The Real stories of the "Made in Dagenham" Women

In June 1968 women sewing machinists in the Ford car plant in Dagenham, Essex took a stand for equal pay in a strike that stopped production for three weeks. 

In 1984 there was another strike led by women. In this article we hear from some of the women whose stories were originally told in the film "Made in Dagenham" and the women who took part in the 2nd strike.

This article has a loose connection to my own family history too as my Uncle worked in Ford's Dagenham plant in the 1960's, and a year after the strike, he emigrated to America with his family.

The women's strike took place in the wake of serious defeats for the unions at Ford, in 1957 and 1962, when 17 stewards were sacked. It therefore represented the resurgence of rank and file trade unionism in one of the most ruthlessly anti-union firms in the world. There are many unsung heroines and heroes in the story - the women strikers themselves, the two shop stewards, Rosie Boland and Lil O'Callaghan, and the male convenors Henry Friedman and his deputy Bernard Passingham, who greatly encouraged the women. The Ford women's strike was one of the most important since the Matchgirls' Strike of 1888 and their struggle remains an inspiration to millions of women fighting discrimination and poor working conditions to this day.

The women had no previous experience of collective struggle on their own issue and were quite unprepared to take on the mighty multinational corporation which, in 1968, had an annual budget greater than that of India. In spite of this they succeeded in getting abolished their lower “women’s rate” of pay and precipitated wider action: there were other equal pay strikes that year and the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women’s Equal Rights (NJACCWER) was formed by women trade unionists, who organised a demonstration for equal pay in 1969. Without the Ford women, there would have been no Equal Pay Act of 1970.

Equal pay had been a confused aspiration for the trade union movement since the mid nineteenth century when women’s work was seen as a threat to male employment and bans on married women working were supported by trade unions. The Ford women faced two initial problems: it was always difficult for one section to win support from other sections on a "narrow" grading issue - Ford had introduced the new grading structure precisely in order to divide the workers. Also, as women, winning support from their male colleagues, who saw them as working for "pin money", was a real problem.

The idea of a male breadwinner bringing in a “family wage” institutionalised women’s low pay and influenced the labour movement. The welfare state was established around a conception of society in family units. Beverage said, “The attitude of the housewife to gainful employment outside the home should not be the same as that of the single woman. She has other duties...”

It was down to women’s organising to defy these attitudes and fight for a wage that would not allow women to be used as cheap labour to bring down wages as a whole.

Dora Challingsworth, Violet Dawson, Vera Sime, Eileen Pullen, Gwen Davies Geraldine Dear, Pamela Brown and Sheila Douglass were just some of the women who took part in the 1968 strike and the 1984 strike. They tell the story in their own words - all taken from a variety of interviews and articles I found online.

"Our wages weren't for pin money," said Gwen Davis. "They were to help with the cost of living, to pay your mortgage and help pay all your bills. It wasn't pocket money. No woman would go out to work just for pocket money, would she? Not if she's got a family".

"One of the ladies who worked with me had been a machinist for [Norman] Hartnell," she says. "She'd been a dressmaker making the Queen's clothes. She went for a test at Ford and they turned her down. Now if you're working for Hartnell you must be a good machinist mustn't you? [Her brother] had been at Fords quite a few years then. He said: 'Why have you turned my sister down? She's been making the Queen's clothes and you're telling me she can't machine?' So they had her back and gave her a job".

The demand of the Ford women in 1968 was originally to re-grade their jobs from unskilled B grade to semi-skilled grade C. This demand was not won until another strike in 1984. Ironically, the Ford women had not been able to use the Equal Pay Act that they precipitated to win their re-grading, as they could not compare themselves to a man in their role; they could only claim that their skill level matched some men. 

The real cause of the pay gap between men and women was and remains women’s segregation into underpaid and devalued jobs. Just as the Ford women had to fight to prove their worth, fights in low-paid industries such as cleaning are happening and are necessary today. 

The sewing machinists at Ford made the car seat covers. It was a skilled job. Assessors inspected them on the job. Sheila Douglas said, 

“I had to do 30 seat covers an hour, we were watched over and timed. We were annoyed about the way that some people had been getting C grade for doing what we did. Why weren't we sufficiently skilled to get C grade? We had two or three votes and convenors had been down to the company management to put our case but they weren't interested. Then we had a vote to come out on strike. We were determined to show we weren't being treated properly."

At Ford there was a skilled male rate, a semi-skilled male rate, an unskilled male rate and a women’s rate, which was only 87% of the unskilled male rate. With the obvious injustice of the ‘women’s rate’ and the devaluation of the skill they brought to the job, there was a strong feeling, as expressed by Violet Dawson, from the dispute, that, “We wanted C grade, we wanted equal pay”.

The women put up with harsh working conditions. The company expanded its premises at the River Plant in Dagenham into an asbestos air craft hanger with holes in the roof. Sheila Douglas recalled:

“We used to stuff the seats with wadding. The building was two-thirds brick and above that asbestos. All these little holes used to get drafts in. We used to stuff holes in the ceiling with wadding to keep warm”

Machinists worked without guards on the needles and injuries were common. It was said that you weren’t accepted as a proper machinist until you’d been caught by the machine. The wage was small. On grade B, women earned eight or nine pounds. 

Sheila Douglas admitted it “seemed like a lot of money, because... I’d been on piece work... if I didn’t work, I didn’t earn. When we went to Fords we was on time work so whatever you done you got some wage each week…” But the money was already spoken for. Sheila was “living at home, I had to give my mum money and she needed anything I could give up.” 

Vera Sime, a fellow striker, said, “I gave my sister half my wages. She looked after my children so we had half each, that’s how we worked it”. Violet agreed, “It went in the home didn’t it, and on the children”.

Grievances about the women’s rate and their devalued skill were raised through company procedures with no success. The company feared upsetting its entire grading structure and causing resentment amongst male workers. 

Bernie Passington, convenor for the T & G union who fought for the women at the car plant, said:

“They got ignored. I went up with two stewardesses with thirteen pieces for a head rest and said to the company man, ‘Put them together’. He said, ‘Well, what are they?’ I said, ‘You should know. 13 pieces. Give them to a production girl and she knows what to do with them. That girl don’t put all those bits in a jig or anything. All she knows is she’s got to put all those bits together so at the end of it there’s a neat rolled head rest’. I said, ‘Who else does that? Nobody. ...She has to use her mind’. But you still couldn’t get anywhere with the company...".

Sheila recalled, “That’s how it was all sort of kicking off really. About the C grade and for equal rights it ended up. But originally it was for the C grade we were fighting”

Bernie said, “And in the end, like any group of workers, if they’re going to take no notice, better do something what makes them take notice”.

Sheila Douglas remembered, “We had a meeting on the shop floor and we had a meeting in the employment exchange to vote whether we would strike or not. And that’s how it happened. I don’t think it was unanimous but it was more for than against obviously because we came out on strike.” 

The strike by the women sewing machinists brought production at the Ford motor company to a standstill. 

For Vera Sime, a former sewing machinist at Ford's Dagenham plant in the 1960s, one of the epochal days in modern industrial history started like any other:

"It was like a normal work day in that I got the children ready and gave them to my sister. Then we all met at the factory and got on the coach."

The impact was huge, especially when the Ford Halewood Plant in Liverpool joined the action.

Bernie said “It shook them to the core. And being women, the mighty Ford motor company got women in dispute… It was something new. It shut the place down, they were laying people off”

Sheila: “It wasn’t the done thing at the time.”

Violet: “It frightened them.”

Sheila: “We didn’t think we were that strong.”

Violet: “We didn’t think we could bring Ford to a standstill.”

Sheila: “It was a surprise to us as well as everybody else. We didn’t think we were going to fetch the whole Ford Empire to its knees, as you might say, but that’s what happened eventually. And it was all down to us, us ladies. And we were ladies, whatever anybody else may say.”

Bernie recalled how they faced opposition from some within the T & G: “Some of our national officials weren’t all that agreed with what we were doing. They didn’t think it was right.”

The women strikers received angry letters from the public and faced opposition in the home: while Sheila’s father and Vera’s husband supported the strike, Violet’s husband opposed it. 

Sheila: My father worked across the yard from me. When we went on strike he said, "You've got to fight for what you want, Sheila. If you want anything no one's going to give it to you. You do what you want to do." So he was out of work as well as me. You did get a lot of people saying ‘What are you doing this for? You only come to work for pin money, women. Bernard told me that Jack Jones [later general secretary of the TGWU] said, "What can we give these women to get them back to work?" and then someone said, "Let's get them equal pay," not the grading. That's how we got the equal pay. There were grading grievances everywhere at Ford's so regrading the women would have cost Ford more than giving the women equal pay. I didn't want to go back to work! I wanted to stay out to get my C grade. I've always been on my own, I earn my own living, and I thought getting C grade would make a great deal of difference if and when I retired. But a lot of the women were married and their husbands and maybe other family members were working at Ford's. They were struggling, and so eventually we got sevenpence more an hour for all women in Ford, but we never got our C grade. We all felt that we deserved C grade, and we were determined that we weren't going to go back for less. If you see any bits on television where the girls are talking coming out of the gates they're saying to reporters, "We'll stay out forever!" or as long as it takes. We didn't think we were that important at the time. All we were was a handful of women who thought we deserved a better standard of pay. So we thought we'd try our luck and see what happens. It's not as if we hadn't been out on strike before. We were always in and out for this department or that. It was a known fact that Ford workers were strikers. We just thought we were coming out to try and gain C grade for ourselves and that's how it started off and it gradually got worse and worse. Because naturally you can't put a car on sale if it's not got a seat in. That's when we realised that we were more important than we thought. That's when it really struck home. I thought we should get C grade, so the equal pay wasn't that important. I don't mind it being there but I still felt we should be trying to fight for C grade - for lots of people outside Ford's equal pay was more important. The women wanted to be recognised for their skills. To get the job you needed the skills to do it, but you were classed as unskilled.

Dora was involved in both the 1968 & 1984 Strike.

 "They kept putting in wage claims which would be thrown out. That happened for two years. By this time they'd closed down different departments and Bernard Passingham had hardly any men, so he had us, and he stuck in a bit more. The union didn't want to be bothered with it. What, go on strike for women? Ron Todd [the TGWU leader] came down to take a meeting with the women and they booed him out of the plant. Every time he went to speak they booed him, because he was coming in to tell them, "Forget it this time and we'll put it in again in two years time."

It took a seven-week strike. The company didn't want to give in because a lot of people were sitting out there waiting to come in for their grade. You'd hear them saying, "I hope the women get it, because it's our turn to go in." But the women were more determined as well in 1984. They didn't get it the first time round. You're not going to be second time losers, are you?

The stewards at the time were more for the women then, even Bernard, as I said. They had to get people to do evaluations on different jobs. In the end that panel came up with we could have gone in E grade - way past a C grade. They said we could fight on longer and go up to an E grade. That's how badly we had been treated. During the 1968 strike  Rosie Boland, shop steward, and Bernard went up to Halewood to persuade the Halewood women to come out as well.

In the 1984 strike The women were in quite good spirits. They were determined. I went down on the picket and they used to get the lorry drivers in to break up the wooden palettes they put work on so they could be used on the fire on the picket line. The coal people were out on strike at the time too and they had pickets out, we had pickets out and we used to have a right laugh. A lot of the office staff used to come down and give us bottles of whisky to keep warm on the picket line.

I was ill treated by a foreman and that's the reason I went in as a steward. I went out for a hysterectomy and I came back and he put me on the end of this line where you've got to bend up and down. So I went to see the doctor and he said I'd got to come off that job. But the foreman phoned the doctor up and got him to change his mind to say I could do that job. After I was a steward I got that foreman transferred. It wasn't only about me. He could have treated other women like it, and it's not on. 

You had to be really strong. If you're right you're right. If you're wrong you've got to back away. It was funny because we had a man senior steward first who we voted in and he said, "If you do it with me, Dora, I'll do it," so I said OK. He bloody died in about a year and it was all left to me! But you couldn't do it without the women - there's your backing. The company knew that. If anything was wrong in H-building I'd only have to ask and they would stop. That's where you're strong because you all stick together. 

The company and the union were against the women. I told the union they were rubbish. One time we went up to the union headquarters at Transport House because no one was taking any notice of us. So I went up there and sat there and was told Ron Todd was busy and I said I don't care, I'm not going anywhere. In the end he sees me and he says, "I'm not having this. You just come up here unannounced and I've got to see you." And I said, "Well, Ron, if you don't like it then you'd better get your people underneath you to do their job." All men obviously. But it was great after that. Once we were at a conference and Ron had had his knees done and he was on crutches. So I said, "Whatever's up with you?" and he said, "I've had my knees done," and I said, "Well, you should have stopped begging, shouldn't you?"

We went to a school a while ago and we were talking to school children, and what I say to them is if they're going to join a union they must have a branch, go every month and hear different stories of people and what they get up to in work. You get more idea of what's going on in the world, because where else do you find that? I don't want to sell the unions because they're not always all that good, but it's somewhere to go. Otherwise get into politics and sort yourself out. Today you don't get big factories, you don't get lots of women who all work together, but they need to come together. How else do you do that?".

The film Made in Dagenham was a fair imitation of what happened. You have to give it a bit of poetic licence to make it interesting, like when they ripped their tops off, the ladies, because it's a sweatshop. But that never happened! Eileen was always swearing so that was her name. When Henry Ford came in she made a hat, she wrote "Bollocks" on it, and sat on the front machine. The foreladies were saying, "Eileen, take that hat off!" and she wouldn't. She sat there and he walked past her. Sometimes, it was a laugh. 

With Ford production stopped in 1968, the dispute was of national significance and Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, intervened. The women's confidence had grown so much that during the meeting shop steward Rosie Boland raised the issue of equal pay for the first time. 

A meeting between ministers, the union and the company agreed that the company would raise wages to 100% of grade B rate over two years. The union were satisfied with this abolition of the women’s rate, and felt that the re-grading was too much to ask from the company.

But the women were not satisfied. Sheila: “There was a meeting at the labour exchange. It was put to the vote we’d get an extra 7 pence an hour on our wages and would we accept this? The union recommended we accept. Some of us argued that we came out for C grade. I voted against, but I was in a minority, so we came back to work for an extra 7 pence an hour”.

“The union worked it that some now and again got C grade. But the whole of the women never got C grade until they came out in 1984. I was really annoyed that what we came out for originally was swept under the carpet. I suppose you could say that we started off equal pay but it wasn’t equal pay really.”

The strike had illustrated the widespread injustice in the employment market between male and female rates of pay. To tackle these abuses, The Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970. This legislation armed employees with the right to go to an industrial tribunal for equal pay with men in the same employment — but only if they were doing “like work” or if their job had been rated as equivalent but was paid at a different rate. The 1970 legislation did not give the Ford women the tools to fight for the re-grading that they originally demanded, as the only people they were doing “like work” to was themselves.

By 1984, women at the Ford car plant still experienced harsh conditions, with no guards on the needles and damage to hearing by machinery noise. All the women were in the union, as there was a strong woman rep who backed them up.

In 1983, the “Equal Value Amendment Regulations” passed as an amendment to the Equal Pay Act. The European Court of Justice had found that UK legislation was not sufficient to provide for equal work for equal value for all employees. The new legislation gave women the right to go to an employment tribunal on a new ground: that they felt their work was of equal value to men in the same organisation. The women at Ford used this to challenge Ford’s discriminatory job evaluation scheme, but the employment tribunal ruled against them and turned down their appeal in 1984. With their renewed hopes once again unfulfilled by the law, the women at Ford took strike action in December 1984.

There was a meeting in the canteen to decide on the action. Geraldine Dear, who was involved in the 1984 action recalled, “We shocked management. They thought we’d all walk out of that canteen and walk back into work.”

Management tried to undermine their strike by smuggling their work out through back fences, which the women organised to prevent. The women’s action was helped by solidarity from their male colleagues. 

Dora said, “They had train loads (of work) coming in. But the men wouldn’t do it. Give ‘em their due. They did stand by us.” Geraldine admitted, “We did feel awful. A lot of men were very upset. They had families as well and they got laid off. But we had to stick up for what we thought was right.”

The women organised pickets. Another striker, Pamela Brown, said, “We mainly did nights.” 

 Geraldine added, “My husband worked for British Rail so he knew what it was all about. I had him to look after my little one during the night.” They set up a big tent, sang and listened to the radio through the night. They had a chant: “Ford sewing machinists are like mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed shit.” The women stayed out for nine weeks.

Their strike stopped production and, with nobody working, delayed the year’s pay claim. Trade unions wanted a quick resolution. The women found themselves against both the unions and management.

They were brought into arbitration through ACAS, who set up a panel to examine the grading system at Ford. All the male C grade jobs were evaluated and compared to the sewing jobs. They looked at the many inbuilt discriminatory features of the job evaluation scheme, which awarded points for features of men’s jobs, while not recognising features of women’s jobs. The panel ruled that women’s speed and dexterity was unequalled in the company and that it had been significantly undervalued. 

Their ability to fix their own sewing machines and piece new designs together without training was finally acknowledged. The panel ruled that the sewing machinists’ job should be graded as grade C.

Management had the audacity to call the women to a meeting and announce that they were awarding the new grade almost like a gift. The women felt that this was an insult to the two strikes and almost twenty year wait they had endured to win this. Their job had not changed. 

They had simply received acknowledgement of their worth, which they had known all along.

Made in Dagenham is a 2010 British film directed by Nigel Cole. The film stars Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson, Geraldine James, Rosamund Pike, Andrea Riseborough, Jaime Winstone, Daniel Mays and Richard Schiff. It dramatises the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968 that aimed for equal pay for women. The film's theme song, with lyrics by Billy Bragg, is performed by Sandie Shaw, herself a native of the area and a former Ford Dagenham clerk.

Made in Dagenham was nominated for four awards at the 2010 British Academy Film Awards; Outstanding British Film, Costume Design, Make Up & Hair Design and Supporting Actress (Miranda Richardson).

 A musical adaption of the film opened on 5 November 2014, at the Adelphi Theatre in London. Scripted by Richard Bean, and directed by Rupert Goold, it starred Gemma Arterton in the lead role.

The TUC has produced a series of films about the fight for equal pay. They include oral history interviews with women and union representatives involved in some of the major equal pay cases since 1968.Watch and hear the women tell their stories below & watch a "behind the scenes" video on the making of the movie.

 TRAILER FOR "MADE IN DAGENHAM - THE MUSICAL 

THE STORY BEHIND THE MUSICAL

George Lansbury and the History of Hutton Poplars

I have lived on the Long Ridings Estate, in Hutton Essex for the last 10 years.  The Estate consists of purpose built social housing built andowned by Brentwood Borough Council. There are a variety of blocks flats, but none are more than 3 storeys high. There are lot of standard 3 bedroom council houses and many bungalows designed for the elderly on the estate. Many of the housing areas and roads are situated around a central “Green” such as Hawksmoor Green and Corram Green near to where I live. The Long Ridings Estate was constructed in the early 1980’s and the majority of these properties are still rented to council tenants.  This is in direct contrast to the large detached houses in privately accessed roads which are owned by the more wealthy residents of Shenfield and Brentwood. The area directly surrounding the Estate also includes a lot of natural woodland, and if you head off in the direction of Chelmsford, past the Hutton Industrial Estate, then you begin to get a few clues as to what may have been here in the past. If you reach Arnolds Farm Lane, then you will find yourself in  narrow rural country lanes, surrounded by hedgerows. There are Victorian farm houses and farm workers cottages stil standing here, along with various agricultural buildings and barns and plenty of fertile fields sown with crops.

On Rayleigh Road heading back towards Shenfield Station, there is an Adult Education Centre which is housed in a wonderful old large red brick building whose Architecture clearly dates from the early 20^th Century. I have often walked past it and wondered what it was in a former life, so I decided to do some in-depth historical research on Hutton in order to find out what the land was used for, before they built the Long Ridings Estate here in the early 1980’s. 

A lot of people, who now reside in this part of Essex, have ancestors who once lived in the poorest parts of the East End of London.  After the 2^nd World War, many families who had been bombed out during the Blitz were rehoused in Essex. My own grandparents – originally from Bow and Canning Town - moved out to Chadwell Heath just before the war began in 1939. However, Hutton’s links with the East End – and with Poplar in particular – go back much further and are mainly down to the actions of one man – George Lansbury.

If you are familiar with the film  “Bed Knobs and Broomsticks” or the popular TV Detective Series “Murder She Wrote” you will know that the veteran English Actress, Angela Lansbury, starred in the Disney movie and became well-known for her portrayal of Crime Sleuth Jessica Fletcher on TV. What you may not know is that her Grandfather was the Socialist MP George Lansbury, who eventually became Leader of the opposition Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. It was his pioneering social reforms at the beginning of the 20^th Century, which took many working class children from the poverty stricken streets of East London, and relocated them to the rural Essex. 

George Lansbury was born in Halesworth, Suffolk on 22 February 1859. His father was a travelling railway worker, also named George Lansbury, and his mother Anne, was a progressively-minded woman who introduced young George to the works of great contemporary political reformers such as Gladstone, at an early age. By the end of 1868 the family had moved into London's East End, the district in which Lansbury would live and work for almost all his life.

Lansbury attended schools in Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. He then held a succession of manual jobs, including work as a coaling contractor in partnership with his elder brother, James, loading and unloading coal wagons, which was heavy and dangerous work. During his adolescence and early manhood Lansbury was a regular attender at the public gallery at the House of Commons, where he heard and remembered many of Gladstone's speeches. He was present at the riots which erupted outside Gladstone's house on 24 February 1878 after a peace meeting in Hyde Park. It was Gladstone's Liberalism, proclaiming liberty, freedom and community which left an indelible impression on George Lansbury and would underpin most of his political principles.

In 1875 George met 14-year-old Elizabeth Brine, whose father Isaac owned a local sawmill. The couple eventually married in 1880, at Whitechapel parish church, where the vicar, J. Franklin Kitto, had been Lansbury's spiritual guide and counsellor. Apart from a period of doubt in the 1890s when he temporarily rejected the Church, Lansbury remained a staunch Anglican Christian until his death.

In 1881 the first of Lansbury's 12 children, Bessie, was born, and another daughter, Annie, followed in 1882. Seeking to improve his family's prospects, Lansbury decided that their best hopes of prosperity lay in emigrating to Australia. The London agent-general for Queensland depicted a land of boundless opportunities, with work for all.  Seduced by this appeal, Lansbury and his wife raised the necessary passage money, and in May 1884 they set sail with their children for Brisbane.

On the outward passage the family experienced illness, discomfort and danger - on one occasion the ship came close to foundering during a monsoon. On arrival at Brisbane in July 1884, Lansbury found that contrary to the London agent's promises, there was a superfluity of labour and work was hard to find. His first job, breaking stone, proved to be far too physically punishing. He moved to a better-paid position as a van driver, but was sacked when, for religious reasons, he refused to work on Sundays. He was then contracted to work on a farm some 80 miles inland, only to find on arrival that his employer had misled him about his living conditions and the terms of employment. For several months the family lived in extreme squalor and poverty before Lansbury secured release from the contract. Back in Brisbane, he worked for a while at the newly built Brisbane cricket ground. 

Throughout his time in Australia Lansbury sent letters home, revealing the real truth about the terrible conditions facing immigrants. To a friend he wrote in March 1885: 

"Mechanics are not wanted. Farm labourers are not wanted ... Hundreds of men and women are not able to get work ... The streets are foul day and night, and if I had a sister I would shoot her dead rather than see her brought out to this little hell on earth".  

 In May 1885, after having received from Isaac Brine sufficient funds for a passage home, the Lansbury’s left Australia to return to the East End of London. 

Back in England, Lansbury took a job in his father-in-law’s timber business. In his spare time he campaigned against the false prospectuses offered by colonial emigration agents. His speech at an emigration conference at King's College in London in April 1886 so impressed delegates that shortly afterwards, the government established an Emigration Information Bureau under the Colonial Office. This body was required to provide accurate information on the state of labour markets in all the government's overseas possessions.

Having joined the Liberal Party shortly after his return from Australia, Lansbury became a ward secretary and then general secretary for the Bow and Bromley Liberal and Radical Association. His effective campaigning skills had been noted by leading Liberals, and he was persuaded to become an agent for the Montagu, the Liberal MP. in the 1885 general election. Lansbury's handling of his election campaign prompted Montagu to urge George to stand for parliament himself.  Lansbury declined this, partly on practical grounds (MPs were then unpaid and he had to provide for his family), and partly on principle; he was becoming increasingly convinced that his future lay not as a radical Liberal but as a socialist. He continued to serve the Liberals, as an agent and local secretary, while expressing his socialism in a short-lived monthly radical journal, Coming Times, which he founded and co-edited with a fellow-dissident, William Hoffman.

In 1888 Lansbury agreed to act as election agent for Jane Cobden, who was contesting the first elections for the newly formed London County Council (LCC) as Liberal candidate for the Bow and Bromley division. Jane Cobden was an early supporter of women's suffrage.  The Society for Promoting Women as County Councillors (SPWCC), a new women's rights group, had proposed Cobden as the candidate for Bow and Bromley.  Lansbury counselled Cobden in the issues of greatest concern to the East End electorate: housing for the poor, ending of sweated labour, rights of public assembly, and control of the police. Specific questions of women's rights were largely avoided during the campaign. In April 1891, after a series of legal actions, Cobden was effectively neutered as a councillor by being prevented from voting on pain of severe financial penalties. Lansbury urged her, during the hearings, to "go to prison and let the Council back you up by refusing to declare your seat vacant" but Cobden did not follow this path. A Bill introduced in the House of Commons in May 1891 permitting women to serve as county councillors found little support among MPs of any party and women were not granted this right until 1907. 

Lansbury was offended by his party's lukewarm support for women's rights. In a letter published in the Pall Mall Gazette he made an open call to Bow and Bromley's Liberals to:

"shake themselves free of party feeling and throw the energy and ability they are now wasting on minor questions into ... securing the full rights of citizenship to every woman in the land". 

He was also disillusioned by his party's failure to endorse the eight-hour maximum working day. 

Lansbury had formed the view, expressed some years later that "Liberalism would progress just as far as the great money bags of capitalism would allow it to progress".

By 1892 the Liberals no longer felt like Lansbury's political home; most of his current associates like William Morris and Eleanor Marx were avowed socialists. Lansbury did not resign from the Liberals until he had fulfilled a commitment to act as election agent for John Murray MacDonald, the prospective Liberal candidate for Bow and Bromley. He saw his candidate victorious in the July 1892 General Election; but as soon as the result was declared, Lansbury resigned from the Liberal Party and joined the SDF. Lansbury quickly became the Socialist Federation's most tireless propagandist, travelling throughout Britain to address meetings or to demonstrate solidarity with workers involved in industrial disputes. Around this time, Lansbury temporarily set aside his Christian beliefs and became a member of the East London Ethical Society. One factor in his disillusion with the Church was the local clergy's unsympathetic approach to poor relief, and their opposition to collective political action.

In 1895 Lansbury fought two parliamentary elections for the SDF in Walworth, first a by-election on 14 May, then the 1895 general election two months later. Despite his energetic campaigning he was heavily defeated on each occasion, and only gained a tiny proportion of the vote. After these dismal results, Lansbury was persuaded to give up his job at the saw mill and become the SDF's full-time salaried national organiser. He preached a straightforward revolutionary doctrine:  

"The time has arrived for the working classes to seize political power and use it to overthrow the competitive system and establish in its place state cooperation". 

 Lansbury's time as SDF national organiser did not last long; in 1896, when Isaac Brine died suddenly, Lansbury thought that his family duty required him to take charge of the sawmill, and he returned home to Bow.

In the general election of 1900 a pact with the Liberals in the Bow and Bromley constituency gave Lansbury, the SDF candidate, a straight fight against the Conservatives. Lansbury's cause was hindered by his public opposition to the Boer War at a time when war fever was strong. Lansbury lost the election, though his total of 2,258 votes was considered creditable by the press. This campaign was Lansbury's last major effort on behalf of the SDF. He became disenchanted by its inability to work with other socialist groups. He resigned from the SDF to join the Independent Labour Party and also rediscovered his Christian faith.

In April 1893 Lansbury achieved his first elective office when he became a Poor Law guardian for the district of Poplar. In place of the traditionally harsh workhouse regime that was the norm, Lansbury proposed a programme of reform, whereby the workhouse became "an agency of help instead of a place of despair". Education for the poor was one of Lansbury's major concerns. He helped to transform the Forest Gate District School, previously a punitive establishment run on quasi-military lines, into a proper place of education that became the Poplar Training School, and was still in existence more than half a century later.  At the 1897 annual Poor Law Conference Lansbury summarised his views on poor relief in his first published paper: "The Principles of the English Poor Law". His analysis offered a Marxist critique of capitalism: only the reorganisation of industry on collectivist lines would solve contemporary problems.

Lansbury added to his public duties when, in 1903, he was elected to Poplar Borough Council. In the summer of that year he met Joseph Fels, a rich American soap manufacturer with a penchant for social projects. Lansbury persuaded Fels, to purchase a 100-acre farm at Laindon, in Essex, which was converted into a labour colony that provided regular work for Poplar's unemployed and destitute. The project was initially successful, but was undermined after the election of a Liberal government in 1906. The new Local Government minister, John Burns, was a firm opponent of socialism. Burns encouraged a campaign of propaganda to discredit the principle of labour colonies, which were presented as money-wasting ventures that pampered idlers and scroungers. A formal enquiry revealed irregularities in the operation of the scheme, though it exonerated Lansbury. He retained the confidence of his electorate and was easily re-elected to the Board of Guardians in 1907.

In 1905 Lansbury was appointed to a Royal Commission on the Poor Laws. . Lansbury, together with Beatrice Webb of the Fabian Society, argued for the complete abolition of the Poor Laws and their replacement by a system that incorporated old age pensions, a minimum wage, and national and local public works projects. These proposals were embodied at the Commission's conclusion in a minority report signed by Lansbury and Webb. Most of the minority's recommendations in time became national policy and the Poor Laws were finally abolished by the Local Government Act 1929.

Lansbury summarised the extent of cronyism and abuse in the Poor Law system by saying:

"'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' was the basis of policy where jobs and contracts were concerned ... the slum owner and agent could be depended upon to create the conditions which produce disease; the doctor would then get the job of attending the sick, the chemist would be needed to supply drugs, the parson to pray, and when, between them all, the victims died the undertaker was on hand to bury them."

The Borough of Poplar had always faced high poverty levels. Since the turn of the century the workhouses and orphanages in the borough had been trying to cope with significant overcrowding. George Lansbury now saw another opportunity to expand The Board of Guardians operations into the Essex countryside. This time he managed to convinced the Board to acquire 100 acres of land for £10,100 situated between the Villages of Hutton and Shenfield on the Rayleigh Road. A further £174,180 was spent on buildings, services and roads, architects' fees and furniture - making a total cost of £184,280

 In 1906 the Board completed work on this self-contained community which had its own store, a school, a farm, an indoor swimming pool and an array of ancillary buildings alongside the living accommodation for the staff and the orphans. Hutton Poplars was the name given to the Training School and Residential Home which was capable of housing anything from 400 - 700 children at any one time.

The cost of the project caused uproar in the Houses of Parliament when it first opened. Some MPs complained that with parquet flooring and central heating, the buildings were more of the comfort levels of a public school like Eton than for an East End orphan’s training school. However, once operational, the project received recognition for its good work, with a Governmental inspection in early 1914 rating the facilities as "among the best in Britain" with the children "well cared for by an efficient staff of specially selected teachers." 

 George Lansbury’s typically socialist reaction to the high costs of building Hutton Poplars was “Hang the Rates”. He thought that this is where public money should be spent – on improving the lives and conditions of the poor. 

In February 1907 the very first children arrived at Shenfield railway Station, accompanied by staff. Doreen Buttleman was one of the first residents of Hutton Poplars:

“Nearly 700 babies and children, along with staff walked from Shenfield station up the hill to their new homes on a freezing February day in 1907. The site was like a small town with separate houses for boys and girls, a school, laundry, kitchens, infirmary, swimming pool, dining hall, a small farm with stables, orchards and even shoe menders.” 

The average cost of food per week per child was 2s.7d in 1907 but this had been reduced down to 1s.11d by 1910. An October 1911 report confirms 697 children were being accommodated at the time out of a possible maximum of 743.

Hutton Poplars was like a small town serving all the day to day needs of the children. There was an administration building with the swimming baths and Gymnasium set across from the central green and the school houses situated on either side. The main hall of the school had a beautiful stained glass window. There was a separate dining hall with some beautiful brickwork, and nearby were the Porter's Lodge and the Kitchens. There was also a gardener's shed and greenhouses, the Master's House, and the Matron's block with needlework and laundry training rooms. There was a Bakery and Workshops, the Infirmary and the Receiving Ward and some farm buildings.

The Boys' houses were home to 66 boys and each house had 6 members of staff. The Girl's houses were home to 36 girls and also had accommodation for younger boys up to 8 years old. There was a separate house for Babies' and toddlers and the children would usually be there up to the ages of 14 or 15 years old – the legal age at which state schooling ended – and would then leave, hopefully to find jobs in the areas for which they had received training for during their time at the establishment. 

There was an official Royal visit in 1918 by Queen Mary. She came to inspect the premises and see some of the work that was being done at Hutton Poplars – and she was accompanied by non-other than George Lansbury, who was the Chairman of the Governors.  

Not everyone was happy with having 700 East End children suddenly being re-housed in Hutton. The placement of such an establishment was controversial with the local villagers and the hostility continued for many years, with the children constantly being referred to as "outsiders" and thought best avoided by the local residents.  

The administration of Hutton Poplars passed to the London County Council in the 1920s and subsequently it opened its doors to children from all parts of East and North London. Several thousand children passed through its gates over the next six decades and the memoirs of a few former residents give us a really good idea of what living there was really like. 

James Chalkley attended the Hutton Residential School from 1930 to 1939 and has distinct memories of the Dining Hall:

“We had a big dining hall where all the boys had their meals but it was more like the “Food, Glorious Food” scene from the film, Oliver. The Headmaster and his cronies would sit above us on a stage eating roast chicken & roast potatoes while we ate whatever they dished up to us.”

James also recalls a regular Saturday tradition:

“On Saturday we got a penny pocket money. We would rush down to Musgrove’s Shop and buy four golliwog bars for a penny - they were one farthing each back then. The shop would be packed with us boys spending our pocket money. The older boys would pinch a big bar of chocolate; then pass it to one of the smaller boys who would run out of the shop. The big boy would then leave the shop run up the hill and snatch the bar back from us before we had a chance to break a square off for ourselves.”

John Wilson was evacuated from East London and stayed at Hutton Poplars from 1939 to 1949. He remembers using the swimming pool for the very first time: 

“During my three and a half years there I learned a lot and we had some exciting times. The ones I remember most were our swimming lessons. I had never been allowed into a swimming pool before and the first time we went, those who could swim had to race across the pool, and the last one out was supposed to go back to the class room. Those who could not swim were meant to wade across - and again - the last out had to go back to the school.  As I was one of the taller ones I was nearly half way down the pool when I slipped and went into a hypoglycemic coma due to being a diabetic. At first the other kids thought I was lying when I told them that I had never been in a swimming pool before!  I was doing somersaults and cartwheels in the water and it was only when I reached the side that they realised I was really unwell! After that I was never allowed in the pool again and all the other diabetics had an extra slice of bread on swimming days, both boys and girls.”

John also recalls the chores and jobs that the young residents were required to undertake. 

“The girls and also boys up to seven years old were in Block 1 and boys seven years and older were in Block 2. Each week we had a job allocated to us such as scrubbing the corridors and washrooms, polishing the dormitory floors, and also the playroom and dining room floors and stairs. In addition we had to do the washing up and lay the tables. The best job of all was buttering the bread. Each slice was the weight of two pennies in old money, some with makeweights trimmed from those too heavy, the ‘butter’ consisted of two thirds margarine and one third butter mixed together in a bowl. When the Sister in charge of weighing the slices was not looking, we pinched the makeweights to eat on the way to school or to feed to the pet rabbits. When you had done all the jobs on the list (a week at a time) you had a week off.” 

Although the main emphasis was on education and training for employment, the children did get some leisure time too: 

In our free time, after school and when chores had finished, we investigated the woods and surroundings area. The school buildings were in a large circle with the Headmasters house, and the Assembly & Dining Hall on one side, Blocks 1 – 10 were opposite. The Store, and the block for Girls training to go into service were at one end. The Woodwork, Gym, Swimming Pool, Laundry, and Engineers room went across the middle and the Infirmary and Staff Quarters were at the other end near the big woods. During Our first Autumn/Winter there in 1939 we use to go out in the blackout and help ourselves to apples stored in a shed on the floor.”

John remembers a couple of other painful moments too: 

“The Training Block girls were somewhat spiteful. We all played ‘kiss chase’ but when they caught one of us lads, after kissing us, they used to throw us in the bed of stinging nettles. I also learned that daffodils did not grow wild. I picked some to send to my Mum but we were caught by the school caretaker who took us to the Headmaster. He gave us both six of the best, and we never picked daffodils again.”

John also recalls an incident during an air raid in the early1940's:

One night, because of an air raid, we were all sleeping in the corridor downstairs; there were five children to a mattress, all lying across it sideways. A bomb took away the bathroom guttering and landed outside the kitchen. We had to run up to Blocks 9 and 10 (the babies blocks) carrying our mattresses, pillow, and blankets. Thankfully the bomb turned out to be a dud! Some nights we slept in the air raid shelter with just a blanket between you and the concrete floor, not too bad on the smooth part of the floor but not so comfortable on the ridged part.”

John recalls having to walk to Brentwood on a Sunday morning in order to attend Church:

Going to Mass on a Sunday, I took my friend Johnny Russell with me on the two and a half mile uphill walk to Brentwood Cathedral. We weren’t allowed to travel by city coach – they were being reserved for adult war workers. We had to go back one Sunday afternoon because Johnny Russell had left his gas mask there.”

A resident who was there after the war and into the 1950’s recalls some of the staff members:

“The Head master then was Mr Higdon, Teacher of woodwork and my house master was Mr McFadon. There was also a Governor called Mr Reilly, and I remeber Mr. & Mrs. Creasy, and Mr Banister. I left there in 1953 to take up an apprenticeship with the London Electricity Board as an electrical tradesman. I then emigrated to Australia. One thing that always sticks out in my mind is seeing the end of 'sugar rationing' whilst I was living at Hutton Poplars.”

Another former resident has more memories of Hutton Poplars in the late 1960’s:

“I remember living in a large austere Edwardian mansion called Windermere, which was across the field from Serota House, which was a more modern building. Windermere had a large winding staircase and in the playroom there was a rocking horse. I remember playing in the garden where there was an old car, and when they were smashing down the old buildings we were surrounded by bricks. When my mother died in 1969 I was there for a very long time.”

The children were encouraged to spend lots of time outside in the fresh air:

 “We had to play out every day and we were just on the edge of woodland that would be smothered with bluebells. Across the way was a beautiful swing park with a maypole surrounded by rose bushes. I went to Bishops Hill and used to roll down the hill and across the road that was surrounded by tall poplars. There were lots of cherry trees and oak trees too. Every day we had to go out to play unless it rained. I used to love it when it rained because I hated the cold and I could stay in and draw and paint and play games instead.”

Dinner times and bedtimes all had a strict routine’s right up to the end of the 1960’s:

“I remember the wash room for clothes next door to the kitchen and the rules of having to wash dishes and sweep the floors after dinner. At the dinner table we were made to keep our hands on the edge of the table after we had finished eating. The kitchen entry was the main entrance to the house that led into a large hallway. To the left of the hallway was the dining room and living room with a little black and white TV in the back of the room. There was a hatch to the left where we would have to push the plates through after eating. At bedtime the rule was to go to the toilet first before going up to the rooms to get ready for bath. Bedtime was at 6-7pm. The girl’s quarter was to the right and the boys to the left with the bathroom situated to the middle.”

Some children were adopted and others who were not orphans were allowed to go back to their parents when their home situation improved: 

" I remember at dinner times the guardians would announce somebody going home or being adopted. My heart would beat to hear my name being called. I spent a lot of time screaming and crying for my mother, because at this time I had no idea where she was, so I would find myself looking for her whenever we went out. I remember constantly walking into lamp posts along Raleigh Road whilst looking for her. After 7 years, at the age of 10 my name was called and I remember crying my heart out as we pulled away from Serota House to start my new life back in London.  I vowed at that moment at that on my 18th Birthday I would go back to Serota House – and I did on the exact day. The house was derelict like all the rest of the buildings surrounding it. I was just about to go up the wide stairs to where I used to sleep when I heard a movement. I was with a friend at the time. We got scared and ran out with our hearts in our mouth and I never returned.”

The creation of the Greater London Council in 1966 replacing the London County Council resulted in the London Borough of Hackney taking administrative control of Hutton Poplars. Charged with emptying it of non - Hackney residents and ultimately selling it off to property developers, children began leaving for smaller establishments in and around London. Hackney continued to house its children there until 1982. A teacher who taught at the school in the 1970s for the last few years before it eventually closed had this to say:

"I recall the numbers being gradually reduced in the home but local children were also being taught at the school. The aim was to be firm but fair but it was not always easy for all teachers to be fair all the time. I remember only too well how traumatised some of the resident children were from their early childhood and that I feared that some would never adjust to normal life. Sadly, with so many children in each house, the house mother could not give the degree of love and attention that some children needed but that nonetheless they were clearly better cared for than they had been at home. In consequence, I still remember individual children well and by name and some would call at my house in Shenfield knowing they would be welcomed with a glass of lemonade”.

After the school closed in the late 1970’s, the buildings then witnessed various fates under Essex County Council. Some were demolished but the swimming pool was left standing. Brentwood Swimming Club used the pool for training sessions on Saturday mornings and it remained open until 1982 when it too was demolished - despite local resident’s pleas for it to become a facility for the wider community. The school hall, known as Bishops Hill, was maintained as an educational facility and became an Adult Community Learning centre for the Essex Adult Community College. Hutton Poplars Hall was deemed a listed building.  It was restored in 1991 and may now be hired from Brentwood Borough Council for weddings, conferences and other events. The Essex Dining Hall still remains as a traditional village hall.

 In 1982 the development of the new Long Ridings residential estate began. The new housing development on the old site was modelled largely on the original layout with houses forming an oval around central open green spaces. Some back gardens in Colet Road still retain the original fruit trees that grew in the Orchard at Hutton Poplars. 

Being a life- long Socialist, whose maternal grandparents both grew up in Bow and Poplar in the 1900’s, I feel a distinct link to the past, knowing that the area I now live in, was once the site of a home and school for some of the very poorest children from those areas.  What George Lansbury achieved in the early of the 20^th Century by building Hutton Poplars, may now be seen over a hundred years later as an archaic type of institution, but at the time it was built it provided safe homes a good education and led to better work opportunities for many thousands of deprived and under privileged working class children. During the Second World War many more children’s lives were saved by evacuating them out to Essex, and in the post war years, lots of children who had lost parents or had family problems could come to Hutton Poplars and be cared for in a safe environment. 

Centenary celebrations took place in 2006 and Whit Monday is traditionally a reunion day when any former residents are encouraged to visit for the annual open fete day. This now takes place in the Essex dining hall every year. 

So what became of George Lansbury and his children?

He remained a staunch socialist and pacifist for the rest of his life and was also one of the few male politicians who openly supported the Women's Suffragette movement.  He was elected to parliament in 1910, but resigned his seat in 1912 to campaign for women's suffrage, and was briefly imprisoned after publicly supporting militant action.

In 1912 Lansbury helped to establish the Daily Herald newspaper and became its editor. Throughout the First World War the paper maintained a strongly pacifist stance, and supported the October 1917 Russian Revolution. These positions contributed to Lansbury's failure to be elected to parliament in 1918. He devoted himself to local politics in his home borough of Poplar, and went to prison with 30 fellow-councillors for his part in the Poplar "rates revolt" of 1921.

After his return to parliament in 1922, Lansbury was denied office in the brief Labour government of 1924, although he served as First Commissioner of Works in the Labour government of 1929–31. 

After the political and economic crisis of August 1931 Lansbury did not follow his leader, Ramsay MacDonald, into the National Government, but stayed with the Labour Party. As the most senior of the small contingent of Labour MPs that survived the 1931 general election, Lansbury became the party's leader. His pacifism and his opposition to rearmament in the face of rising European fascism put him at odds with his party, and when his position was rejected at the 1935 party conference he resigned the leadership. He spent his final years travelling through the United States and Europe in the cause of peace and disarmament.

Lansbury’s wife had died in 1933, after 53 years of a marriage that had produced 12 children between 1881 and 1905. Of the 10 who survived to adulthood, Edgar Lansbury followed his father into local political activism as a Poplar councillor in 1912, serving as the borough's mayor in 1924–25. He was for a time also a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. After the death of his first wife Minnie in 1922, Edgar married an actress from Belfast; and their daughter Dame Angela Lansbury who was born in 1925, became a famous stage and screen actress. George Lansbury's youngest daughter Violet was an active CPGB member in the 1920s. She lived and worked in Moscow for many years and married Clemens Palme Dutt, the brother of the prominent Marxist intellectual Rajani Palme Dutt.

Another of George Lansbury’s daughters, Dorothy, was a women's rights activist and later a campaigner for contraceptive and abortion rights. She married Ernest Thurtle, the Labour MP for Shoreditch, and was herself a member of Shoreditch council, serving as mayor in 1936. She and her husband also founded the Workers' Birth Control Group in 1924. Her younger sister Daisy served as George Lansbury's secretary for 20 years. In 1913 she helped Sylvia Pankhurst to evade police capture by disguising herself as Pankhurst. She was married to Raymond Postgate, the left-wing writer and historian, who was Lansbury's first biographer and founder of The Good Food Guide. Their son, Oliver Postgate, was a successful writer, animator and producer for children's television.

The Lansbury home at 39 Bow Road was destroyed by bombing during the London Blitz of 1940–41 but there is a small memorial stone dedicated to Lansbury in front of the current building, appropriately named George Lansbury House, which itself carries a memorial plaque. There is also a memorial to Lansbury in the nearby St Mary & Holy Trinity Church, known as ‘Bow Church’, where Lansbury was a long-term member of the congregation and churchwarden.