:11:50,640
Speaker 1: better than alarm clock, and that was what always woke

2217
02:11:50,680 --> 02:11:54,240
Speaker 1: her up in the morning. So again, there's just this

2218
02:11:54,400 --> 02:11:58,840
Speaker 1: incredible spirit. She when she was even though she was

2219
02:11:58,880 --> 02:12:01,480
Speaker 1: often without food, she would always make sure that the

2220
02:12:01,640 --> 02:12:05,320
Speaker 1: children ate, and later her grandchildren. She had ducks in

2221
02:12:05,640 --> 02:12:09,320
Speaker 1: her tiny little backyard, and when Ted visited, he'd say,

2222
02:12:09,400 --> 02:12:11,280
Speaker 1: what are we having for dinner, Grandma? And she always

2223
02:12:11,320 --> 02:12:14,240
Speaker 1: look at him and smile and say, duck. Do you think,

2224
02:12:14,280 --> 02:12:16,920
Speaker 1: Oh no, she's eating with ducks. Were eating the ducks.

2225
02:12:16,960 --> 02:12:19,640
Speaker 1: That's terrible. And she was just winding him up because

2226
02:12:19,800 --> 02:12:21,760
Speaker 1: then he realized after a couple of years, hang on

2227
02:12:21,760 --> 02:12:23,760
Speaker 1: a minute, there's always the same number of ducks out

2228
02:12:23,800 --> 02:12:25,640
Speaker 1: the side, out of the back. She was just using

2229
02:12:25,680 --> 02:12:29,400
Speaker 1: them for eggs and they were probably eating baggots, really

2230
02:12:29,480 --> 02:12:32,680
Speaker 1: cheat cuts and meat or something completely different. But you know,

2231
02:12:32,800 --> 02:12:38,800
Speaker 1: she's the archetypal I suppose woman who just has, on

2232
02:12:38,960 --> 02:12:41,920
Speaker 1: the surface, on paper, such a terrible life and goes

2233
02:12:42,000 --> 02:12:45,160
Speaker 1: through so much, but still manages to be a community

2234
02:12:45,320 --> 02:12:48,400
Speaker 1: leader and a real force, not just as in her family,

2235
02:12:49,000 --> 02:12:51,560
Speaker 1: but in her widest streets and neighborhood to you know,

2236
02:12:51,680 --> 02:12:56,120
Speaker 1: a highly respected queen of the East End. Um, let's

2237
02:12:56,160 --> 02:12:59,320
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the strike itself. What were

2238
02:12:59,360 --> 02:13:05,640
Speaker 1: the events that kicked off the walkout and how did

2239
02:13:05,720 --> 02:13:11,480
Speaker 1: the strike committee for mm hmm. I really had to

2240
02:13:11,600 --> 02:13:14,720
Speaker 1: dig to work this out because when it came to it,

2241
02:13:14,880 --> 02:13:17,000
Speaker 1: all I knew was that there had been a strike

2242
02:13:17,960 --> 02:13:22,320
Speaker 1: and that it had been led from the outside. So obviously,

2243
02:13:22,400 --> 02:13:24,880
Speaker 1: because of that, we had no details about the real

2244
02:13:25,000 --> 02:13:27,160
Speaker 1: strike because it was supposed to have been a case

2245
02:13:27,360 --> 02:13:29,120
Speaker 1: is women were just told to go on strike by

2246
02:13:29,160 --> 02:13:32,520
Speaker 1: them with the classes. But what actually happened is so

2247
02:13:33,040 --> 02:13:39,440
Speaker 1: much more fascinating. Annie Besson was this middle class journalist

2248
02:13:39,640 --> 02:13:43,200
Speaker 1: and fabian a kind of socialist society that George Burnet

2249
02:13:43,240 --> 02:13:46,200
Speaker 1: Sure was a member of two and she was at

2250
02:13:46,240 --> 02:13:52,720
Speaker 1: a Fabian meeting in June and heard someone speak about

2251
02:13:52,800 --> 02:13:58,160
Speaker 1: the terrible conditions that working women particularly experienced in the

2252
02:13:58,240 --> 02:14:01,640
Speaker 1: East End and the terrible exploit a ship. She didn't

2253
02:14:01,720 --> 02:14:04,360
Speaker 1: know enough about the match were going to realize that

2254
02:14:04,400 --> 02:14:07,560
Speaker 1: the speaker was actually talking about box makers. The match

2255
02:14:07,640 --> 02:14:12,080
Speaker 1: box makers the homeworkers who worked in their homes. She assumed, well,

2256
02:14:12,120 --> 02:14:14,200
Speaker 1: as a brand and mayfactory in Fairfield, and it must

2257
02:14:14,240 --> 02:14:17,960
Speaker 1: be them. So she thought, well, I'll go and see

2258
02:14:18,360 --> 02:14:22,920
Speaker 1: if that's true. She wasn't convinced that it was. She

2259
02:14:23,080 --> 02:14:25,920
Speaker 1: went down and she waited until some of the women

2260
02:14:26,000 --> 02:14:28,480
Speaker 1: came off shift there. They worked different shifts and came

2261
02:14:28,520 --> 02:14:31,120
Speaker 1: out of the gates and onto the boat road, and

2262
02:14:31,320 --> 02:14:34,840
Speaker 1: she stopped them and said, I'm a journalist. I would

2263
02:14:34,840 --> 02:14:38,640
Speaker 1: like to talk to you about your conditions. It was

2264
02:14:38,800 --> 02:14:41,920
Speaker 1: that from this that we know everything that we do

2265
02:14:42,040 --> 02:14:44,640
Speaker 1: know about their conditions, From what those women told her

2266
02:14:44,680 --> 02:14:48,160
Speaker 1: about the fossy jaw, about the finds, about the fact

2267
02:14:48,200 --> 02:14:53,000
Speaker 1: that they were earning less now than in and the

2268
02:14:53,120 --> 02:14:55,680
Speaker 1: wonderful story of the statue. This all came out in

2269
02:14:55,760 --> 02:15:00,280
Speaker 1: that initial interview. She went back and wrote it up

2270
02:15:01,320 --> 02:15:05,280
Speaker 1: really hard hitting piece called White Slavery in London. And

2271
02:15:05,360 --> 02:15:09,240
Speaker 1: now there we can hark back to the maiden tribute

2272
02:15:09,520 --> 02:15:12,640
Speaker 1: to modern Babylon and this kind of obsession with the

2273
02:15:13,200 --> 02:15:17,280
Speaker 1: sexual exploitation of working class women, because white Slavery was

2274
02:15:17,440 --> 02:15:22,200
Speaker 1: one of the phrases used to refer to that. It's

2275
02:15:22,240 --> 02:15:24,240
Speaker 1: a very good title. I think. Also I wonder if

2276
02:15:24,240 --> 02:15:26,720
Speaker 1: any Beston wasn't having a pop that one of the

2277
02:15:27,040 --> 02:15:31,440
Speaker 1: Bryants who had been named Wilberforce Bryant after William Morberforce,

2278
02:15:31,880 --> 02:15:35,480
Speaker 1: the abolition campaigner, And I wonder if she wasn't having

2279
02:15:35,520 --> 02:15:37,880
Speaker 1: a goal because she's basically saying to Brian, and may

2280
02:15:38,760 --> 02:15:43,560
Speaker 1: you treat these people actually worse than enslaved people, because

2281
02:15:43,800 --> 02:15:48,320
Speaker 1: enslaved people at least are usually fed, you know, just

2282
02:15:48,520 --> 02:15:50,320
Speaker 1: enough so they can do the work, probably not well,

2283
02:15:50,800 --> 02:15:53,840
Speaker 1: but they are usually fed and housed. And your women

2284
02:15:54,000 --> 02:15:56,720
Speaker 1: girls don't even have that. They have to pay out

2285
02:15:56,760 --> 02:16:01,640
Speaker 1: of these terrible wages, terribly low ages after you find them,

2286
02:16:01,680 --> 02:16:04,200
Speaker 1: and the wages have gone done even further for all

2287
02:16:04,320 --> 02:16:08,040
Speaker 1: of that as well. And it was meant to be

2288
02:16:08,360 --> 02:16:12,280
Speaker 1: incredibly hard hitting, and it was, and to make sure

2289
02:16:12,720 --> 02:16:16,040
Speaker 1: that Brian and they knew about it. She telegrammed them

2290
02:16:16,320 --> 02:16:19,480
Speaker 1: and said, please do buy my paper, which is called

2291
02:16:19,520 --> 02:16:22,400
Speaker 1: The Link, a socialist journal, Please do buy it. I

2292
02:16:22,440 --> 02:16:24,840
Speaker 1: think there's nascar we're going to be very interested in.

2293
02:16:25,360 --> 02:16:28,400
Speaker 1: And of course they did buy it, and we're incandescent

2294
02:16:28,520 --> 02:16:33,760
Speaker 1: with rage. What was she hoped was not for a strike.

2295
02:16:34,400 --> 02:16:37,560
Speaker 1: There's no mention of that at all in White Slavery

2296
02:16:37,600 --> 02:16:40,960
Speaker 1: in London, despite the fact she's been called a strike leader.

2297
02:16:41,560 --> 02:16:43,360
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the first things I was

2298
02:16:43,480 --> 02:16:47,120
Speaker 1: able to do, thanks to Brian to May, was to

2299
02:16:47,280 --> 02:16:52,280
Speaker 1: look at the initial the original article White Slavery in London,

2300
02:16:52,320 --> 02:16:54,240
Speaker 1: because it was in those boxes. I looked at in

2301
02:16:54,240 --> 02:16:56,240
Speaker 1: the archive and they'd ripped it out. It looked like

2302
02:16:56,280 --> 02:16:59,320
Speaker 1: it had been angrily ripped out of the paper it

2303
02:16:59,440 --> 02:17:03,199
Speaker 1: was and thrown into the archives. But I then looked

2304
02:17:03,240 --> 02:17:05,600
Speaker 1: at the whole edition of that paper in the newspaper

2305
02:17:05,720 --> 02:17:10,280
Speaker 1: library and it was quite illuminating. She's written a little

2306
02:17:10,320 --> 02:17:16,119
Speaker 1: bit further on about the idea of unionizing the casual poor,

2307
02:17:16,600 --> 02:17:19,040
Speaker 1: the very poor, the underclass women like this, and she

2308
02:17:19,240 --> 02:17:23,680
Speaker 1: actually said consider the women of Bryant Made that I

2309
02:17:23,760 --> 02:17:27,440
Speaker 1: wrote about in another column, and she's arguing against unionizing them.

2310
02:17:27,480 --> 02:17:30,320
Speaker 1: By the way, it would be impossible because if they

2311
02:17:30,480 --> 02:17:32,640
Speaker 1: tried to go on strike, they would just be sacked.

2312
02:17:32,800 --> 02:17:35,959
Speaker 1: And there's such high unemployment in this London that all

2313
02:17:36,040 --> 02:17:38,760
Speaker 1: their bosses are going to do is to hire someone else.

2314
02:17:38,959 --> 02:17:41,959
Speaker 1: It just wouldn't work. She's saying, it's not the way

2315
02:17:42,040 --> 02:17:43,920
Speaker 1: we do it, which is kind of interesting, isn't it

2316
02:17:44,120 --> 02:17:49,240
Speaker 1: a strike leader arguing against strikes. Well, you might think

2317
02:17:49,240 --> 02:17:51,760
Speaker 1: perhaps she's been tactical, she doesn't want the employers to

2318
02:17:51,840 --> 02:17:54,199
Speaker 1: know what she's up to. But in fact, the faber

2319
02:17:54,200 --> 02:17:59,000
Speaker 1: in society were really against strikes. M. George Bernard sure

2320
02:17:59,200 --> 02:18:02,120
Speaker 1: busterly complain about strikes and what they cost the economy.

2321
02:18:02,680 --> 02:18:07,680
Speaker 1: What they want, there's a much more respectable reform. They

2322
02:18:07,760 --> 02:18:13,320
Speaker 1: want the upper echelons of labor, the labor aristocracy as

2323
02:18:13,360 --> 02:18:15,840
Speaker 1: they're called then, to be the ones who are in

2324
02:18:15,920 --> 02:18:18,680
Speaker 1: trading is because you know they're they're proper people with

2325
02:18:18,840 --> 02:18:21,160
Speaker 1: top hats. They might be working class, but my goodness,

2326
02:18:21,160 --> 02:18:24,360
Speaker 1: at least they're decent people, not like these underclass proles.

2327
02:18:24,400 --> 02:18:26,800
Speaker 1: We don't really want anything to do with them. So

2328
02:18:27,440 --> 02:18:32,320
Speaker 1: she was absolutely typical of her class of socialists in

2329
02:18:32,480 --> 02:18:37,280
Speaker 1: suggesting that striking was a terrible mistake. So then Brian

2330
02:18:37,360 --> 02:18:40,040
Speaker 1: to May get this article and they are furious. But

2331
02:18:40,320 --> 02:18:42,880
Speaker 1: rather than what she thinks they're going to do, which

2332
02:18:42,959 --> 02:18:46,240
Speaker 1: is to sue her, and that's what she wants. She thinks, right,

2333
02:18:46,280 --> 02:18:48,959
Speaker 1: they'll sue me, I'll go to court and defend myself.

2334
02:18:49,080 --> 02:18:52,120
Speaker 1: She's done this before, and this gives me a forum.

2335
02:18:52,440 --> 02:18:55,680
Speaker 1: This will be reporting the papers forum for my message.

2336
02:18:55,680 --> 02:18:58,320
Speaker 1: I can then say these workers are being treated terribly

2337
02:18:58,640 --> 02:19:01,039
Speaker 1: and I can advise people to boycott brant to May.

2338
02:19:01,760 --> 02:19:04,360
Speaker 1: I think about that she's not talking to working class people.

2339
02:19:04,480 --> 02:19:07,560
Speaker 1: She's talking to consumers. That's middle class to middle class,

2340
02:19:07,720 --> 02:19:11,800
Speaker 1: over the heads of the workers. But in fact Brian

2341
02:19:11,879 --> 02:19:14,080
Speaker 1: to May threatened to see what they never do. They

2342
02:19:14,120 --> 02:19:16,040
Speaker 1: probably know they haven't got a leg to stand on. Actually,

2343
02:19:16,480 --> 02:19:20,440
Speaker 1: what they do is to gather together the workers, give

2344
02:19:20,520 --> 02:19:23,680
Speaker 1: them pre printed statesments which are laid around in every

2345
02:19:23,720 --> 02:19:27,040
Speaker 1: work for him by the foreman, which pre prepared and

2346
02:19:27,120 --> 02:19:29,280
Speaker 1: they say, you know, we love working for Brian to May.

2347
02:19:29,320 --> 02:19:32,199
Speaker 1: They're wonderful employers. We don't mind about the fossy journey.

2348
02:19:32,360 --> 02:19:35,080
Speaker 1: Didn't actually say that, but this is the idea. They're

2349
02:19:35,080 --> 02:19:38,680
Speaker 1: supposed to say this journalist has lied. Nothing she said

2350
02:19:38,800 --> 02:19:41,720
Speaker 1: is true. We couldn't be happier. And they know they'll

2351
02:19:41,760 --> 02:19:45,160
Speaker 1: be sacked if they don't sign those papers, and they

2352
02:19:45,280 --> 02:19:48,359
Speaker 1: need their jobs, they need them desperately, but they refuse.

2353
02:19:48,800 --> 02:19:51,000
Speaker 1: Every single one of these women, I'm so proud of them,

2354
02:19:51,760 --> 02:19:56,000
Speaker 1: refuses to sign. And when the foreman come back into

2355
02:19:56,080 --> 02:19:59,600
Speaker 1: the room, there are these blank sheets of paper and

2356
02:19:59,760 --> 02:20:04,320
Speaker 1: they absolutely livid. So what are the employers going to

2357
02:20:04,400 --> 02:20:06,960
Speaker 1: do next? While employers haven't been a trade unis, I

2358
02:20:06,959 --> 02:20:08,920
Speaker 1: can say they do the absolutely typical thing. And they

2359
02:20:09,000 --> 02:20:12,600
Speaker 1: pick on one young girl, one worker who's very popular

2360
02:20:12,760 --> 02:20:15,640
Speaker 1: with the others, and they sack her on a pretext.

2361
02:20:15,760 --> 02:20:18,800
Speaker 1: They're clever enough not to do it because they think

2362
02:20:18,879 --> 02:20:21,000
Speaker 1: she's one of the ones who's spoken to Lesson. But

2363
02:20:21,040 --> 02:20:23,880
Speaker 1: I think she probably is. They suck her and so

2364
02:20:24,080 --> 02:20:26,840
Speaker 1: she's not doing her work properly. How she goes now,

2365
02:20:27,120 --> 02:20:32,000
Speaker 1: talk about underestimating your workforce. As one the women laid

2366
02:20:32,040 --> 02:20:36,760
Speaker 1: down their tools, wipe their hands on their aprons, and

2367
02:20:37,080 --> 02:20:42,080
Speaker 1: stream out of these imposing gates of the fair Field

2368
02:20:42,160 --> 02:20:46,199
Speaker 1: Works Match factory, onto the fair Field Road and onto

2369
02:20:46,480 --> 02:20:50,000
Speaker 1: the Bow Road. What do they do then? Well, if

2370
02:20:50,080 --> 02:20:53,800
Speaker 1: they were these a political people who you know, weren't

2371
02:20:53,920 --> 02:20:57,320
Speaker 1: educated and didn't really realize what their conditions were or

2372
02:20:57,360 --> 02:20:59,680
Speaker 1: that they were being exploited. Well, what they're done. They

2373
02:20:59,680 --> 02:21:01,920
Speaker 1: would have was in gone all, BlimE me, Elisa, we've

2374
02:21:02,000 --> 02:21:04,600
Speaker 1: gone on strike by mistake. What shall we do now?

2375
02:21:04,680 --> 02:21:06,600
Speaker 1: What are we like? And I don't know, gone down

2376
02:21:06,640 --> 02:21:10,600
Speaker 1: the pub or something. But they didn't. They swung into action.

2377
02:21:11,240 --> 02:21:15,119
Speaker 1: They had an election there at the gates and they

2378
02:21:15,320 --> 02:21:21,520
Speaker 1: elected six women from all the major significant workshops within

2379
02:21:21,600 --> 02:21:24,120
Speaker 1: the factory, one from each to go back in and

2380
02:21:24,200 --> 02:21:26,840
Speaker 1: put their demands. So instantly they walked back in and

2381
02:21:26,920 --> 02:21:29,440
Speaker 1: they confront the directors. I can just imagine how this

2382
02:21:29,520 --> 02:21:33,800
Speaker 1: went down, and said, right, we'll come back, but only

2383
02:21:34,160 --> 02:21:37,200
Speaker 1: if you let us form a union. BlimE me. They

2384
02:21:37,240 --> 02:21:39,800
Speaker 1: were not bright and they were not expecting that, and

2385
02:21:39,879 --> 02:21:42,360
Speaker 1: they immediately widen their demands. I didn't just say we

2386
02:21:42,440 --> 02:21:45,279
Speaker 1: want that girl room, stated they said, we want a union.

2387
02:21:45,440 --> 02:21:47,320
Speaker 1: And I tell you another thing while we're here, we

2388
02:21:47,480 --> 02:21:49,960
Speaker 1: want a separate dining room to eat our dinners in

2389
02:21:50,040 --> 02:21:52,480
Speaker 1: to each our breading. Because they knew about Fossy Jewel

2390
02:21:53,720 --> 02:21:55,640
Speaker 1: Bright and May told them to do what I can

2391
02:21:55,760 --> 02:21:58,920
Speaker 1: imagine the language must have been pretty strong, because they

2392
02:21:58,959 --> 02:22:01,960
Speaker 1: would have been out rage How dare you you know?

2393
02:22:02,040 --> 02:22:05,520
Speaker 1: How dare you underclass women? How dare you tell us

2394
02:22:05,720 --> 02:22:09,000
Speaker 1: what to do? So back out the women go and

2395
02:22:09,080 --> 02:22:11,800
Speaker 1: they tell their colleagues, no, go, we're going to have

2396
02:22:11,920 --> 02:22:14,880
Speaker 1: to strike, and as everyone else comes on shift, they

2397
02:22:15,000 --> 02:22:18,439
Speaker 1: gradually pull all this workforce out. It's a huge workforce,

2398
02:22:18,520 --> 02:22:21,760
Speaker 1: by the way, we have four hundred people on strike

2399
02:22:21,959 --> 02:22:26,040
Speaker 1: by the end of the day. Now what do you do.

2400
02:22:26,480 --> 02:22:29,280
Speaker 1: You don't have access to the press, you don't have

2401
02:22:29,400 --> 02:22:32,320
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. I can tell you as a historian,

2402
02:22:32,400 --> 02:22:34,320
Speaker 1: we did not have those things in those days. So

2403
02:22:34,440 --> 02:22:37,320
Speaker 1: how on earth do you tell people that you're on strike?

2404
02:22:37,560 --> 02:22:40,760
Speaker 1: How on earth do you get strike funds? Well, surely

2405
02:22:40,840 --> 02:22:42,800
Speaker 1: that if Annye Bessel led the strike, she would have

2406
02:22:42,840 --> 02:22:47,000
Speaker 1: been there. No, she's nowhere to be seen. So what

2407
02:22:47,160 --> 02:22:51,320
Speaker 1: they do is rather wonderful. They march around the streets

2408
02:22:51,360 --> 02:22:54,560
Speaker 1: of the East End arm in arm On maths hundreds

2409
02:22:54,600 --> 02:22:59,440
Speaker 1: of them, and they sing very loudly and very rude

2410
02:22:59,480 --> 02:23:02,360
Speaker 1: I'm afraid songs about their employers and what they would

2411
02:23:02,400 --> 02:23:04,200
Speaker 1: like to do to their employers, which are not nice.

2412
02:23:04,240 --> 02:23:08,039
Speaker 1: Though is mentioned of hanging old Brian On a sour apple.

2413
02:23:08,200 --> 02:23:12,160
Speaker 1: Tree's absolutely suposed to the tune of John Brown's Body,

2414
02:23:12,200 --> 02:23:14,360
Speaker 1: which is so interesting, isn't it that they're using battle

2415
02:23:14,400 --> 02:23:17,560
Speaker 1: him if the Repubic. They're using that tune to sing

2416
02:23:17,680 --> 02:23:20,120
Speaker 1: their protests on which they've just made up on the spot.

2417
02:23:20,160 --> 02:23:22,640
Speaker 1: But you know, there's are women who like musical songs.

2418
02:23:22,720 --> 02:23:26,320
Speaker 1: They're they're very creative. They enjoy lyrics, and as they

2419
02:23:26,400 --> 02:23:30,119
Speaker 1: walk around people hear them, obviously, and this draws attention.

2420
02:23:30,240 --> 02:23:32,760
Speaker 1: People come out onto their balconists, they open their windows,

2421
02:23:32,840 --> 02:23:34,680
Speaker 1: they come out to their doors, and what earth are

2422
02:23:34,680 --> 02:23:37,920
Speaker 1: you lot doing? And they say, well, we're the match women,

2423
02:23:38,120 --> 02:23:40,760
Speaker 1: as you probably know, because they would have known. They

2424
02:23:40,840 --> 02:23:43,480
Speaker 1: all had very distinct styles. You could tell a much woman.

2425
02:23:44,160 --> 02:23:46,280
Speaker 1: And we're on stripe because our bodies are a bunch

2426
02:23:46,280 --> 02:23:49,720
Speaker 1: of bastards and they've sat one of us for talking

2427
02:23:49,760 --> 02:23:52,640
Speaker 1: to a journalist and they treat it supportingly anyway, And

2428
02:23:52,720 --> 02:23:54,800
Speaker 1: we're bullied by management and our wages are shopping and

2429
02:23:54,920 --> 02:23:57,840
Speaker 1: we're not having any more, and we're on strike. And

2430
02:23:58,040 --> 02:24:01,440
Speaker 1: so people threw down to them coins, whatever money they

2431
02:24:01,480 --> 02:24:03,760
Speaker 1: could get their hands on, and the women wore these

2432
02:24:03,920 --> 02:24:07,920
Speaker 1: long white aprons to cover their dresses. And they caught them.

2433
02:24:08,040 --> 02:24:11,600
Speaker 1: They helped them out and they caught these coins in

2434
02:24:12,040 --> 02:24:15,600
Speaker 1: their aprons and that was their first strike funds. It's

2435
02:24:15,680 --> 02:24:19,800
Speaker 1: really impressive. Then they held mass meetings on mile end Ways,

2436
02:24:19,840 --> 02:24:23,959
Speaker 1: traditionary place where people met, and they had speakers. People

2437
02:24:24,000 --> 02:24:27,320
Speaker 1: came along to hear them. Other trade unionst Lewis Lions,

2438
02:24:27,920 --> 02:24:32,119
Speaker 1: famous from the Jewish Taylor's Union of famously militant trade unionsts,

2439
02:24:32,160 --> 02:24:35,920
Speaker 1: came along and they really started to garner support. The

2440
02:24:36,080 --> 02:24:38,560
Speaker 1: Star newspaper sent down its journalists, who was, you know,

2441
02:24:38,680 --> 02:24:42,200
Speaker 1: most discombobulated by the site of poor women looking poor

2442
02:24:42,640 --> 02:24:45,080
Speaker 1: and also by the fact that they were in Telliger.

2443
02:24:45,200 --> 02:24:48,040
Speaker 1: This was a real shocker to the middle classes, just

2444
02:24:48,240 --> 02:24:50,640
Speaker 1: like to the MPs when they finally marched a parliament.

2445
02:24:50,680 --> 02:24:54,080
Speaker 1: This journalist is saying, what goodness is women actually quite eloquent,

2446
02:24:54,080 --> 02:24:57,240
Speaker 1: and they're actually expressing themselves quite politically, and they're saying,

2447
02:24:57,959 --> 02:25:00,480
Speaker 1: we are typical of working people who are treated like

2448
02:25:00,560 --> 02:25:02,240
Speaker 1: this and we can't put up with it anymore. They're

2449
02:25:02,320 --> 02:25:04,879
Speaker 1: really rather surprised. This is not what we've been told

2450
02:25:05,520 --> 02:25:08,560
Speaker 1: about the inhabitants of the Darkest East. They're supposed to

2451
02:25:08,640 --> 02:25:11,160
Speaker 1: be all savages, and animals. You know, savages is a

2452
02:25:11,360 --> 02:25:14,840
Speaker 1: term that it's literally used about them. So they carry

2453
02:25:14,879 --> 02:25:19,680
Speaker 1: on meeting and at one point Annie Bessent finally, finally,

2454
02:25:20,000 --> 02:25:22,560
Speaker 1: a couple of days on from this, enters the picture

2455
02:25:22,600 --> 02:25:25,320
Speaker 1: a bit weird for a supposed strike leader. And I

2456
02:25:25,400 --> 02:25:28,000
Speaker 1: looked at her journal and she says, well, I was

2457
02:25:28,080 --> 02:25:30,600
Speaker 1: working in my rooms in Fleet Street and I heard

2458
02:25:30,600 --> 02:25:32,880
Speaker 1: a commotion and I looked out of the window and

2459
02:25:32,920 --> 02:25:35,600
Speaker 1: there was just s gaggle of of you know, quite

2460
02:25:35,680 --> 02:25:39,879
Speaker 1: rough looking girls, hundred or so, and they were blocking

2461
02:25:39,920 --> 02:25:42,480
Speaker 1: the pavement. You know, my goodness, this is nice London.

2462
02:25:42,600 --> 02:25:44,920
Speaker 1: People are trying to walk past, and there's working class people.

2463
02:25:44,959 --> 02:25:46,640
Speaker 1: It's a bit of it. It's it's you know. It

2464
02:25:46,760 --> 02:25:49,600
Speaker 1: causes a bit of an uproar. So she sends a

2465
02:25:49,720 --> 02:25:52,600
Speaker 1: note down and basically says, who the hell are you now?

2466
02:25:52,680 --> 02:25:54,760
Speaker 1: That should put the kai bosh on the fact that

2467
02:25:54,840 --> 02:25:57,120
Speaker 1: she was a strike leader. You can't recognize a strike

2468
02:25:57,200 --> 02:26:00,040
Speaker 1: you can't recognize your strikers. And they said were the

2469
02:26:00,080 --> 02:26:04,240
Speaker 1: match women. She entertained a couple of them to tea.

2470
02:26:04,760 --> 02:26:06,400
Speaker 1: She wouldn't have them all up. We'll go down to

2471
02:26:06,560 --> 02:26:08,920
Speaker 1: them because they are they're not quite sure what the

2472
02:26:08,959 --> 02:26:11,520
Speaker 1: rebel is going to do, and she says they're quite respectable.

2473
02:26:12,000 --> 02:26:13,840
Speaker 1: And they tell her they're on strike, and she is

2474
02:26:13,879 --> 02:26:17,600
Speaker 1: not pleased. She writes in her political paper, the Link

2475
02:26:17,840 --> 02:26:20,400
Speaker 1: the match Women, the Revolt of the Matchmakers. The match

2476
02:26:20,480 --> 02:26:22,440
Speaker 1: women have gone on strike, but she says the girls

2477
02:26:22,560 --> 02:26:25,240
Speaker 1: will go back to work. In this huge ban of headline,

2478
02:26:25,240 --> 02:26:27,440
Speaker 1: they will go back to work. Desperately hoping they will,

2479
02:26:28,480 --> 02:26:30,520
Speaker 1: and she says, you know, this was so ridiculous that

2480
02:26:30,560 --> 02:26:32,200
Speaker 1: they went on strike. They should have let a few

2481
02:26:32,240 --> 02:26:34,920
Speaker 1: people be sacked. We could have afforded to support a

2482
02:26:35,000 --> 02:26:37,840
Speaker 1: few people. But my god, now we have fourteen hundred

2483
02:26:37,920 --> 02:26:40,080
Speaker 1: people on strike. What on earth are we going to

2484
02:26:40,160 --> 02:26:42,920
Speaker 1: do to feed them? Again? This is not the rhetoric

2485
02:26:43,000 --> 02:26:44,720
Speaker 1: of a strike leader. Is that she's supposed to know

2486
02:26:44,840 --> 02:26:46,880
Speaker 1: about this strike. She's supposed to have brought it about.

2487
02:26:47,400 --> 02:26:52,160
Speaker 1: Why hasn't she got funds in place? Women march to Parliament.

2488
02:26:52,200 --> 02:26:54,560
Speaker 1: There's a lot of public key that's really helps with that.

2489
02:26:54,760 --> 02:26:58,720
Speaker 1: She writes letters to the newspaper attacking Brian to make

2490
02:26:58,800 --> 02:27:01,840
Speaker 1: she writes to the Times, Times published her, they published

2491
02:27:01,879 --> 02:27:04,600
Speaker 1: Bryant and May's response, it's like tennis. It goes back

2492
02:27:04,640 --> 02:27:08,000
Speaker 1: and forth. Everyone's accusing everyone else and things the matter

2493
02:27:08,120 --> 02:27:10,520
Speaker 1: in march to Parliament and this is where people are

2494
02:27:10,560 --> 02:27:13,879
Speaker 1: so shocked to see these poor girls out of their

2495
02:27:13,959 --> 02:27:17,560
Speaker 1: area that they get shouted at, you know, can't stop

2496
02:27:17,600 --> 02:27:19,320
Speaker 1: in the streets. Things are thrown at them, what on

2497
02:27:19,400 --> 02:27:21,200
Speaker 1: earth are you doing? Get back to the East End.

2498
02:27:21,360 --> 02:27:23,520
Speaker 1: But they won't. They help, They hold their heads high,

2499
02:27:24,640 --> 02:27:28,320
Speaker 1: and when they're finally in with the MPs again this

2500
02:27:28,560 --> 02:27:32,920
Speaker 1: fascinating clash of classes. The MP's are probably never sat

2501
02:27:33,000 --> 02:27:35,840
Speaker 1: and talked to an Eastern woman on an equal basis

2502
02:27:35,959 --> 02:27:37,840
Speaker 1: or a working class woman. They might have talked to

2503
02:27:37,879 --> 02:27:41,160
Speaker 1: their own servants, but that's not an equal relationship. So

2504
02:27:42,280 --> 02:27:44,080
Speaker 1: when they're in the room, one of the girls, who's

2505
02:27:44,080 --> 02:27:47,800
Speaker 1: about twelve, takes off her bonnet and they see that

2506
02:27:47,920 --> 02:27:51,960
Speaker 1: she's balls completely bald on top of her head, and

2507
02:27:52,160 --> 02:27:54,880
Speaker 1: she says, can you see my head? I've been working

2508
02:27:55,000 --> 02:27:57,240
Speaker 1: for Brian and May since I was an infant, carrying

2509
02:27:57,320 --> 02:27:59,280
Speaker 1: palettes and matches on my head, and it's worn my

2510
02:27:59,400 --> 02:28:02,520
Speaker 1: hair away completely. Now this is brilliant because they've probably

2511
02:28:02,560 --> 02:28:05,320
Speaker 1: got young daughters about the same age with those beautiful

2512
02:28:05,400 --> 02:28:08,520
Speaker 1: Victorian ringulets, and this really hits them where they live.

2513
02:28:09,240 --> 02:28:11,560
Speaker 1: These reps have invested in Brian and May. This is

2514
02:28:11,640 --> 02:28:15,119
Speaker 1: all rather embarrassing, isn't it. Liberal MPs who were supposed

2515
02:28:15,120 --> 02:28:18,040
Speaker 1: to support the poor, and yet they're profiting off this.

2516
02:28:18,760 --> 02:28:21,120
Speaker 1: They tell them about fosse A jewel and the MPs

2517
02:28:21,200 --> 02:28:25,640
Speaker 1: are impressed that they're so intelligent and so eloquent. They

2518
02:28:25,879 --> 02:28:29,200
Speaker 1: start to swing on side, but brianton May fight a

2519
02:28:29,280 --> 02:28:32,200
Speaker 1: great rearguard action. A lot of the newspapers are on

2520
02:28:32,320 --> 02:28:36,200
Speaker 1: their side and saying, look at this disgraceful situation, these

2521
02:28:36,879 --> 02:28:41,000
Speaker 1: poor women and the worst sorts of people parading around

2522
02:28:41,040 --> 02:28:43,240
Speaker 1: the usea and I mean, how dare they It's disgraceful,

2523
02:28:43,240 --> 02:28:46,000
Speaker 1: They've got jobs. They should be grateful Brian to their gentlemen,

2524
02:28:46,120 --> 02:28:50,320
Speaker 1: all that rhetoric that we're so used to. But the

2525
02:28:50,480 --> 02:28:54,440
Speaker 1: tide starts to turn very quickly, because once the MPs

2526
02:28:54,760 --> 02:28:58,240
Speaker 1: are on side, respectable people are on side. They call

2527
02:28:58,440 --> 02:29:02,840
Speaker 1: for an independent investigation into conditions at the factory. And

2528
02:29:03,360 --> 02:29:08,320
Speaker 1: this investigation shows that what any bestness said wasn't quite right,

2529
02:29:09,160 --> 02:29:13,119
Speaker 1: because actually conditions are worse. Things are far far worse

2530
02:29:13,600 --> 02:29:18,000
Speaker 1: than she'd touched on in white slavery in London, Brian

2531
02:29:18,080 --> 02:29:21,440
Speaker 1: and they have nowhere to go at that point because

2532
02:29:21,520 --> 02:29:25,520
Speaker 1: their shareholders are coming to them and say, for God's say,

2533
02:29:25,560 --> 02:29:28,320
Speaker 1: you've got to do something about this. You know, share

2534
02:29:28,400 --> 02:29:32,120
Speaker 1: prices are dropping, that's capitalists do care about that, don't they.

2535
02:29:32,440 --> 02:29:34,520
Speaker 1: You're going to have to back down. The government are

2536
02:29:34,600 --> 02:29:38,400
Speaker 1: telling them that they do need to back down at

2537
02:29:38,440 --> 02:29:41,200
Speaker 1: this point. And they're so angry about It's so angry

2538
02:29:41,520 --> 02:29:43,959
Speaker 1: you can see it in the company archives. They're feeling

2539
02:29:44,000 --> 02:29:47,120
Speaker 1: about it absolutely decade whenever there's a mention of this type.

2540
02:29:47,760 --> 02:29:51,279
Speaker 1: But they have to climb down with the worst possible grace.

2541
02:29:51,879 --> 02:29:57,119
Speaker 1: You know, it's not Christmas Carol type scenario. They haven't

2542
02:29:57,160 --> 02:30:00,040
Speaker 1: been visited by ghosts and become nice Scrooge and in

2543
02:30:00,160 --> 02:30:03,119
Speaker 1: the error of their ways at all. They're forced into

2544
02:30:03,200 --> 02:30:07,320
Speaker 1: this as they see an undignified climbed down and within

2545
02:30:07,560 --> 02:30:10,800
Speaker 1: a little over two weeks they had to grant these

2546
02:30:10,879 --> 02:30:15,040
Speaker 1: women the right to form the largest union of women

2547
02:30:15,080 --> 02:30:19,600
Speaker 1: and girls in the entire country, and better rates of pay,

2548
02:30:20,160 --> 02:30:23,240
Speaker 1: and their separate dining room to eat in, and the

2549
02:30:23,400 --> 02:30:26,160
Speaker 1: right to take their grievances over the heads of the

2550
02:30:26,320 --> 02:30:31,000
Speaker 1: foremen to the directors. I love to think of how

2551
02:30:31,200 --> 02:30:34,760
Speaker 1: furiously piste off the foreman must have been about this,

2552
02:30:35,320 --> 02:30:37,240
Speaker 1: that the women could go sailing out of the room

2553
02:30:37,280 --> 02:30:39,360
Speaker 1: and say, sorry for it. I'm going to complain to

2554
02:30:39,440 --> 02:30:41,280
Speaker 1: the directors that don't like the way you're running things

2555
02:30:41,360 --> 02:30:45,080
Speaker 1: down here. It was a complete rebalancing of power, and

2556
02:30:45,160 --> 02:30:50,000
Speaker 1: they swept back victoriously into work and I would imagine

2557
02:30:50,000 --> 02:30:52,760
Speaker 1: they would have had their beautiful cats from their feather

2558
02:30:52,840 --> 02:30:58,480
Speaker 1: clubs as they did. So, absolutely victorious, absolutely unexpected. Nobody

2559
02:30:58,600 --> 02:31:01,080
Speaker 1: expected that was going to be the upcome. Not the

2560
02:31:01,160 --> 02:31:03,520
Speaker 1: first strike by women, by the way, not even by

2561
02:31:03,640 --> 02:31:06,160
Speaker 1: these women. They've been on strike before. It was the

2562
02:31:06,240 --> 02:31:09,600
Speaker 1: only weapon that very poor people had but to win,

2563
02:31:10,400 --> 02:31:13,119
Speaker 1: and to win against one of the most powerful employers

2564
02:31:13,200 --> 02:31:21,120
Speaker 1: in the country was absolutely unprecedented, brilliant. So um, the

2565
02:31:21,240 --> 02:31:26,160
Speaker 1: strike was June, right, yeah, second in July, I think

2566
02:31:26,200 --> 02:31:29,959
Speaker 1: it started, Yes, it did, okay, okay, So the peace

2567
02:31:30,000 --> 02:31:32,360
Speaker 1: white slavery in London that came out in June, and

2568
02:31:32,440 --> 02:31:34,200
Speaker 1: then there was just this little bit of build up,

2569
02:31:34,480 --> 02:31:39,599
Speaker 1: right um. So of course, then in this season of Unobscured,

2570
02:31:40,240 --> 02:31:46,800
Speaker 1: we are following the murders in Whitechapel investigation and we're

2571
02:31:46,840 --> 02:31:48,880
Speaker 1: really going to be looking at you know, what the

2572
02:31:48,959 --> 02:31:53,920
Speaker 1: police were doing and the tourism on Hanbury Street, you know,

2573
02:31:54,040 --> 02:31:56,880
Speaker 1: starting with any Chapman's murder, that kind of thing, and

2574
02:31:57,000 --> 02:32:02,640
Speaker 1: all of that is in the months after the September um.

2575
02:32:03,040 --> 02:32:06,400
Speaker 1: But at the beginning of October, no kind of the

2576
02:32:06,440 --> 02:32:10,480
Speaker 1: middle of October um that that radical newspaper The Star

2577
02:32:11,320 --> 02:32:15,600
Speaker 1: reports that Briant and May have received a letter signed

2578
02:32:15,920 --> 02:32:20,400
Speaker 1: signed by the Ripper. Um. Do you have the text

2579
02:32:20,440 --> 02:32:24,080
Speaker 1: of it there? Do ared you be willing to read

2580
02:32:24,120 --> 02:32:26,640
Speaker 1: that for us? And then? And then and then tell

2581
02:32:26,720 --> 02:32:31,520
Speaker 1: us what does that letter reveal to us about how

2582
02:32:31,640 --> 02:32:36,040
Speaker 1: working women who lived across the East End we're experiencing

2583
02:32:37,400 --> 02:32:40,080
Speaker 1: the panic that fall, which some writers have called the

2584
02:32:40,160 --> 02:32:44,680
Speaker 1: Autumn of terror. How would that have been felt by

2585
02:32:44,800 --> 02:32:49,040
Speaker 1: the people whose neighborhoods this was. It's so interesting and

2586
02:32:49,120 --> 02:32:54,240
Speaker 1: it's so revealing. So we hear from the newspaper. Intimation

2587
02:32:54,400 --> 02:32:57,440
Speaker 1: was given to the city police on Saturday morning that

2588
02:32:57,680 --> 02:33:02,039
Speaker 1: Messrs Brianton May had received a better signed j Ripper

2589
02:33:02,879 --> 02:33:07,600
Speaker 1: and couched in the following terms. I hereby notify you

2590
02:33:07,720 --> 02:33:10,680
Speaker 1: that I'm going to pay your girls a visit. I

2591
02:33:10,879 --> 02:33:13,040
Speaker 1: hear they are beginning to say what they will do

2592
02:33:13,200 --> 02:33:16,280
Speaker 1: with me. I'm going to see what a few of

2593
02:33:16,320 --> 02:33:19,880
Speaker 1: them have in their stomachs, and I will take it

2594
02:33:20,000 --> 02:33:22,160
Speaker 1: out of them so that they will have no more

2595
02:33:22,280 --> 02:33:26,960
Speaker 1: to do on the quiet, Signed John Ripper, p S.

2596
02:33:27,120 --> 02:33:31,879
Speaker 1: I am in Popular today. Well, it's an incredible letter,

2597
02:33:32,440 --> 02:33:34,840
Speaker 1: whether or not it was a hoax, what it says

2598
02:33:35,240 --> 02:33:38,080
Speaker 1: is so revealing even a few lines if we break

2599
02:33:38,120 --> 02:33:42,760
Speaker 1: it down. So this person says the reason is going

2600
02:33:42,840 --> 02:33:45,840
Speaker 1: to attack the match women? Is I hear they are

2601
02:33:45,879 --> 02:33:48,400
Speaker 1: beginning to say what they will do with me? Well,

2602
02:33:48,480 --> 02:33:51,480
Speaker 1: what does that mean? That means that the match women,

2603
02:33:52,320 --> 02:33:57,440
Speaker 1: rather than being understandably terrified that there is a killers

2604
02:33:57,480 --> 02:34:01,800
Speaker 1: talking their streets, are furious because what this means they're

2605
02:34:01,800 --> 02:34:03,720
Speaker 1: going to say what they will do with me? They're

2606
02:34:03,760 --> 02:34:07,160
Speaker 1: presumably saying, right, we're going to find that bastard, wait

2607
02:34:07,280 --> 02:34:10,400
Speaker 1: till we get our hands on him. They are threatening

2608
02:34:10,560 --> 02:34:13,840
Speaker 1: the Ripper, basically, and there weren't the only ones doing that.

2609
02:34:13,879 --> 02:34:17,000
Speaker 1: Of course, there were vigilante commitsteers who are going around

2610
02:34:17,160 --> 02:34:19,199
Speaker 1: trying to keep an eye on the Ripper. It would

2611
02:34:19,200 --> 02:34:22,520
Speaker 1: be fascinating to know whether the match were men were

2612
02:34:22,600 --> 02:34:25,960
Speaker 1: doing that themselves. I love to think of them parading

2613
02:34:26,040 --> 02:34:28,640
Speaker 1: the back alleys of White Chapel with that happens at

2614
02:34:28,680 --> 02:34:33,039
Speaker 1: the ready just in case. But that's what he's retaliating against.

2615
02:34:33,160 --> 02:34:36,280
Speaker 1: They're threatening him. And then of course he issues his

2616
02:34:36,480 --> 02:34:39,320
Speaker 1: disgusting threat and says they will have no more to

2617
02:34:39,440 --> 02:34:43,080
Speaker 1: do on the choir. And that is about prostitution. So

2618
02:34:43,360 --> 02:34:47,000
Speaker 1: whoever this is is implying that as working girls, they're

2619
02:34:47,080 --> 02:34:50,640
Speaker 1: also doing things on the quiet. They are also engaging

2620
02:34:50,840 --> 02:34:55,480
Speaker 1: in sex work or prostitution. So for just a few lines,

2621
02:34:55,760 --> 02:34:58,400
Speaker 1: it really tells us a lot. Now we know people

2622
02:34:58,480 --> 02:35:00,800
Speaker 1: were scared. Of course they were scared. We know that

2623
02:35:00,920 --> 02:35:06,600
Speaker 1: women working in prostitution were trying to get into workhouses overnight,

2624
02:35:06,680 --> 02:35:10,240
Speaker 1: and that was unusual. The poor fear the workhouses like

2625
02:35:10,480 --> 02:35:14,480
Speaker 1: nothing else. That was the real nightmare scenario was being

2626
02:35:14,600 --> 02:35:18,760
Speaker 1: placed in a workhouse, awful conditions. If you had children,

2627
02:35:18,879 --> 02:35:21,520
Speaker 1: you were separated from them. It was really really brutal.

2628
02:35:22,400 --> 02:35:25,440
Speaker 1: But for once they're thinking they are safer off the streets,

2629
02:35:26,120 --> 02:35:28,840
Speaker 1: but not the match women, and I would bet not

2630
02:35:29,160 --> 02:35:32,360
Speaker 1: all women either, because the sad truth of it is,

2631
02:35:32,560 --> 02:35:37,600
Speaker 1: although this these murders, this murderer gets so taken up

2632
02:35:37,640 --> 02:35:41,560
Speaker 1: by the press and get so sensationalized. People killing women

2633
02:35:41,840 --> 02:35:46,200
Speaker 1: is nothing new in the East End. People killing prostituted

2634
02:35:46,240 --> 02:35:49,040
Speaker 1: women is nothing new in the East End. Had it

2635
02:35:49,200 --> 02:35:54,720
Speaker 1: not been so dramatized and sensationalized, perhaps they wouldn't would

2636
02:35:54,840 --> 02:35:59,320
Speaker 1: scarcely have known what was happening. But certainly two people

2637
02:35:59,400 --> 02:36:01,240
Speaker 1: like the match him and this was just a sense

2638
02:36:01,320 --> 02:36:04,560
Speaker 1: of outrage. These are our streets, this is our manner.

2639
02:36:04,920 --> 02:36:09,320
Speaker 1: How dare some bloke come on to our manner and

2640
02:36:09,520 --> 02:36:13,600
Speaker 1: behave like this? Two women like us to Eastern women

2641
02:36:13,680 --> 02:36:16,640
Speaker 1: and girls, they're absolutely outrage and I think that's tells

2642
02:36:16,760 --> 02:36:21,720
Speaker 1: us an awful lot about their spirit. M hm hm, brilliant.

2643
02:36:22,320 --> 02:36:28,440
Speaker 1: Do we actually know any details about the lives of, um,

2644
02:36:29,040 --> 02:36:32,640
Speaker 1: some of the girls like Mary Driscoll, Martha Robinson in

2645
02:36:32,760 --> 02:36:36,600
Speaker 1: those months after the strike while these things were happening, Um,

2646
02:36:37,120 --> 02:36:40,080
Speaker 1: what were the first few months of you know, union

2647
02:36:40,560 --> 02:36:45,400
Speaker 1: life like? Yeah, the union was really active and they

2648
02:36:45,560 --> 02:36:50,320
Speaker 1: were probably more concerned and busy with that than they

2649
02:36:50,400 --> 02:36:53,080
Speaker 1: would have been worrying about the rip. I'm not saying

2650
02:36:53,120 --> 02:36:55,760
Speaker 1: they didn't worry. I'm sure when they walked down the

2651
02:36:55,800 --> 02:36:59,200
Speaker 1: streets at night they were concerned. But you see, they

2652
02:36:59,280 --> 02:37:02,680
Speaker 1: were always in danger the Eastern was never a safe

2653
02:37:02,959 --> 02:37:05,200
Speaker 1: space if you were a working class women, so they

2654
02:37:05,240 --> 02:37:08,800
Speaker 1: always traveled in gangs. Middle classes hated this because there

2655
02:37:08,840 --> 02:37:11,280
Speaker 1: were noisy gangs, and they were disrespectful gangs, and they

2656
02:37:11,320 --> 02:37:14,160
Speaker 1: would be singing and they would be using terrible language,

2657
02:37:14,200 --> 02:37:16,680
Speaker 1: and people would get their kids off the street when

2658
02:37:16,800 --> 02:37:18,760
Speaker 1: all the match women are coming off shift. Come along,

2659
02:37:18,800 --> 02:37:21,840
Speaker 1: deer inside inside, stop your ears. These vile women are

2660
02:37:21,879 --> 02:37:23,800
Speaker 1: out in the streets being being a bit rough and

2661
02:37:23,879 --> 02:37:26,640
Speaker 1: working class. So they always did that. They were really

2662
02:37:26,840 --> 02:37:30,640
Speaker 1: used to taking precautions, so probably life didn't change that

2663
02:37:30,800 --> 02:37:33,640
Speaker 1: much for them, and you always had someone in a family.

2664
02:37:34,000 --> 02:37:35,920
Speaker 1: All the women had to learn to fight, you know,

2665
02:37:36,040 --> 02:37:38,560
Speaker 1: not just because they were horrible violent people, because you

2666
02:37:38,680 --> 02:37:41,760
Speaker 1: had to. There were always people trying to grab you

2667
02:37:41,879 --> 02:37:44,560
Speaker 1: down a you know, drag you down a dark alley,

2668
02:37:44,640 --> 02:37:46,760
Speaker 1: and those were often people from outside the area who

2669
02:37:46,800 --> 02:37:49,120
Speaker 1: would come in and people would be raped, children would

2670
02:37:49,200 --> 02:37:51,960
Speaker 1: would be kidnapped. Their awful things used to happen in

2671
02:37:52,000 --> 02:37:55,680
Speaker 1: those dark streets, so they had to defend themselves. And

2672
02:37:55,760 --> 02:37:58,000
Speaker 1: there was a wonderful story I got from one of

2673
02:37:58,120 --> 02:38:01,560
Speaker 1: the descendants about how how good the women were at forcing,

2674
02:38:01,640 --> 02:38:07,119
Speaker 1: which really illustrates the fact that outsiders, like posh outsiders

2675
02:38:07,160 --> 02:38:10,360
Speaker 1: were really noticed in the Eastern as well. And he

2676
02:38:10,760 --> 02:38:14,480
Speaker 1: told this story about one of his relatives being in

2677
02:38:15,120 --> 02:38:16,560
Speaker 1: a book is. I think it was one of his

2678
02:38:16,680 --> 02:38:18,680
Speaker 1: great antswers in the book is one day lining up

2679
02:38:18,720 --> 02:38:23,480
Speaker 1: to place her bet and behind her incomes a top

2680
02:38:23,600 --> 02:38:26,240
Speaker 1: with a top hat, a rich guy for some reasons

2681
02:38:26,280 --> 02:38:30,520
Speaker 1: in the area and stands behind her to place his bet.

2682
02:38:31,080 --> 02:38:32,920
Speaker 1: And some of the local lads who are in there

2683
02:38:33,000 --> 02:38:36,560
Speaker 1: think this is an opportunity here for a bit of mischiefs.

2684
02:38:36,959 --> 02:38:41,240
Speaker 1: So they reached around said top and they pinch aunt

2685
02:38:41,400 --> 02:38:45,160
Speaker 1: his bottom. Now, she does not ask any questions at

2686
02:38:45,200 --> 02:38:47,760
Speaker 1: this point, by the way, she just wheels round, leading

2687
02:38:47,800 --> 02:38:51,920
Speaker 1: with her fist and knocks the bloke out with one punch.

2688
02:38:52,040 --> 02:38:55,560
Speaker 1: So one good right hook and this port off top hat,

2689
02:38:55,680 --> 02:38:58,840
Speaker 1: doubtless flying across the blacks floor is spark out on

2690
02:38:58,920 --> 02:39:01,760
Speaker 1: the floor. So that tells you how violent, you know,

2691
02:39:01,840 --> 02:39:03,840
Speaker 1: how dangerous life was for women. They had to be

2692
02:39:03,920 --> 02:39:07,680
Speaker 1: prepared to come out fighting and no questions asked. So

2693
02:39:08,520 --> 02:39:10,680
Speaker 1: I think in that respect they would have been much

2694
02:39:10,840 --> 02:39:13,720
Speaker 1: more careful, but they were always used to being careful.

2695
02:39:13,760 --> 02:39:16,440
Speaker 1: They were always used to being on their guard and

2696
02:39:16,600 --> 02:39:20,000
Speaker 1: to not being particularly safe in their own streets. And

2697
02:39:20,120 --> 02:39:22,600
Speaker 1: the union was so busy because you said they didn't

2698
02:39:22,640 --> 02:39:26,160
Speaker 1: rest on their laurels. If they hadn't been involved in

2699
02:39:26,200 --> 02:39:28,800
Speaker 1: their own strike, if they had been passive puppets, you

2700
02:39:28,920 --> 02:39:30,960
Speaker 1: imagine they would have just thought, well, we've done it.

2701
02:39:31,080 --> 02:39:32,960
Speaker 1: Now we've got a union, we've done really well. Life

2702
02:39:33,040 --> 02:39:37,920
Speaker 1: goes on. But actually they didn't. They kept unionizing. They

2703
02:39:38,080 --> 02:39:41,480
Speaker 1: kept taking the message to other groups of workers. So

2704
02:39:41,640 --> 02:39:45,520
Speaker 1: the girls that worked in nearby confectionary factors, the sweetie

2705
02:39:45,560 --> 02:39:50,640
Speaker 1: girls who worked in jam factories, the wives of eastern dockers,

2706
02:39:50,879 --> 02:39:54,400
Speaker 1: they were constantly having meetings and trying to unionize them

2707
02:39:54,480 --> 02:39:58,600
Speaker 1: as well. And there's a really amusing account from one

2708
02:39:58,680 --> 02:40:02,480
Speaker 1: of the lead weeks of with the class women, philanthropic

2709
02:40:02,520 --> 02:40:06,320
Speaker 1: women who were trying to organize working class women but

2710
02:40:06,400 --> 02:40:09,360
Speaker 1: in a bit of a middle class top down where

2711
02:40:09,360 --> 02:40:12,600
Speaker 1: we didn't always go down very well with the women themselves.

2712
02:40:13,000 --> 02:40:15,519
Speaker 1: But they recorded at the time that they were absolutely

2713
02:40:15,600 --> 02:40:18,960
Speaker 1: worn out with these match women because they kept coming

2714
02:40:19,000 --> 02:40:21,440
Speaker 1: to them as saying, all right, um, we want you

2715
02:40:21,480 --> 02:40:23,760
Speaker 1: to help us, because we want to have another union meeting.

2716
02:40:23,840 --> 02:40:26,880
Speaker 1: Please with the jam factory girls, and we'd like you

2717
02:40:26,959 --> 02:40:29,040
Speaker 1: to help us find a venue please, and then we

2718
02:40:29,080 --> 02:40:31,560
Speaker 1: would like tea and cakes, and we would like some

2719
02:40:31,640 --> 02:40:34,240
Speaker 1: Irish music. And they were like, oh my god, you know,

2720
02:40:34,280 --> 02:40:36,080
Speaker 1: I've got to try and find an Irish musician. How

2721
02:40:36,160 --> 02:40:39,440
Speaker 1: its short noticed, But I love this idea of a

2722
02:40:39,600 --> 02:40:42,920
Speaker 1: union meeting that involves tea and cach and Irish dancing.

2723
02:40:43,080 --> 02:40:46,199
Speaker 1: How fantastic. And I have a little match Wents festival

2724
02:40:46,320 --> 02:40:48,840
Speaker 1: every year right close to their old factory and bow

2725
02:40:49,000 --> 02:40:51,960
Speaker 1: and I have music and tea and well not so

2726
02:40:52,080 --> 02:40:54,240
Speaker 1: much tea and cakes as gin, but anyway, I like

2727
02:40:54,360 --> 02:40:57,040
Speaker 1: to think it's very much in the spirit of the

2728
02:40:57,120 --> 02:41:01,360
Speaker 1: match women. So they were incredibly busy unionizing, you know,

2729
02:41:01,440 --> 02:41:03,840
Speaker 1: they weren't messing about. And it's so interesting that they

2730
02:41:03,920 --> 02:41:07,480
Speaker 1: took this message to the dockers as well. Now, the

2731
02:41:07,600 --> 02:41:13,880
Speaker 1: big Great dock Strike of nine has traditionally been what

2732
02:41:14,160 --> 02:41:17,240
Speaker 1: historians of the labor movement, the union movement looked to

2733
02:41:17,600 --> 02:41:20,640
Speaker 1: as a big starting event, very important. This is where

2734
02:41:20,720 --> 02:41:24,880
Speaker 1: modern trade Juanism, that is, trade unism with a political

2735
02:41:24,959 --> 02:41:27,720
Speaker 1: objective to liberate the working class really as opposed to

2736
02:41:27,879 --> 02:41:32,360
Speaker 1: just sort of boys club really that the previous unions

2737
02:41:32,400 --> 02:41:36,519
Speaker 1: were to keep people out of the profession, to organize apprenticeships,

2738
02:41:36,560 --> 02:41:38,440
Speaker 1: to keep your own labor price high. This is a

2739
02:41:38,600 --> 02:41:42,959
Speaker 1: very different thing when trade Juanism, and it's been dated

2740
02:41:43,080 --> 02:41:47,400
Speaker 1: from the dock strike, and historians, those historians have even

2741
02:41:47,480 --> 02:41:49,440
Speaker 1: bothered to write about the match women in a line

2742
02:41:49,520 --> 02:41:52,199
Speaker 1: or two have said, well, this was just a vague,

2743
02:41:52,240 --> 02:41:56,280
Speaker 1: sort of minor harbinger of the dock strike. And you think,

2744
02:41:56,320 --> 02:41:59,400
Speaker 1: what does that mean exactly if it happened first, is

2745
02:41:59,440 --> 02:42:02,200
Speaker 1: it not part the same movement but the start of it?

2746
02:42:02,440 --> 02:42:04,760
Speaker 1: Would you not think that I've had his story. Say

2747
02:42:04,760 --> 02:42:08,400
Speaker 1: to me, Olouise, you're really failing to understand the way

2748
02:42:08,440 --> 02:42:10,480
Speaker 1: this work. As I'm standing, come from a trade union background,

2749
02:42:10,520 --> 02:42:12,560
Speaker 1: are not real an academic, but now this is not

2750
02:42:12,720 --> 02:42:15,120
Speaker 1: really the way this happens a dock strike. These were

2751
02:42:15,160 --> 02:42:18,720
Speaker 1: just girls dock strikes far more important. Well, I went back,

2752
02:42:19,040 --> 02:42:23,040
Speaker 1: in my sort of nerdy peeky way and started those

2753
02:42:23,160 --> 02:42:28,680
Speaker 1: months after the match from strike really intensely, really really intensely.

2754
02:42:29,000 --> 02:42:34,440
Speaker 1: I got out the record of incidents of strikes, which

2755
02:42:34,520 --> 02:42:37,720
Speaker 1: were recorded for like every week after the match from

2756
02:42:37,760 --> 02:42:39,800
Speaker 1: his strike and every week before. I looked at the

2757
02:42:40,280 --> 02:42:42,560
Speaker 1: years and years of this stuff, and I found that

2758
02:42:42,680 --> 02:42:46,879
Speaker 1: strikes shut up, shut up right after the match from

2759
02:42:46,879 --> 02:42:49,000
Speaker 1: a strike. And there's no other way to explain it,

2760
02:42:49,040 --> 02:42:51,080
Speaker 1: because I looked. I went right back and looked at

2761
02:42:51,160 --> 02:42:54,600
Speaker 1: averages and years. Everyone in the East End is going

2762
02:42:54,640 --> 02:42:58,480
Speaker 1: on strike. The tailors, the seamstresses, you know, the jam factories,

2763
02:42:58,520 --> 02:43:01,840
Speaker 1: the furblous everyone's going on strike, you know, because working

2764
02:43:01,879 --> 02:43:05,039
Speaker 1: people aren't stupid. They see an example here. Oh look,

2765
02:43:05,200 --> 02:43:08,640
Speaker 1: they are workers like us. They're supposed to be powerless, blimy.

2766
02:43:09,000 --> 02:43:11,680
Speaker 1: They're now trade union leaders and they've got better conditions.

2767
02:43:11,720 --> 02:43:14,080
Speaker 1: You know, how dumb do we think working people are?

2768
02:43:14,640 --> 02:43:17,000
Speaker 1: But this would be lost on them. Of course, it

2769
02:43:17,160 --> 02:43:20,600
Speaker 1: wasn't lost on them and the doctors union we find

2770
02:43:21,680 --> 02:43:24,760
Speaker 1: go to the matchments Union and they say, can you

2771
02:43:24,920 --> 02:43:28,000
Speaker 1: help us? Basically, can you help us? So so far

2772
02:43:28,160 --> 02:43:30,600
Speaker 1: from what historians have said, Oh, these are two totally

2773
02:43:30,680 --> 02:43:34,240
Speaker 1: different groups of workers. There's no connection, and there's a year,

2774
02:43:34,400 --> 02:43:36,720
Speaker 1: by the way between the strikes, so it can't have

2775
02:43:36,920 --> 02:43:39,560
Speaker 1: any cart of be inspired by the match froom. Actually

2776
02:43:39,640 --> 02:43:43,080
Speaker 1: they try to strike in the autumn. That was totally

2777
02:43:43,160 --> 02:43:46,080
Speaker 1: inspired by the match women who said so the leaders

2778
02:43:46,120 --> 02:43:49,240
Speaker 1: of the Dockers unions said so themselves. You know, their

2779
02:43:49,520 --> 02:43:52,160
Speaker 1: people came to speak to us. We tried to strike.

2780
02:43:52,520 --> 02:43:56,720
Speaker 1: It wasn't successful, but it was a rehearsal for nine.

2781
02:43:57,160 --> 02:44:00,600
Speaker 1: In eighteen eight nine, they pulled this strike off big time.

2782
02:44:00,680 --> 02:44:04,240
Speaker 1: It was a humongous strike that spread to become almost

2783
02:44:04,280 --> 02:44:07,800
Speaker 1: a general strike really, and spread to other countries as well.

2784
02:44:07,840 --> 02:44:11,480
Speaker 1: They had support from other countries. The whole of London

2785
02:44:11,680 --> 02:44:14,000
Speaker 1: was almost doubt. It was like a city of the dead,

2786
02:44:14,320 --> 02:44:18,600
Speaker 1: because in those days you could take what's called second reaction.

2787
02:44:18,959 --> 02:44:21,240
Speaker 1: So if someone comes out and strike, you can do

2788
02:44:21,320 --> 02:44:23,520
Speaker 1: a secondary strike. You can come out and strike to

2789
02:44:23,520 --> 02:44:26,320
Speaker 1: support them. I'm old enough to just about remember those

2790
02:44:26,440 --> 02:44:28,720
Speaker 1: petty days and you can still do that. You can't now.

2791
02:44:29,440 --> 02:44:32,200
Speaker 1: So everyone came out and supported them, including match women,

2792
02:44:32,360 --> 02:44:34,720
Speaker 1: by the way, came out and strike and supported them.

2793
02:44:35,440 --> 02:44:39,200
Speaker 1: Now can we prove though, that Dockers were inspired by

2794
02:44:39,280 --> 02:44:42,760
Speaker 1: match women when all the mainly manly historians have said

2795
02:44:42,800 --> 02:44:46,040
Speaker 1: they definitely weren't. Well, apart from the fact that I

2796
02:44:46,200 --> 02:44:49,400
Speaker 1: looked at census records, voy did I look at census records.

2797
02:44:49,400 --> 02:44:53,680
Speaker 1: I haunted those censors offices, and Mattalin and Dockers are

2798
02:44:54,200 --> 02:44:57,360
Speaker 1: so much the same people. Practically. Jim Best, one of

2799
02:44:57,400 --> 02:45:00,280
Speaker 1: the descendants I've talked you, said, no, they're the same people.

2800
02:45:00,360 --> 02:45:04,039
Speaker 1: There's no separation between these people. Matched were married doctors,

2801
02:45:04,879 --> 02:45:07,400
Speaker 1: matched women and the mothers of offers. The sisters are offers,

2802
02:45:07,400 --> 02:45:10,200
Speaker 1: they're friends of doctors. You know, working people do inspire

2803
02:45:10,240 --> 02:45:14,400
Speaker 1: each other. They do talk, of course, and this strike

2804
02:45:14,840 --> 02:45:18,680
Speaker 1: is unquestionably a huge event, but it's unsuccessful at first.

2805
02:45:18,760 --> 02:45:22,480
Speaker 1: The Dot company really fight back and John Burns, one

2806
02:45:22,560 --> 02:45:25,600
Speaker 1: of the key leaders who goes on to bring MP says,

2807
02:45:25,720 --> 02:45:27,960
Speaker 1: drough the strike to a mass meeting of hundreds of

2808
02:45:28,040 --> 02:45:32,480
Speaker 1: thousands of men. Don't give up, stand shoulder to shoulder.

2809
02:45:32,959 --> 02:45:37,080
Speaker 1: Remember the match girls who won their fight and formed

2810
02:45:37,200 --> 02:45:40,240
Speaker 1: a union? Well, I mean wow. And he says that

2811
02:45:40,320 --> 02:45:43,080
Speaker 1: kind of thing constantly. By the way, he doesn't say, oh,

2812
02:45:43,320 --> 02:45:45,320
Speaker 1: some match women. You probably haven't heard of them. They

2813
02:45:45,360 --> 02:45:47,880
Speaker 1: were from Brian to May, down the road. They apparently

2814
02:45:47,920 --> 02:45:49,960
Speaker 1: had a strike, he says, the match girls, and he

2815
02:45:50,080 --> 02:45:53,760
Speaker 1: knows everyone knows. Hundreds of thousands of men listening, they

2816
02:45:53,840 --> 02:45:56,120
Speaker 1: all know damn well who the match were. Enough, that's

2817
02:45:56,160 --> 02:45:59,240
Speaker 1: how inspiring they are. When the leaders wrote their memoirs,

2818
02:45:59,320 --> 02:46:01,160
Speaker 1: they said things like it was the match women that

2819
02:46:01,320 --> 02:46:05,039
Speaker 1: started it. They they were the first signs, They were

2820
02:46:05,080 --> 02:46:07,959
Speaker 1: the first encouragement, the first inspiration. They were the start

2821
02:46:08,000 --> 02:46:11,040
Speaker 1: of new unions. And what more do you need than that?

2822
02:46:11,440 --> 02:46:15,120
Speaker 1: And yet historians have seen that presumably if I can

2823
02:46:15,200 --> 02:46:17,800
Speaker 1: find it, you can find it, and just missed it

2824
02:46:18,040 --> 02:46:21,280
Speaker 1: and said no, no, no, no, match girls not really important.

2825
02:46:22,400 --> 02:46:25,560
Speaker 1: Two different from the doctors, wouldn't have influenced them. Too

2826
02:46:25,680 --> 02:46:28,720
Speaker 1: distant a year apart. Absolutely, the two strikes had nothing

2827
02:46:28,760 --> 02:46:30,959
Speaker 1: to do with each other. And when you look at

2828
02:46:30,959 --> 02:46:36,520
Speaker 1: all the evidence, that is absolutely extraordinary. So yes, long

2829
02:46:36,680 --> 02:46:40,680
Speaker 1: story short, the match women weren't really busy throughout all

2830
02:46:40,760 --> 02:46:43,680
Speaker 1: that time. They came out on strike to support the doctors,

2831
02:46:43,720 --> 02:46:46,640
Speaker 1: as I've said, but also as doctors wise, they were

2832
02:46:46,720 --> 02:46:50,840
Speaker 1: involved in rent strikes. Rent strikes really incredibly powerful weapon

2833
02:46:50,920 --> 02:46:54,520
Speaker 1: that women often employed, actually employed a great effect. And

2834
02:46:54,680 --> 02:46:57,840
Speaker 1: they strung a banner I presume made of sheets. I

2835
02:46:57,879 --> 02:46:59,800
Speaker 1: don't know how else they would have done it across

2836
02:46:59,879 --> 02:47:04,520
Speaker 1: the commercial road and they said, our husbands are on strike.

2837
02:47:05,200 --> 02:47:08,160
Speaker 1: For us wives, it is not honey, So we do

2838
02:47:08,320 --> 02:47:11,400
Speaker 1: not think that it is right to give the landlords money.

2839
02:47:11,959 --> 02:47:15,120
Speaker 1: In other words, tough lads, you can whistle for your rents.

2840
02:47:15,600 --> 02:47:20,039
Speaker 1: You're getting nothing until this strike is settled. So yes,

2841
02:47:20,160 --> 02:47:21,760
Speaker 1: there was one hell of a lot more going on

2842
02:47:22,080 --> 02:47:26,200
Speaker 1: in this period than one, you know, inadequate psychopath murdering women.

2843
02:47:28,440 --> 02:47:33,360
Speaker 1: M And you mentioned that this was the beginning of

2844
02:47:33,480 --> 02:47:38,480
Speaker 1: this new unionism in Britain. Um, what ended up being

2845
02:47:38,560 --> 02:47:43,520
Speaker 1: the fruits of this period of unionism? What did it?

2846
02:47:43,760 --> 02:47:47,520
Speaker 1: What did it bring? What did it result in in Britain?

2847
02:47:47,600 --> 02:47:51,760
Speaker 1: In British, Well, it comes right down to the Labor

2848
02:47:51,879 --> 02:47:55,840
Speaker 1: Party today. This is a chain of events. This is

2849
02:47:56,000 --> 02:48:01,120
Speaker 1: hundreds and thousands of the most explode woitted workers who

2850
02:48:01,160 --> 02:48:04,280
Speaker 1: have been completely left out of any kind of consideration

2851
02:48:04,320 --> 02:48:07,640
Speaker 1: of unions and before on the whole saying we're going

2852
02:48:07,680 --> 02:48:09,840
Speaker 1: to do what they did. They used to strike as

2853
02:48:09,879 --> 02:48:13,400
Speaker 1: a means to force open the door to unionization. They

2854
02:48:13,600 --> 02:48:17,320
Speaker 1: forced the employers to let them the union movement. They

2855
02:48:17,360 --> 02:48:19,680
Speaker 1: didn't bother waiting for them to get around to them,

2856
02:48:19,720 --> 02:48:21,840
Speaker 1: which is what you're supposed to do if you're very poor,

2857
02:48:22,000 --> 02:48:26,880
Speaker 1: politely respectively wait to your turn, and maybe eventually the

2858
02:48:27,000 --> 02:48:28,920
Speaker 1: big boys of the union woman might bother to get

2859
02:48:28,959 --> 02:48:31,119
Speaker 1: around you. Probably not, but you never know your luck.

2860
02:48:31,480 --> 02:48:35,040
Speaker 1: But no, they forced the pace. They used strikes to

2861
02:48:35,280 --> 02:48:39,080
Speaker 1: force the right to form their own unions, and there

2862
02:48:39,120 --> 02:48:42,039
Speaker 1: were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them formed across

2863
02:48:42,120 --> 02:48:45,160
Speaker 1: the country as far Awaars Island too. It's incredible how

2864
02:48:45,320 --> 02:48:48,280
Speaker 1: news traveled in those days, and Irish theams just as

2865
02:48:48,400 --> 02:48:50,640
Speaker 1: unions wrote and said, we've heard about the match women,

2866
02:48:50,920 --> 02:48:52,600
Speaker 1: please come and tell us how to do it. We

2867
02:48:52,680 --> 02:48:56,320
Speaker 1: want to unionize as well. So it really was striking

2868
02:48:56,360 --> 02:48:59,120
Speaker 1: a light, you know. It really went like a fire.

2869
02:48:59,240 --> 02:49:04,279
Speaker 1: It just read and spread and spread. Although the employers

2870
02:49:04,360 --> 02:49:07,480
Speaker 1: fought back, I mean, of course employers always will. They

2871
02:49:07,600 --> 02:49:11,720
Speaker 1: fought back quite viciously, and a lot of those new

2872
02:49:11,840 --> 02:49:16,160
Speaker 1: unions did fold, but in a way that didn't really

2873
02:49:16,240 --> 02:49:19,840
Speaker 1: matter because things never went back. Things never went backwards.

2874
02:49:20,400 --> 02:49:25,360
Speaker 1: The Match Women's Union stayed active until nineteen twenty when

2875
02:49:25,440 --> 02:49:30,599
Speaker 1: it was merged into the g MB General and Municipal Boilermakers,

2876
02:49:30,680 --> 02:49:33,520
Speaker 1: one of our big unions. So it stayed through all

2877
02:49:33,600 --> 02:49:37,600
Speaker 1: that period and people that have written about it um

2878
02:49:37,959 --> 02:49:40,240
Speaker 1: and not many people have written about the strike itself,

2879
02:49:40,320 --> 02:49:42,720
Speaker 1: but I did read one paper that suggested, oh, it

2880
02:49:42,800 --> 02:49:45,039
Speaker 1: can't have bring an important strike because the union only

2881
02:49:45,160 --> 02:49:48,640
Speaker 1: lasted till nineteen twenty, well, rather outrage of the match

2882
02:49:48,680 --> 02:49:51,800
Speaker 1: men's behalf. Not only did it survive all that time

2883
02:49:51,840 --> 02:49:55,119
Speaker 1: when employers were kicking and fighting back with everything they had,

2884
02:49:55,600 --> 02:49:58,720
Speaker 1: but it survived and continued to become part of one

2885
02:49:58,800 --> 02:50:02,040
Speaker 1: of our most major unions. So it's an incredible achievement.

2886
02:50:03,000 --> 02:50:06,000
Speaker 1: And it's out of that modern labor movement, that modern

2887
02:50:06,040 --> 02:50:11,119
Speaker 1: trade union movement that the Labor Party of course began significantly.

2888
02:50:11,720 --> 02:50:13,800
Speaker 1: Whether or not it likes to remember it today, sometimes

2889
02:50:13,840 --> 02:50:16,720
Speaker 1: it does, sometimes it doesn't, but it's completely beholden to

2890
02:50:17,000 --> 02:50:22,320
Speaker 1: the union movement. And I was really pleased, after oh gosh,

2891
02:50:22,640 --> 02:50:26,000
Speaker 1: twenty years of plugging away at this message, flogging away

2892
02:50:26,040 --> 02:50:29,360
Speaker 1: at it, that these women were so important that Jeremy

2893
02:50:29,480 --> 02:50:33,760
Speaker 1: Corbyn said, um, I think it was an international women's

2894
02:50:33,800 --> 02:50:37,240
Speaker 1: dye in sixteen. He said we should hail the mothers

2895
02:50:37,400 --> 02:50:39,880
Speaker 1: of our movement, and he acknowledged my work, and he

2896
02:50:39,920 --> 02:50:42,920
Speaker 1: acknowledged the match women as the mothers as the trade

2897
02:50:43,040 --> 02:50:46,320
Speaker 1: union movement, and you know, I felt my job is done.

2898
02:50:46,440 --> 02:50:50,840
Speaker 1: I was incredibly happy with that. And maybe as a

2899
02:50:50,959 --> 02:50:57,800
Speaker 1: final grace note on our conversation today, can you describe

2900
02:50:59,680 --> 02:51:07,000
Speaker 1: that Glandstone statue? How it's still treated today. Well, this

2901
02:51:07,360 --> 02:51:11,200
Speaker 1: is so fascinating. The statue is still there and I

2902
02:51:11,280 --> 02:51:14,040
Speaker 1: have my match Womens Festival right next to it, actually

2903
02:51:14,520 --> 02:51:17,040
Speaker 1: in a lovely little venue called bow Arts on the

2904
02:51:17,120 --> 02:51:20,760
Speaker 1: Bow Road. It's still there. But there's one very significant

2905
02:51:20,920 --> 02:51:23,240
Speaker 1: thing about it that you would notice if you were

2906
02:51:23,280 --> 02:51:25,640
Speaker 1: walking along the borough and having a look at Gladstone.

2907
02:51:26,200 --> 02:51:28,840
Speaker 1: As I said, he's got one of his arms outstretched,

2908
02:51:28,959 --> 02:51:31,760
Speaker 1: one of his hands outstretched, and it's pointing kind over

2909
02:51:31,800 --> 02:51:34,720
Speaker 1: the direction of the Branton May Factory. You were to

2910
02:51:34,840 --> 02:51:38,080
Speaker 1: look fairly closely, you'd notice that that hand isn't red.

2911
02:51:38,600 --> 02:51:41,640
Speaker 1: It's a slightly faded red, but it's definitely red. Now,

2912
02:51:41,760 --> 02:51:46,280
Speaker 1: why on earth is that? Well it harks back to

2913
02:51:46,840 --> 02:51:50,840
Speaker 1: the match woman rushing the statue and saying, our blood

2914
02:51:50,959 --> 02:51:55,880
Speaker 1: paid for this all those decades before. I was told

2915
02:51:56,160 --> 02:52:01,200
Speaker 1: by Ted Lewis, the grandson of Martha Robertson. Actually it

2916
02:52:01,400 --> 02:52:05,840
Speaker 1: was his grandma and her friends who first threw paint

2917
02:52:05,959 --> 02:52:09,080
Speaker 1: over it. This statue kept annoying them. They were not

2918
02:52:09,280 --> 02:52:13,000
Speaker 1: done with this statue, from charging at it and dripping

2919
02:52:13,040 --> 02:52:15,400
Speaker 1: their blood on its. It was a constant source of

2920
02:52:15,400 --> 02:52:17,680
Speaker 1: annoyance to them. And you can imagine that it would

2921
02:52:17,680 --> 02:52:20,040
Speaker 1: have been. They had to walk past it at least

2922
02:52:20,120 --> 02:52:21,920
Speaker 1: twice a day in and out of work, and they

2923
02:52:22,000 --> 02:52:24,960
Speaker 1: must have thought our wages paid for that bloody statue.

2924
02:52:25,720 --> 02:52:29,440
Speaker 1: Why are its hands still read now? Though? Well? I've

2925
02:52:29,560 --> 02:52:31,880
Speaker 1: tried to find out who done it, and you can

2926
02:52:32,000 --> 02:52:34,800
Speaker 1: understand why people might not want to tell me, because

2927
02:52:34,800 --> 02:52:37,440
Speaker 1: I suppose it is criminal damage after all, isn't it

2928
02:52:37,560 --> 02:52:39,480
Speaker 1: not that I would dog them into the police. But

2929
02:52:39,560 --> 02:52:44,120
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily know that. But it's been done at

2930
02:52:44,280 --> 02:52:48,840
Speaker 1: least since the and by that I mean the hand

2931
02:52:49,040 --> 02:52:51,760
Speaker 1: regularly painted red. It may well have had paint chucked

2932
02:52:51,800 --> 02:52:54,480
Speaker 1: at it by match women as well for many years.

2933
02:52:54,920 --> 02:52:59,840
Speaker 1: But this is when the factory became a gated how

2934
02:53:00,080 --> 02:53:04,400
Speaker 1: was in community Brianson They moved their operations, they were

2935
02:53:04,440 --> 02:53:07,560
Speaker 1: taken over by Swedish Match and in the eighties this

2936
02:53:07,720 --> 02:53:10,640
Speaker 1: became what we used to call yuppy flats in those days,

2937
02:53:11,280 --> 02:53:13,280
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of anger about that in

2938
02:53:13,360 --> 02:53:17,480
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, this gentrification and Gladstone's hand, as far as

2939
02:53:17,560 --> 02:53:20,600
Speaker 1: I can tell asking the council has been painted red

2940
02:53:20,640 --> 02:53:23,040
Speaker 1: ever since, and the council not happy by the way

2941
02:53:23,200 --> 02:53:26,440
Speaker 1: at all, and they've just given up. So what they

2942
02:53:26,560 --> 02:53:29,360
Speaker 1: used to do was to clean it every time the

2943
02:53:29,440 --> 02:53:32,520
Speaker 1: hand was painted red. But this was really expensive and

2944
02:53:32,640 --> 02:53:35,200
Speaker 1: it kept happening, so they just gave up and they've

2945
02:53:35,280 --> 02:53:37,360
Speaker 1: left it red, which I'm very pleased about because there's

2946
02:53:37,360 --> 02:53:41,800
Speaker 1: a lovely little historical reminder. I've asked and asked who

2947
02:53:42,240 --> 02:53:43,879
Speaker 1: might have done it, because I would like to shake

2948
02:53:44,000 --> 02:53:46,360
Speaker 1: them by the hand, whether or not it was covered

2949
02:53:46,400 --> 02:53:48,800
Speaker 1: in red paint, and buy them a drink. I was

2950
02:53:48,920 --> 02:53:52,080
Speaker 1: told once by somebody at talk I know someone who

2951
02:53:52,160 --> 02:53:53,880
Speaker 1: did that. It was one of my mates. But it

2952
02:53:54,080 --> 02:53:57,240
Speaker 1: wasn't massively political. She was just a bit drunk. She's

2953
02:53:57,280 --> 02:53:59,480
Speaker 1: been in the park and she happened to be walking

2954
02:53:59,560 --> 02:54:01,840
Speaker 1: past it. Now I love that story, but I don't

2955
02:54:01,920 --> 02:54:04,640
Speaker 1: buy it because this statue is up a massive flint

2956
02:54:05,280 --> 02:54:07,760
Speaker 1: in the middle of the bow rows. Now, you would

2957
02:54:07,840 --> 02:54:10,080
Speaker 1: need a ladder, and I doubt that you'd be in

2958
02:54:10,120 --> 02:54:12,560
Speaker 1: the pub with a pot of red paint, a paintbrush

2959
02:54:12,680 --> 02:54:15,600
Speaker 1: and a ladder in your handbag. I just can't see it.

2960
02:54:16,000 --> 02:54:18,920
Speaker 1: I really hope though, that one day I find out,

2961
02:54:18,920 --> 02:54:21,480
Speaker 1: and if you're listening and you know, please tell me.

2962
02:54:21,560 --> 02:54:24,000
Speaker 1: I promise I will not tell anybody. I would love

2963
02:54:24,080 --> 02:54:27,440
Speaker 1: to have the satisfaction of knowing who does it. Oh,

2964
02:54:28,160 --> 02:54:30,640
Speaker 1: that's brilliant. That's brilliant. I think that's where we'll wrap

2965
02:54:30,720 --> 02:54:35,520
Speaker 1: it up. Fantastic, Louise, thank you so much for telling

2966
02:54:35,640 --> 02:54:39,240
Speaker 1: the match women's story again for Unobscured and our listeners.

2967
02:54:39,440 --> 02:54:41,800
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to have you and to have

2968
02:54:42,000 --> 02:54:47,200
Speaker 1: this story to include in exploring the East End and beyond.

2969
02:54:47,360 --> 02:54:49,360
Speaker 1: So thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

2970
02:54:49,400 --> 02:54:54,040
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the podcast. That's it for

2971
02:54:54,200 --> 02:54:58,320
Speaker 1: this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short

2972
02:54:58,360 --> 02:55:01,240
Speaker 1: sponsor break for a pre you of what's in store

2973
02:55:01,400 --> 02:55:08,160
Speaker 1: for next week. We figured that the killer had to

2974
02:55:08,360 --> 02:55:10,440
Speaker 1: know White Chapel. He had to be able to move

2975
02:55:10,520 --> 02:55:14,840
Speaker 1: around White Chapel in Spittlefield without causing suspicion, and I

2976
02:55:14,920 --> 02:55:19,080
Speaker 1: had to know all these dark alleys and cut throughs.

2977
02:55:20,040 --> 02:55:23,040
Speaker 1: He had to appear to avoid police patrols, particularly as

2978
02:55:23,280 --> 02:55:26,440
Speaker 1: more and more police were put on the streets, particularly

2979
02:55:26,480 --> 02:55:29,959
Speaker 1: following the double event. So this is someone who needs

2980
02:55:30,000 --> 02:55:32,119
Speaker 1: to know his local environment, and that doesn't really fit

2981
02:55:32,240 --> 02:55:34,680
Speaker 1: with a doctor from outside, or a slumming top or

2982
02:55:34,680 --> 02:55:37,040
Speaker 1: any of these other people. It has to be a

2983
02:55:37,120 --> 02:55:40,160
Speaker 1: local man. I think you had to have somebody who

2984
02:55:40,200 --> 02:55:42,160
Speaker 1: had a clear motive for wanting to kill. In many

2985
02:55:42,200 --> 02:55:44,240
Speaker 1: of the books I've read about JACKI Ripard, I can't

2986
02:55:44,240 --> 02:55:46,800
Speaker 1: really understand why he would do the things he would do.

2987
02:55:47,400 --> 02:55:49,440
Speaker 1: That's kind of a bit that the writers don't tell

2988
02:55:49,520 --> 02:55:52,280
Speaker 1: you why would you do that? Now? I understand, of

2989
02:55:52,360 --> 02:55:55,400
Speaker 1: course that without knowing who the killer is, m without

2990
02:55:55,400 --> 02:55:59,080
Speaker 1: a confession, we can never know why somebody chooses to murder.

2991
02:55:59,320 --> 02:56:01,920
Speaker 1: But I feel you had to find a try and

2992
02:56:02,040 --> 02:56:04,400
Speaker 1: identify a motive, and in this case we found somebody

2993
02:56:04,440 --> 02:56:23,959
Speaker 1: who had the mains motive and opportunity. Unobscured was created

2994
02:56:24,000 --> 02:56:27,600
Speaker 1: by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams,

2995
02:56:27,720 --> 02:56:31,520
Speaker 1: and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research

2996
02:56:31,600 --> 02:56:33,600
Speaker 1: and writing for this season is all the work of

2997
02:56:33,680 --> 02:56:36,440
Speaker 1: my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad

2998
02:56:36,520 --> 02:56:40,080
Speaker 1: Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our

2999
02:56:40,120 --> 02:56:44,039
Speaker 1: contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows

3000
02:56:44,240 --> 02:56:48,520
Speaker 1: over at History unobscured dot com, and until next time,

3001
02:56:49,240 --> 02:56:59,080
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Unobscured as a production of I Heart

3002
02:56:59,160 --> 02:57:01,760
Speaker 1: Radio and Aaron Mank. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,

3003
02:57:01,879 --> 02:57:04,320
Speaker 1: visit i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

3004
02:57:04,400 --> 02:57:05,480
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.