Striking a Light

This is the story of one of the most important strikes in labour history revealing the significance and truth of what actually happened. In July 1888, fourteen hundred women and girls employed by the matchmakers Bryant and May walked out of their East End factory and into the history books. Louise Raw gives us a challenging new interpretation of events proving that the women themselves, not celebrity socialists like Annie Besant, began it. She provides unequivocal evidence to show that the matchwomen greatly influenced the Dock Strike of 1889, which until now was thought to be the key event of new unionism, and repositions them as the mothers of the modern labour movement. Returning to the stories of the women themselves, and by interviewing their relatives today, Raw is able to construct a new history which challenges existing accounts of the strike itself and radically alters the accepted history of the labour movement in Britain.

"'In a careful reconstruction of events, Raw exposes inaccuracies in the standard accounts... [she] tells a great story with a terrific cast of characters... parts of the book read like a detective story, with Raw ingenious in tracking down the strike leaders.'-Times Higher Education"

Louise Raw is a Labour historian with a background in the Trade Union movement and political campaigning. She has spoken throughout the world and in the media about her research into the matchwomen's strike. She has appeared on television and radio as well as delivering many talks in the local and Union communities. Sheila Rowbotham is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK. The author of the seminal works A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the US (Penguin) and Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties (Penguin), a symposium on her historical work was organised at the American Historical Association in 1994.