Vote 100 and International Women’s Day

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate so far, with some very inspiring speeches about International Women’s Day. I want to spend the time available to me doing some womansplaining. I want to take stock of how far we have come in gender equality and look back at some amazing ordinary women who have achieved extraordinary changes in our society, but who have often been ignored or written out of history.

I want to tell Members three stories. The first is from July 1888, when 1,400 women at the Bryant and May east end factory went on strike against bullying, low pay and dangerous working conditions, which resulted in many of them developing phossy jaw. The second story is about the June 1968 equal pay dispute by 187 women machinists at Ford in Dagenham. My third story, which is also from 1968, is about the campaign by the Hessle Road women’s committee in Hull, which was led by four great local women: Lily Bilocca, Yvonne Blenkinsop, Mary Denness and Christine Jensen. They campaigned to improve safety at sea for trawlermen.

In 1968, Hull was one of the world’s largest fishing ports, but there was a dark side to the industry. A trawlerman was 17 times more likely to die in an industrial accident at sea than the average worker. It was the most dangerous occupation on earth. Six thousand men had died at sea in the years before 1968. When a further 58 trawlermen were lost on the St Romanus, Kingston Peridot and Ross Cleveland trawlers between January and February 1968, it became known as the triple trawler disaster. Those lost were the husbands, the sons, the brothers, the uncles and the nephews of the women in Hull. After the triple trawler disaster, Lily Bilocca said, “Enough is enough”, and started a campaign to improve safety for their menfolk.

All three of those stories of determined working women getting organised and taking a stand share three similar characteristics. First, all these women took action that shocked the society of their time and offended some. Each went against the view that women should not have views of their own or the will to take action. At this point, I am thinking of the maxim, “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” In 1888, in late Victorian England, matchwomen were dismissed as little more than ignorant young women, largely of Irish immigrant stock, who were easily led astray by outside militant forces.

The 1968 Dagenham women machinists fought as much against the TGWU establishment of the time, tepid at best in any support for equal pay, as much as they fought against the Detroit bosses of Ford. Hull’s headscarf revolutionaries shocked the nation and knocked the Vietnam war off the front pages of newspapers with their 10,000-name petition, their local marches, and their picketing of the dockside. They took the fight to Westminster and met Harold Wilson. They threatened to picket his private home if their demands to improve safety were not met. They did this in the face of death threats, actual violence, and insults from trawler owners and others. They were described as “hysterical women” and told that they should not get involved in men’s business. This was, of course, all before social media. We know now how threats and insults are used to try to put women down and stop them standing up for the issues that they care about.

Secondly, all these women achieved far more in a very short period of time than men, supposedly campaigning for the same causes, achieved over decades. The 1888 Bow strike lasted only about 14 days, but it resulted in more progress than the men had achieved in decades before. The ripple of change throughout the wider labour movement was even more profound from the matchwomen’s strike, because in the following year we had the 1889 dock strike in east London, spawning more politically active new unionism. As such, I believe that the matchwomen can be described as the founding mothers of the Labour party.

The 1968 Ford Dagenham strike lasted just 21 days. Like the matchwomen and the headscarf revolutionaries in Hull, the women brought their case to Westminster and won. As a result of this strike, Labour’s Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity—the wonderful, the marvellous Barbara Castle—introduced the Equal Pay Act 1970. Although we all know in this House that the battle for equal pay goes on, the Dagenham women overturned decades of stalling on pay equality.

In Hull, as one of the headscarf revolutionaries, Mary Denness, said, they had

“achieved more in six weeks than the politicians and trade unions have in years.”

Their campaign persuaded the Government to adopt their demands in the fishermen’s charter, which meant full crewing of ships, radio operators on board every ship, improved weather forecasting, better training, more safety equipment, and a mother ship with medical facilities to accompany the fleet. Those ordinary yet extraordinary Hull women, led by Lily Bilocca, a cod skinner on the docks, saved thousands of men’s lives by their short campaign of direct action.

Thirdly, all the victories won by those women were then obscured in the history books for decades and even written out. The 1888 Bow matchwomen, though recognised by leading trade unionists at the time, were soon written out of history for the entire 20th century. Bow 1888 was downplayed in its significance. Many claim the strike was led by a more establishment figure, Annie Besant, who I think people would describe as the Polly Toynbee of her day.

The real names of the strike leaders—Alice Francis, Kate Slater, Mary Driscoll, Jane Wakeling and Eliza Martin—were finally published in Louise Raw’s brilliant book published in 2009, “Striking a Light”. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) first read those names out in Parliament in 2013. The story of the 1968 Dagenham Ford women slipped from view for decades, until the 2010 film “Made in Dagenham” raised its profile again. It is a delight that some of those original women have now had the recognition they deserve in their lifetime.

I want to conclude by returning to the story of the headscarf revolutionaries. Events in 1968 in Hull faded from popular culture, partly due to the post cod war decline of the local fishing industry, but also because of some frankly very outdated views about women in the city. Lily Bilocca, who led the headscarf revolutionaries, was sacked after the campaign, blacklisted and told she would never work in the fishing industry again. She was out of work for two years, eventually finding work in a nightclub cloakroom. She died at the age of 59 in 1988, and there was no public recognition by the people or the city of Hull of the pivotal role she had played in helping to protect the lives and improve the safety of trawlermen.

Despite that huge victory for safer working conditions, before today Lily Bilocca’s name has only ever been mentioned in this House once, on 25 March 1969 by a local Hull MP, James Johnson—no relation—and, sadly, just in passing. There was no proper recognition of or tribute to what she and those other women did, so it was great to see the story of the headscarf revolutionaries brought back to life in Brian Lavery’s 2015 book “The Headscarf Revolutionaries” and more recently the excellent BBC 4 programme based on his book, as we this year mark the 50th anniversary of the triple trawler disaster.

Interestingly, Hull has granted freedom of the city to many notable citizens over the years, but I have discovered that since 1885, when that honour could first be bestowed, of 47 recipients only two have been women—that is 45 men and only two women. Regrettably for the pioneering city of Hull, one of our most famous daughters, Amy Johnson, did not make that list and did not receive freedom of the city. In fact, we waited more than 100 years for the first woman to receive the freedom of the city of Hull. Janet Suzman, a wonderful anti-apartheid campaigner, received the award in 1987, and then we waited another 30 years before Jean Bishop, a lady in her 90s who has raised more than £100,000 for Age UK, was given the honour of freedom of the city at the end of last year.

Today, along with the other two Hull MPs, I am calling on Hull City Council to honour the leading women of the Hessle Road women’s committee by making them all freewomen of Hull. Fifty years after the triple trawler disaster, Hull needs to properly recognise these women. We have had wonderful theatre plays and murals for the women in the city, but we need to make sure that they get the tribute they really deserve.

As the headscarf revolutionaries achieved change both locally in the fishing industry and nationally in health and safety practices, they should be recognised nationally too. That is why all three Hull MPs are backing Ian Cuthbert’s campaign for Yvonne Blenkinsop, who is sadly the only surviving member of the headscarf revolutionaries, to receive an honour. It is just not on for these wonderful heroines from Hull to be overlooked any longer. In Lily Bilocca’s own words, “Enough is enough.” It is time to act now.