This year will see the Women Chainmakers festival at a new home - Bearmore Park in the centre of Cradley Heath, right at the centre of where the historic dispute was played out to a successful conclusion.
There is a small entrance fee to the festival this year - £5 for adults, with children 16 and under entering for free. Tickets are available from:
Midlands TUC
24 Livery Street
Birmingham
B3 2PA
Tel: 0121 262 6383
email: midlands@tuc.org.uk
Cheques payable to the TUC
The TUC is delighted to announce a new venue for the Women Chainmakers’ festival for 2011. The new venue, Bearmore Mound, is in the heart of the Cradley Heath community where the Chainmakers worked and lived - and fought their successful ten week dispute to secure a minimum wage for their sector. Festival organiser Alan Weaver said, “Bringing the Chainmakers’ festival back to the heart of the community where the women fought for their rights is a great achievement and we are indebted to Sandwell Council for their support in helping us do so. We are looking to make this festival an integral part of Cradley Heath for the foreseeable future and look forward to a long and successful partnership with the council to make this happen.”
Sandwell Council Leader Councillor Darren Cooper said: "Mary Macarthur is one of the giants of Sandwell's past.
"Her role as leader of the Cradley Heath chainmakers' strike last century has rightly earned her a place in the history of the borough and trade unionism.
"The TUC has asked us to help with this year's celebrations of her life and we are delighted to be able to bring them back home to Cradley Heath by making Bearmore Mound available.
"We very much hope this year's festival will continue the success of the past few years."
The festival celebrates the achievements of 800 or so women Chainmakers who fought to establish a minimum wage for their labour. The local employers sought to deny them their rights but were met with forceful opposition, led by Mary Macarthur, who founded the National Federation of Women Workers and later stood for Parliament as a Labour candidate.
The seventh Women Chainmakers festival takes place at Bearmore Mound on Saturday 17th September. Further details will be announced in the run up to the festival.
The pioneering work of a formidable group of Black Country women will be honoured at the Women Chainmakers' Festival held at the Black Country Living Museum on Saturday September 18, 2010. The event celebrates the 1910 Women Chainmakers strike –100 years after the women, led by Mary Macarthur, marched for better pay and shaped industrial relations in Britain. The main speaker at the TUC organised event will be former cabinet minister Tony Benn.
Benn, who is the longest-serving Labour MP in the history of the party, retired from the House of Commons in 2001 after 50 years in Parliament to ‘devote more time to politics’.
He said:"The Chainmakers' dispute, 100 years ago this year, was a classic trade union battle led by women who inspired the whole trade union movement. This year we will be remembering that battle and honouring those who fought it."
Cheryl Pigeon, TUC Regional Secretary said: “The Chainmakers struggle for a minimum wage marked a turning point in the campaign for better pay for women workers. The lessons from the Chainmakers are still with us today in campaigns to improve pay and working conditions for all workers.”
In 1910 the Women Chainmakers of Cradley Heath won a fight to establish the right to a fair wage following a bitter 10 week dispute. This landmark victory changed the lives of thousands of workers who were earning starvation wages. The employers and unions agreed to a minimum wage of two-and-a-half pence an hour - an amount which equaled a 150 percent pay increase for the poorest of workers
Andrew Lovett, Director and Chief Executive of the Black Country Living Museum commented: “It has been said that the Cradley Heath Workers’ Institute – now part of the Black Country Living Museum – is the last physical reminder of the Women Chainmakers Strike of 1910. That maybe so – but the more important legacy is the fairer treatment of working people and the development of a more respectful and tolerant society – one that isn’t built on a kind of semi-slavery of others.”
The story of Mary Macarthur and the Women Chainmakers will be brought to life through stirring speeches, historic re-enactments, theatre and music. The highlight of the day will be a re-creation of the strike march when the women walk to victory once more!
