In 1910, the women chain makers of Cradley Heath, in the West Midlands, went on strike in protest against low pay and exploitative working conditions. led by union organiser and campaigner, Mary Macarthur. 

 

The strike was to last for 10 weeks, by the end of which they achieved their aim in attaining a living wage, this  victory helped to make the principle of a national minimum wage a reality.

 

During the Nineteenth Century, Cradley Heath had become the centre of the British chain making industry, while heavy industrial type chains were made in factories, smaller hand-hammered type chains were made by  women these were housewives and mothers. They would work in a outhouse behind their homes, which contained a small forge. 

 

Several women worked together in hot, cramped and unsanitary conditions, and were often accompanied by their small children and babies. 

 

Workers called ‘foggers’ - middle-men for the companies - delivered rods of iron to the women, who would then weld and hammer the rods to make links of chain. The foggers collected the finished chain, and took a percentage of the women’s earnings. 

 

The women were paid piece rates, which depended on the amount and weight of chain they produced they were very poorly paid, but had little choice but to accept and be thankful for the pittance they received.

 

The women chain makers typified ‘sweated labour’, which was notorious for low pay and bad working conditions with no legal recourse or government assistance to fall back on, workers were at the mercy of their, often unscrupulous, employers. 

 

The plight of the sweated labourers had not gone unnoticed and social reformers set out to expose the diabolical conditions under which they worked, and of which the general population was largely ignorant. Mary Macarthur was one of the founding members of The National Anti-Sweating League - a powerful pressure group dedicated to establishing a living wage for everyone. 

 

She founded and was secretary to the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW). Macarthur put her mind to helping the women chain makers. 

 

On her first visit to Cradley Heath she wrote: ‘The red glow of the forge fires and the dim shadows of the chain makers made me think of some torture chamber of the Middle ages.’

 

In 1909, Macarthur gave testimony before the parliamentary select committee on homework as a result of this the Liberal government passed the Trades Boards Act to establish regulatory boards and minimum rates for low-paid trades. 

 

In March 1910, the Chain Making Trade Board set a minimum wage of 2 1/2d an hour to replace the piece work system, few employers paid the new rate, and many tricked or forced their workers into signing a contract opting out of a minimum wage, those who refused were denied work, or got rid of by other means. 

 

They were easily replaced by other willing workers, and being so few in number and scattered about the county there was little the women could do.

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Macarthur threw her heart, body and soul into the women chain makers’ cause helping to organise the strike, she attended daily picket duty, chaired meetings and arranged fund raising events, a charismatic leader who attracted enormous attention from all walks of society. 

 

Skilfully she used the media to attract publicity, using photographs of the oldest and frailest workers, who were dressed in rags, with chains strewn around their necks. Pathe news reel, exposed the women’s diabolical working conditions, shown in music halls and picture houses throughout the country. the women became known as the white slaves of England.

 

Thanks to Macarthur, the striking women received incredible public sympathy and support, and donations flooded in. 

 

The government refused to tender contracts to firms refusing to pay the new minimum wage, and the striking women gained the support of the TUC. 

 

Faced with such incredible pressure, the chain companies finally acquiesced, and gradually all employers signed a paper stipulating that they would pay the new minimum wage, the women’s wages rose from a pittance of 5 shillings a week to 11 shillings a week. the women had won the strike was at an end and they returned to work. 

 

When the strike was over there was still £1,500 in the fund as a memorial to the women’s achievement, the NFWW used it to build a worker’s institute on the site where many of the strike meetings were held.

 

The women’s chain makers’ victory had a huge impact across the British Labour Movement. Between 1910-1920 membership of the NFWW rose from 2,000 to 20,000. They played a pioneering role in regulating low pay. 58 years after the strike in 1998, the Labour government passed the National minimum Wage Act which extended the minimum pay protection to all industries.