The Dagenham strikers with their placards, 1968.
Ford Dagenham women strike for equal pay
1968
In 1968 how did a group of women cause fear in the British government, prompting statements such as ‘disastrous’ and ‘a critical problem for British economy’?
The strike by women at Ford Motor Company’s Dagenham plant in 1968 has been the subject of popular culture depictions, but records from The National Archives show these women workers really did panic the Wilson government.
The action started on 7 June 1968, when 187 women walked out of Ford’s Dagenham plant, led by several key women: Rose Boland, Eileen Pullen, Vera Sime, Gwen Davis and Sheila Douglass. Prime Minister’s Office files on this subject show the government tensions through fraught telegrams, alongside a handwritten letter signed the ‘Women Workers at Fords of Dagenham’. The letter from these women workers boldly declares, ‘We are fighting a great fight equal pay for women’.
In a regrading exercise, the women’s work had been graded as less skilled, and therefore they were paid less. Contrary to popular belief, the women were not directly asking for equal pay, but for their technical skills used to make seat covers to be ranked at the same grade as that of their fellow male workers.
As the strike continued, production of the seat covers stopped. Three weeks into the strike Barbara Castle, First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Employment, was sent to intervene on the 27 June.
With the threat of Henry Ford visiting England, the pressure was upped. Strained telegrams from the government stated the productions of 2,200 cars had been brought to a halt and had caused the cancellation of export orders exceeding eight million, with the threatened complete closure of all Ford plants in Britain, affecting 40,000 men. The women workers state in their letter they are sorry for the disruption to the men’s work, ‘but more sorry for ourselves’. Their impact on the economy could not be ignored.
Women had long been campaigning for equal pay; in the suffrage era, women saw the vote as a means to influence the government on equal pay. In the 1930s the Six Point Group, a women’s rights organisation, lobbied the government around six principle issues, one of which was ‘equal pay for men and women teachers.’
The Court of Inquiry appointed by Barbara Castle reassured the women it would look fully into their problem of regrading; it gave them the understanding that, subject to ratification, the women’s rate was to be increased from 85 per cent to 90–92 per cent of the men’s rate. The women workers settled for this agreement.
On 28 July, Mr Batty, the Managing Director of Ford Britain, telegrammed the Prime Minister thanking him for his intervention. By 8 July, production had restarted in the plants.
Contrary to popular perception, the women did not directly win their demands – the grading of their work did not change. However, this case was fundamental in the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970 by Barbara Castle, for which women had been fighting for decades. As the women of Dagenham stated in their letter, this fight was for ‘not only us at Fords all women everywhere’.
