The strikes at the Ford factories in Dagenham in 1968 and 1984 are considered landmark disputes in labour-relations. A limited-edition plate (c.1984), that belongs to the collections of the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics, commemorates the strikes and their legacy. The message of the plate is clear; the strikes were instrumental in eliminating workplace sex discrimination and establishing equal pay. This view has endured in the near half-decade since the strikes; a major theme of the movie, Made in Dagenham (2010), is the pursuit for sex equality. Nevertheless, since 1968 there has also been disagreement over whether or not the strikers were truly fighting for equal pay and women’s rights.
The initial strikes were triggered when the Ford Motor Company evaluated their pay scales. Female sewing machinists who made car seats were classified as ‘Category B’, meaning less-skilled production jobs, forcing them into a low pay grade. In consequence, on 7 June 1968, 187 women at the Ford factory in Dagenham walked out, followed later by a further 200 from the Halewood Body and Assembly Plant in Merseyside. The strike at Dagenham lasted 3 weeks, and it was reported production of cars ceased, 9000 workers were left idle, and it cost Ford £8 million in export orders.[1] At the intervention of Employment Minister Barbara Castle, a settlement was secured and machinists pay was brought up to 92% of their male colleagues, in line with the policy at Vauxhall factories. Their primary demand, however, was to have their skills recognised and subsequently be moved into ‘Category C’, meaning more-skilled production jobs. This was not achieved until a further six-week strike in 1984, when they were finally upgraded to category C and recognised as skilled workers.
Certainly, as the top of the plate reads, the actions of the Ford sewing machinists contributed to the passing of the 1970 Equal Pay Act which banned sex discrimination in pay and conditions of employment. At the second reading of the bill, MP Shirley Summerskill attributed the Ford sewing machinists in triggering the Act. She stated: ‘we must acknowledge in this debate a group of women who played a very significant part in the history of the struggle for equal pay. I refer to that small group of women machinists at Fords who went on strike for their beliefs and their rights.’[2]
However, it was the view of some contemporaries that the strikers were only actually fighting for the reclassification of their labour, rather than equal pay for women. The 1968 Inquiry into the dispute, chaired by Sir Jack Scamp, insisted that sex discrimination was not a cause of the strikes, stating ‘we are in no doubt that the question of the relativity between the women’s and men’s rates was not a material cause of this dispute and played no part in the events leading up to the strike’.[3] According to the report, the National Union of Vehicle Builders (NUVB), who represented the majority of the Ford machinists, attributed the cause of the strikes to the grading issue and not equal pay.[4] The logo of the NUVB is displayed on the bottom left of the plate. The Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU), whose logo is on the top left, maintained that Equal Pay was a central issue at play. Jack Mitchell, of the AUE, whose name is listed in the 1968 Scroll of Honour, is quoted in The Times as saying ‘there was no doubt that the underlying cause of the dispute was sex discrimination, connected with the fact that the women were getting unequal pay for unequal work, yet had achieved the same standards of their male counterparts’.[5] The AUE only represented 6 of the machinists at Dagenham, and ultimately the official inquiry did not fall in their favour. The report declined to make a definitive conclusion on the grading system and instead deferred the issue back to the factory.
An article from The Guardian, August 1968 reported the results of the inquiry with the headline: ‘Strike of Ford women “was not over Equal pay”’.[6] This title is remarkably similar to the title of a letter printed in the same newspaper nearly 50 years later, in February 2017: ‘Ford sewing machinists’ strike in 1968 was not for equal pay’. [7] The author, Sheila Cohen, argued, like Scamp’s report, that the strikes were prompted primarily as a reaction to the classification of the machinists’ skill. The letter was prompted by comments by former deputy leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman that the machinists were fighting for equal pay. [8] Cohen dismissed ‘the myth that the Ford sewing machinists went on strike in 1968 for “equal pay”’ and asked ‘that middle-class politicians stopped rewriting history according to their own (mis)conceptions’. [9]
Whatever the original intentions of the machinists, the strikes remain in popular memory as a dispute over equal pay. The disputes are commonly accepted as a pivotal point in the economic emancipation of the female worker, and a catalyst for the legislative changes that would take place in the 1970s.
By Katie Carpenter
Katie Carpenter is a Citizens project intern researching material held in the Women’s Library collection at the LSE Library. Katie is also a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London.
[1] John Torode, ‘Ford Women machinists go back to work on promise’, The Guardian, 1 July 1968, p. 16
[2] Dr Shirley Summerskill cited in EQUAL PAY (No. 2) BILL, HC Deb, 09 February 1970, hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1970/feb/09/equal-pay-no-2-bill#S5CV0795P0_19700209_HOC_242
[3] Report of a Court of Inquiry under Sir Jack Scamp into a dispute concerning sewing machinists employed by the Ford Motor Company Limited (Industrial Disputes), 1968, cmnd. 3749, p. 38.
[4] Ibid., p. 37.
[5] ‘Agreements Disregarded at Ford’, The Times, 4 July 1968, p. 2.
[6] ‘Our Labour Staff’, ‘Strike of Ford women “was not over Equal pay”, The Guardian, 22 August 1968.
[7] Sheila Cohen, ‘Ford sewing machinists’ strike in 1968 was not for equal pay’, The Guardian, 13 February 2017, www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/13/ford-sewing-machinists-strike-in-1968-was-not-for-equal-pay
[8] Harriet Harman, ‘”We feminists don’t go in for heroines much, but Barbara Castle is mine”’, The Guardian, 11 February 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/11/harriet-harman-barbara-castle-heroine
[9] Cohen, ‘Ford sewing machinists’’.
