FILM REVIEW: Made in Dagenham

In 1968 three struggles by working class women in Britain helped inspire the formation of the women’s liberation movement there: Hull fishermen’s wives fought for better safety on trawlers, despite being told by the bosses to keep quiet; London bus conductresses rebelled for the right to become drivers; and women machinists at the Ford motor company’s giant plant at Dagenham went on strike for equal pay.

The Ford women’s strike led to the National Joint Action Committee on Women’s Equal Rights, a union-based group focussed on equal pay and women’s rights at work.

Over four decades later, the Ford strike has been dramatised, and partly fictionalised, as a film: Made in Dagenham, directed by Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls), produced by Steven Woolley (The Crying Game, Scandal, Interview with the Vampire) and  partner Elizabeth Karlsen (The Crying Game, Hollow Reed, Sounds like Teen Spirit), written by Billy Ivory, who wrote for TV series such as Minder and Common as Muck, and starring Sally Hawkins as strike leader Rita, Daniel Mays as her husband Eddie and Bob Hoskins as Albert, the shop steward for their area.  The theme song is sung by 60s British pop star Sandie Shaw, a former Fords Dagenham punch-card operator (albeit several years before the 1968 strike). [Read more…]

Workers Party leaflet

The Workers Party is backing Matt McCarten in the Mana By Election because he’s a genuine working class fighter.

Matt McCarten, leader of Unite union, has hands-on experience promoting workers’ rights. That is a rare thing in politics these days, where parliament is awash with bland, middle-class liberals.

Since founding Unite union in 2003 Matt has been a prominent figure in campaigns for low paid casualised workers. He has shown an absolute commitment to that cause. [Read more…]

The Spark November 2010

The New Zealand Government has just listed the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People’s Army as terrorist organisations. The Spark talks to trade unionist, Luke Coxon, who has just spent a year in the Philippines.

Spark: Luke you took a year off work to do voluntary work in the Philippines. What drew you there?

Luke Coxon: I first went to the Philippines as a student activist in 1996. It really shaped my political outlook. Back then I already considered myself Marxist, but I was so inspired by the living movement in the Philippines that it left a lasting impression. I always wanted to go back and in 2007 was part of a fact finding group looking into human rights abuses there. I decided then to go back and volunteer for the KMU, the militant trade union federation.

Nestle picket

[Read more…]