matchgirls

[thetilleys]

why was the matchgirls strike not considered an important event in the history of trade unions

[dot.hawkes]

can you tell us where it is you have read that it is not considered important?

[JK2]

From the TUC website:
"The meeting at the factory gate that June, of the socialist activist and the group of angry young working class women, was a key moment in the birth of a vast social movement which would be celebrated in labour and socialist history as the New Unionism. Ben Tillett paid tribute to the Match Workers whose strike he called 'the beginning of the social convulsion which produced the New Unionism'.

But the strike is not just of historic interest. It is an absolutely critical example of how after decades of low struggle and disappointment a militant movement can revive."

How on earth can you say it is not considered important?

[starmack]

Nobody has been written out of history as much as The Chartists -- the forerunners of the modern trade unioin movement. Many of them were Irish but they do not even feature in most Irish history books (a) because their main acvtivism was in Britain and (b) Irish leaders of their era did not get on with them.

[jno]

I can't talk for others, starmack, but I learnt a lot about the Chartists when I was at achool (not this millennium, I should add, so I don't know if it's still true). I wasn't schooled in Ireland, though.