International Women’s Day

Liz Twist Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab) [V]]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) on securing this debate.

International Women’s Day is a day to remember and to celebrate, and this year I want to celebrate the wonderful women in trade unions. My union, Unison, has nearly 1 million women among its 1.3 million membership. They are women working in public services, ensuring that our essential services keep going, and they include: nurses, healthcare professionals, healthcare assistants, cleaners and catering staff in our NHS. They have been so vital this year, above all others, and deserve so much more than the 1% pay rise proposed by the Government. There are also the women in local government, energy, schools, colleges, the police and social care, who have been undervalued for too long. I want to say a huge congratulations to our new Unison general secretary, Christina McAnea, who was elected by Unison members as head of Britain’s biggest union. Christina will do an absolutely brilliant job and make a real difference for her members.

I also want to mention some other brilliant Unison organisations and women here in the north-east with whom I work. The brilliant northern women’s network is headed by Pat Heron, Maria Alberts, Linda Hobson, our regional convenor Nikki Ramanandi, Josie Bird, our national Unison president, and so many others working to fight for what is important to women in work and in society—as well as, of course, our fantastic regional secretary, Clare Williams. There are so many more people I could mention, including in other trade unions, but time does not allow.

Trade unions are still needed by women in dealing with fairness and equality at work, but I want to mention the campaign backed by Unison to create a permanent memorial for an earlier group of women trade unionists—the match girls. Those women and young girls took strike action against the terrible conditions in the Bryant and May match factory in London in 1888. Their action led not only to better conditions for themselves and their fellow workers, but inspired many more workers, male and female, to organise and fight for better and fairer conditions at work. How sad it is to hear that there must be a petition to save the grave of one of the strike leaders, Sarah Chapman. I look forward to marking the 150th anniversary of the match tax protest in April. Perhaps we can also mark the day in this House. This struggle continues today. A survey of Unison female workers, including nurses, teaching assistants and council employees, showed that many feel on the brink of burnout in trying to juggle both work and home commitments.

But today we must also think of Sarah Everard, and my thoughts and prayers go out to her family.