Working Lives Research Institute
PositionPostgraduate Student
Certificates in Professional Development, University of North London/
Transport and General Workers Union:
Industrial Relations, 1996
Labour
History, 1997
MA with distinction in Labour and Trade Union Studies, University of North London 2002
My background is in the trade union movement. As an officer for NALGO and the TGWU I developed my interest in the organisation of women and marginalised workers. I first researched the 1888 Bryant and May strike for the TGWU in 1996.
I carried out research into European trade unions and immigration/ asylum policy for the UK Race and Europe Network in 2000.
My research will look at the 1888 strike, by a largely female workforce, at Bryant and May’s match factory in the East End of London.
The matchwomen’s strike is well-known even outside the field, but it’s fame rests largely in the supposedly picturesque nature of the heroines. Few sources accord it any real significance in the development of ‘New Unionism’, the beginning of a mass movement.
The orthodox view is that it was the Great Dock Strike a year later which was the seminal event of this. The matchwomen’s strike is not even supposed to be theirs at all: it is generally accepted that they were manipulated into taking action by middle-class socialists like the journalist Annie Besant.
My research will challenge these views, showing:
In so doing, this research will counter orthodox beliefs about the development of women’s trade unionism.
email: l.raw@londonmet.ac.uk
I have written feature articles on the matchwomen for the Irish Times and Irish Post.
My research for the UK Race and Europe Network into European Trade Unions and immigration is pending publication as a report.